It is released on June 27th in Japan. I imagine it will be the same or very shortly afterwards for the rest of us.

Where are you? If you tell us which country you are in we may be able to offer you other shops which will ship to you and charge in Euros. Though SRS are brilliant, and do ship abroad.

Check the terms and conditions very carefully for any insurance covering cameras - some will not pay out for what they describe as negligence - for instance if you are concentrating on taking a photo with your bag at your feet and the bag gets snatched - you are negligent. They also often don't cover theft from a hotel room - but do you really want to take your gear to dinner with you every evening? Have you tried fitting all your gear in a hotel safe??? If you are planning on flying make sure it offers worldwide coverage and will cover gear that is checked - your tripod for instance must be checked and should there be another security scare you may not be allowed hand baggage and have to check the whole lot to get home again.

For the Dutch members here I can recommend the Omroep insurance .

I resent that. My youngest son is a journalist.

You could always ask for the Grip for father's day/birthday/Christmas Mike! It's probably not essential to get it immediately.

My brother in law owns a company that restores classic cars. He drives a Scimitar himself, and always some old car in the garage to play with when he's not at work! My son wanted to do the same thing but in the end he followed his other great love of sailing and makes his living at that nowadays.

You need a minimum of 300mm at the long end for a safari. A zoom is better than a prime though as you can never be sure how close to the animals you can get, and if you want a bit more than a rhinos nostril on your photograph you'll need to be able to zoom out to a wider angle .
I took my Ist Ds on safari a few years ago, with a Tamron 28-300mm lens on it. No weatherproofing involved, and it was lovely and light to carry. I had no dust problems either since I never changed lenses. I found 300mm just a bit short so bought the Sigma 50-500mm.

The Sigma 18-250 with OS says it can be used in combination with Pentax's own antishake system:
It is a tempting "holiday lens".

Ah a Mk1 Cortina! That was my first car, same colour too. One from 1964, B registered. Cost me all of 30 quid, which was nearly three weeks wages .
I went all over Britain in it, loved it to bits. And I sold it for 40 pounds, which can't be bad

Benjikan (Ben Kanerek) springs to mind as a professional still using Pentax, inspite of losing his sponsorship. At least that's the impression I get from his postings on Pentaxforums.

There are some places which charge for professionals, and some Native American areas charge for cameras, professional or not. But on the whole you are free to photograph in any National park in the US, with any camera and tripod.
I can understand that security is a bit touchy somewhere like DC, but we have never had a problem in any US national park or in any state park with taking photographs. I go in there with my back pack loaded up with gear and tripod and have never had a problem. It is not true that state and federal parks are clamping down on photographers as stated in the OP's first posting and certainly not to make people buy their postcards instead. Indeed most state parks I have visited, and most BLM and forestry sites do not have a shop to sell you postcards even if you wanted them.

Here is a link to the need for permits at Grand Canyon NP, the same rules apply to all other US NPs. http://tinyurl.com/nkw2fm, and this link quotes chapter and verse for various US parks and lands http://tinyurl.com/6syvwg.

Clearly provided you are photographing for personal use only you do not need a permit. Even for commercial photography often no permit is needed.