Ski Whitefish Video!

Finally, Timewaster Studios has come through with another amazingly-awesomely-mega-super-fantastic video.  ah...yes, I'm somewhat biased about Timewaster Studio projects being awesome and all. 

I was only slightly bummed that I was sitting on the couch with a shattered leg and unable to actually get footage of the guys myself.  (Not that I would have been any better at praying to get a good shot as I hurtled down the slopes than the rest of the crew...but it would have been more fun for me.)  Yeah, I'm selfish I guess.

Never fear though my loyal readers and fans of Timewaster Studio projects!  I had my friends go out and ski with cameras strapped to them in my stead, and they filmed everything they could until the cold zapped the batteries.

Admittedly, it took me a while to give a rip about editing the video what with the accident and all, but there was some great stuff on there when I got around to editing!  Several hours worth of stuff actually.  As is the norm for most of my vacations, we had the GoPro's running constantly and the footage adds up.

Well, it's spring now so I'm positive it's the ideal time to get a bunch of hits on a winter ski trip video!

Enough with the rambling intro to this video.  I'm sure the gang has been looking forward to it, or they have all forgotten about it due to the length of time that has lapsed.  I just hope they didn't fall asleep reading the opening remarks here.

There...I'm done yammering...for now...

Enjoy everyone, and thanks to my good friends for the support!

Whitefish Montana - Post 2

The group of us had a great day on the slopes.  Snow fell off and on throughout the day and there was also some sun that made the powder snow sparkle on the tree lined slopes.  The trees themselves were brightened as the light hit the pillows of snow piled on the branches.  As I had heard about Montana, "If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes."  It changed constantly from blowing snow and zero visibility to blinding sun and blue skies. 

As the second half of the day progressed, the group of us would separate and re-join for a few hours as we all skied and boarded what we could. 

I could have used the spiritual help 20 minutes after taking this picture...

On the second to last run Paul and I stopped by to visit Big Mountain Jesus.  A statue of Christ that was built to honor members of the U.S. Military 10th Mountain Division, and it has stood there for the past 50 years. As a side note, this memorial has been subject to some legal debate on whether or not to allow it to remain.  My opinion is that the local government should have the power to allow or reject the display based on local majority opinion even if it is on "Federal Land".  It's not like a 6 foot tall statue on a ski resort mountainside is all that obtrusive and offensive.  If you don't like it, either don't look at it or you are free to not ski that run.

Paul, Nathan and I took the last lift up to the top of the mountain as the lifts closed.  The clouds had socked in the summit and the wind was whipping snow off the peak.  It was a really inhospitable looking place, but our coats and gear just made it fun to look at.  It's strange to be standing in a place like that, and to be perfectly encased in clothes that protect you so that you are comfortable even when the world outside would try to kill you in a short period without them.  We skirted the peak and looked over the deadly looking drop-offs that were marked as black diamond trails.  I really wonder if dropping into one of those trails would have been any worse than what proceeded to happen.

(Important tangent for all you readers: this next part of the trip sucks way worse than the eating heaps and heaps of humble pie as mentioned in the previous post, so if you have to choose...)

Down a trail from the summit,

Smiling,

Friends Nearby, 

Laughing,

Wind Rushing,

White Snow Made into Clouds,

Steep Rolling Trail,

Oh, NO!!! Off Balance,

Turn!

Save it! Save It!

A Red Flash.

Black.

Cold snow on my face...

Please, Oh Please, Don't Let It Be Broken...

And that, my friends, is about as choppy and rapid-fire as the last moments of that run feel when I recall them.  (and it's painfully obvious from that artful bit of writing that I'm not an English Major either, but I never wanted to have a job that required me to ask "Do you want fries with that?") 

Paul was first there and Nathan shortly afterwards to help as he had to come back up the slope a bit to reach me. 

I knew it was broken.  The leg moved in a way it shouldn't when I shifted it.  The concern on both their faces was evident.  Paul stayed with me and Nathan rocketed down the slopes to tell the Ski Patrol, and from that point began the one of the most limiting and agonizing injuries I have ever had.  Agonizing not so much related to the pain, but more related to my need to move and the need to be independent.  I am trapped for a time in a body that won't let me do what I want to do. 

The Erector Set

I sat in the snow for about 20 minutes with Paul watching up the slope to warn anyone coming down that we were in the way.  The Ski Patrol arrived (without the trumpet fanfare I had imagined for some reason) and they were skilled and really wonderful people.  We actually had a couple of laughs as they splinted me and loaded me in the sled. We were so far out on the mountain that they couldn't get a snowmobile up to me.  They helped me slide into some form of sled and strapped me in.  I was covered in a vinyl tarp to keep snow from flying in my face as they towed me.  We were flying down the mountain from what I could tell, and the sled would pitch violently from side to side as the terrain changed.  That rolled me several times onto the broken leg.  I could hear the guy say, "Sorry man." when it happened.  There wasn't much to do aside from just deal with it.

When we arrived at a ski lift somewhere along the trail, (I don't know which since I was totally disoriented by the sled ride) they attached the sled to a chair and sent us up the lift to where a snowmobile could reach me and tow me to the clinic. I don't ever want to have to make that trip again. Having a broken leg and getting tossed around in a coffin like sled was the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Nathan got this picture before we decided to pull off the ski boot.  Looking back on it, I should have paid for the boot right then and there and had someone destroy it cutting it off my leg rather than what we did.  It took two people to stretch the boot open as much as possible and then we all pulled. 

Take my word for it.  Don't ever do that

Nathan hung with me when I made decision to pull the boot off my broken leg in the clinic. The medic's comment about "You Bama boys are tough." when it was over did make me feel a bit better. I'm sure he has had the opportunity to see the worst in people when they are in pain.

Feeling better with my brand new full leg cast...and loads of pain medication...

The things I have learned and will now pass on to you so you don't have to do this stuff for yourselves: 

Seriously people, please learn this stuff on your own from here on out.  I'm done being the example.

If you are skiing and find yourself saying, "Hey, I'm tired, but I have one more run in me." At that moment you are supposed to just stop and come back tomorrow.  Always leave wanting more.  I believe that this rule may apply to many other sports that risk injury.

Unfortunately, I learned this lesson at the end of the first day of the trip, and after a lovely night in the hospital, I was back in the Lodgepole house where we were staying.

I want to take the time to give my absolute appreciation to all the guys on the trip (Paul, Nathan, John, Way, Carper, and Andy)  You guys are true friends and were wonderful to have around helping out after my accident.  I can't say enough good things.  It really meant a lot to have your company, daily ski stories, and assistance while I was there.  When I get out of this cast and can move again, I'm going to throw a massive party.  Carper...Uh...plane tickets?  I may have to delay catching up with you until I can make it out to Colorado.  It will happen though.

I also have to thank my wife and friends at the office for helping me out now that I have gone on for 2 months without writing about this incident.  I owe my wife a trip to Hawaii or something since she has been driving me everywhere for the past 8 weeks...if I can ever save up enough after paying for the erector set leg.

.

Way and John on the lift...Twins?  Nah...

I will have the video up in the next post, and I think it came together pretty well.

Thanks again everyone.

Snow in Whitefish (This was written a long time ago now)

I am an active person to say the least.  I am apparently also a fragile person (skeletally).  Which is a seriously messed up combination when I think about it.  I mean, how screwed up is it to have the desire to do the sports I do and then have a skeleton that shatters like so much glass when I make a mistake?

I went on my first serious snow ski trip with a group of guys as I noted in a few of my previous posts.  It was stellar.  The flight out, the beauty of the mountain.  The vast amounts of snow.  Trees coated with white powder so thick that they didn't even look real.  It was everything I had imagined.  But...there were a couple of points that didn't quite go as well as I had hoped.

Point #1: Humble Pie:

I don't like humble pie.  It tastes like a big pile of steaming....well you get the idea.  I went to Montana with aspirations of being able to pick up snowboarding like I have many other activities.  Pretty quickly and easily.  I mean, all those guys riding on the snowboard videos make it look easy!  I didn't have the right mindset, and the mountain knew it.  Nathan was very patient and stayed with me on what had to be the steepest "bunny slope" that could be imagined.  Not that it mattered.  His instruction was good.  My execution was pitiful.  I rode the lift up, and then fell.  (Not right under the lift like I had worried, but finding myself not being able to stop I had to do something...)  I then put the boots in place on the board and promptly fell over.  I also found that when I put the snowboard in the direction I wanted to go it went -- and by "went" I mean accelerating to 400 mph with only meager inklings of control.  *crash* 

Out of my element. 

I was seriously frustrated on the first run.  The second run was better although I nearly hit the lift tower on my descent.  That run showed promise, but as soon as I threw the board into a toe side turn I found myself face up with my ears ringing.  All the while I was thinking, "I could do back flips on a wake board, why is this so difficult?"

The third run had me gasping like a person that hasn't ever worked out in his/her life, but I could stop myself and turn for the most part.  Oh, and crash.  I had that crashing part of the lesson NAILED!!  Yeah baby!  Nathan didn't even have to teach me anything.  I was good at it like I was born to do it.  sigh...

We then took the lift to the top of the mountain.  There was no way I going to give into the fact I had only 3 short runs on a snowboard under my belt and should have given in and just taken the day on the bunny slope.  If I was going to embarrass myself and spend time beating my body into snowbanks, I wanted to have a long run of it. 

My vision was sparkling with the lack of oxygen and the panic of realizing that I had no business going up to the top.  The summit was socked in with clouds and blowing snow.  Visibility of maybe 20 yards at best.  Nathan and I managed to get lost even at the slow pace we were keeping.  He seemed to make his turns so effortlessly, and I was flailing around with my heart maxed out at 185bpm and sweating up a storm.  It turns out my first run down the mountain was on an intermediate blue trail that included sheer looking drop offs and loads of trees and narrow ski paths.  Wild times.

I crashed hard toward the bottom (for the bajillionth time) and bruised my knee.  I was done with the snowboard for the day on the 4th run.  Of course, I have some of my horrible performance on video, but the one part that I am really proud of I don't.  In the last segment of the run, we found the terrain park and some pure powder snow.  I actually hopped up on one of the wooden box slider features and rode it across and followed that up with 3-4 great sweeping turns on the board as I came to the end of the run.  It really felt good, and for 30 seconds, it looked like I knew what I was doing on a snowboard.  There is actually something to snowboarding that could be a blast if I practiced a little more.

At that point, I had eaten enough humble pie though for the day.  I traded in my snowboard for skis so I could ride the whole mountain with the rest of the gang that we had out there.  I planned on swapping back to the board in the morning and spending more time on the bunny slope.  Everyone else in the group was skiing and had been all over the mountain and had great stories of all the places I hadn't been yet.

 Off we went.

The blue trails were amazing and the black diamond trails weren't trails.  These so-called black diamonds were just sheer cliffs inviting a swift and sudden death.  Around us were vast scenes of Flathead valley and Whitefish Lake thousands of feet below, and the sun would glint off the lake and illuminate the clouds that clung to the mountain.  Even on the intermediate blue trails, allegedly gently sloping runs had a tendency to just disappear in front of you.   After a moment, you would realize that the trail didn't end, it just got that steep.  I skied pretty well and felt confident doing it.  I determined it was a great idea to split the day between the board and skis. 

Whitefish lake below on an intermediate slope...

I have written and re-written this post several times now.  Not that it would make any difference to someone reading my stream of consciousness gibberish.  My attempts have gone from Negative to Positive to Pitiful, so I have decided to bail and give you a partial story.  You know... a cliff hanger...where the hero gets away, and the girl, and wins, and all that bull...

Ah, the bitterness...  Time to stop writing again...  It's taken me over a month to get this much together...  I hope you enjoy this blog...

The video is coming soon.  It also took me a month to even think about watching the stuff.  The Timewaster Studios project is close to complete, and it's a positive and fun piece.  I promise to get it up soon.

I'll leave you with the start of the last run of the day.  We had skied all over the mountain and decided make a run as the lifts were closing. 

cue the ominous music... 

Snow, Hikes , Math references, and Rocks... Intrigued? No wait! Come Back!!!

Yes it's true.  Snow will slow down a good hike in a big way.  I mean who can possibly go post-holing through hip deep snow and keep the same pace as one would during summer?  Well, while this first statement is completely true, it's not what happened to us.  We only had an epic amount of 4 inches of snow to deal with, but I'll maintain that our hike was slow-motion-ified even by this minute amount of white.

How could such a short and fun hike be so slow? 

Well, there were a couple of important factors which I will outline in one of the most important mathematical equations seen in years.  If you discount little ones like Relativity and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem...

Children from the deep south + Snow = snail like progress and constant mischief

The sound of the kids yelling "POW POW Freshies!!!" echoed through the forest whenever they found untracked snow in a clearing.  As to the Pow Pow Freshies joke, you would understand if you watched loads of stupid snowboarding shows featuring overpaid 19-year-olds skiing impossible lines off cliff faces and speaking some form of ski-bum slang that I find amusing.

The kids stopped as often as dogs on a walk.  Picking up and throwing snow at each other was the real order of the day, so we were moving at about a mile an hour.  (that's a generous speed estimate there...)

Here is Brenna with her patient face on.  This was required because every few steps Aiden, without looking, would just chuck a snowball over his head toward anyone behind him.  You had to be paying attention or you were going to have it on your head.  He thought this was the funniest thing he had come up with...EVER.

We also discovered Aiden was putting the snowballs in his pockets to save them.  He was soaked pretty quickly but seemed completely immune to the chill.  There is something about kids and snow that makes them not notice temperature.

An example of the sneak attack snowball.

Notice that Ansley was not in any of the fight pictures. She wisely avoided her brothers to avoid becoming collateral damage.



As the snowball fights raged on, we were actually on a hike.  The idea, at least, was that we were heading up to Arch Rock in the Smoky Mountain National Park.

The hike followed a stream up to the arch which had been carved out of the limestone and shale over millions of years. It was very different than the examples we had seen in Utah's sandstone.  The rocks that made up the arch had a thin layered sedimentary look to it rather than looking like the arch was carved out of a more uniform piece of rock.  Each layer was .5-1 inch thick and looked really jagged where softer stone had been eroded away leaving the harder layers exposed.

We had to cross the creek we were following a few times and the kids loved the log bridges that we had to use.  I was just happy I didn't have to pluck a soggy child out of the creek...

We found the trail actually passed through the arch itself and we had to climb a wet and slippery series of stone steps to reach the other side. The arch is almost hidden from view by trees so there wasn't a good spot to actually get a photograph of the entire structure.  Here is Ansley descending back through the arch.

It was a 3 mile hike and took us just under 3 hours to complete, and I think with all the smiles that it was exactly the right speed.

Christmas - New Years and SNOW!

We did things a little differently this year...well not the part about being nearly killed by the avalanche of presents Christmas morning.  In the line of thought from the rapidly approaching ski trip, I might recommend the adoption of a Christmas Present Mountain Avalanche Rating/Warning System for the next Christmas season.  We wouldn't want anyone hurt or lost on such a festive occasion.  We could even practice Rescue and Recovery techniques prior to Christmas morning just in case.  You never know, and you just can't be too safe, Right?

Wow...now just look at that digression in all its brilliant glory.

Now for a few photos to move the story along...or perhaps this post is going to turn into a slideshow rather than having much of a "story".  whatever...

Opa reading The Night Before Christmas to the eager and attention span challenged children...

The stack of presents was phenomenal...  Hence my commentary on needing avalanche rescue training...

To keep the focus on the fact that it was Christmas and that we were there to celebrate the birth of Jesus, there was a Nativity play that the kids starred in.  No theater nerves among this crowd...

And no...the Nativity didn't include Iron Man...  No matter how much Aiden may have wanted it to...

We did things a little differently this year.  Normally will gather for Christmas in Atlanta, and have a great time hanging around with the family and extended family.  The unusual part was that we didn't head to play a ton of golf in Myrtle Beach or Florida.  We opted to head for the mountains instead!

Admittedly, I was a bit unsure of going to try to find snow in the deep south in December.  Normally, we bundle up with our heaviest coats for the two days that might be considered remotely winter-ish elsewhere in the country, so snow doesn't normally even cross our minds.  We took off for Gatlinburg Tennessee at the base of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (Which turned out to be a place that I am definitely going to return to for some summer hiking.)

Look out Floridian drivers on ice...there should have been some warning flares or something...

I kept laughing to myself about our retired "Floridians" on the trip when they encountered snow.  Perhaps, I wasn't laughing to myself, because Brenna kept punching me in the shoulder saying, "Hey, That's my Dad!"

But we all know the story about when Bill put our van into orbit in Mexico on the speed bumps there,

so who knows what might have come to pass on that snowy road.  

Yep, that joke is still funny...and I'm probably not getting invited back anytime soon!

Lo and behold the morning was cold and the peaks of the pass we had to cross had been hit with a storm that put down about 5 inches of snow the night before.  

Who would have thought!  

And you would have thought the kids had died and gone to heaven.  We had to stop the car and got out to let the kids experience this interesting white stuff that they see so infrequently because they were trying to gnaw their way out through the car door panels, and my orthodontic bills are going to be high enough in the coming years.  I didn't want to find out how much fixing the car upholstery would be on top of straightening their teeth too.

You can imagine that it took about exactly .000267 seconds before someone began chucking snowballs...

Here is Bryce trying to decide if the repercussions of pegging me with a snowball were worth it...he didn't think long before pounding me with it and running!

Par for the course.  Family portrait with only one of the kids even remotely paying attention.

The house we stayed at was a cool place perched on the side of the mountain overlooking Gatlinburg.  I could really see that we would have had some trouble getting there if the roads had iced at all, but we were OK there closer to town.  The snow line was probably above 4 thousand feet, so the white coated the tops of the mountains around us, but not the roads we had to navigate.

The kids loved the fact they had to walk through snow that stayed on the porch to get to the hot tub.  Livin' large...

 I loved the view from the back porch and spent quite a bit of time just looking over the rail at the town and the Smokies.

I'll pause here in an effort to keep this somewhat short enough.  I'll post up the account of our snowy hike out to Arch Rock next, but I needed to get writing on this before it faded from memory and I ran headlong into the rest of the year.

There is some real beauty in this country surprisingly close to my house...

I hope you all had a great holiday season!

Excited about Snow 2000 miles from here...

The group is set and the trip is planned.  I'm going to try my hand (or feet, hands and face in reality) at SnowBoarding at the end of January.  After spending exactly zero time on snow skis in the past 18 years, and two days skidding down an ice sheet that passes for snow here in the Appalachian mountains prior to that, this should be interesting.

It sounds like, from the blogs and other reports, everyone out west is complaining that the snow hasn't come yet.  That there is "barely anything" that is open.  They certainly haven't spent time in the deep south.  I even ran into a mountain biker at Oak Mountain this weekend that said he was taking his climbing gear out to Colorado on his trip in a couple of weeks because there wasn't any "serious" snow yet and he might get bored.  (I guess he skis a fairly significant amount by that statement.)

At the end of the post is a video filmed yesterday December 15th from Whitefish, Montana where we will be going.

The resort is a pretty small one from what I can tell when compared to the Disneyland versions out in Utah, Colorado, and California, but small isn't bad.  It means short lift lines, lower prices, and a laid back small town atmosphere with more locals vs. fighting millions on the slopes as I try to learn to stay upright on a board.

I like the idea of being out in nowhereville, which is probably why I like hiking/mountain biking in Utah so much.

Anyway, the early season complaints I hear prompted me to look at the SkiWhitefish.com website and I found this video.

If that's "early season" and not really great conditions, I'll be just fine with it.  With 5 weeks more snow before we get there, this trip is going to really open my eyes to what can be done outdoors.  I can remember seeing 8 inches of snow once in my life.  They get an average of 300 inches a year out there.  This is a place where you ski by a short bush and find that it was actually the top of a 30 foot tall pine.

Enjoy.



www.Skiwhitefish.com

Space Camp

Bryce finally got his birthday present, and he has been really patient in waiting for it.  It was a trip to space camp in Huntsville, Alabama.  The testing grounds and construction site for the Saturn V rocket that took us to the moon.  The U.S. Space and Rocket Center has one of the Saturn V’s upright and on display out front and the scale is really astonishing.  However did we get something so large, wildly explosive and complex to work at all?  It’s beyond me and my feeble mathematical skills to comprehend what it took to design and get the vehicle off the ground.  

Like they say…  “Hey, it’s not like its Rocket Science.  Oh wait…yes it is.”

Bryce had an absolute ball at the center.  We were housed in bunk rooms that were designed so that they would fit into the Shuttle cargo bay to further give the sense of how small the spaces are that are required for space travel.  

Each one of the tubes in the background had an entire floor of rooms in it.  

We are so spoiled here on Earth with our expansive land and easy access to anything and everything.  All space crews exist in are little tubes (even on the relatively massive ISS) and the overlap of items required to stay alive makes the entire layout look like something out of an episode of hoarders.  Laptops, wires, clothes, food, several people, life support, and science equipment are everywhere.  Actually it kind of looks like my office a bit. Hmmm…time to clean up perhaps.

There were several simulators that the astronauts used to learn how to move and operate various pieces of machinery in space, and we got to play on them.  You can see them in action...poorly on my part...at the end of this post.

1/6^th chair:  Since the human body only weighs 1/6^th it’s Earthly weight on the moon, somebody had to practice how to move around, and this is what they used.  Even so, if you are used to a 170lb body here, it’s a bit awkward when you find yourself only weighing in at 28lbs.  Every push with a foot launches you 4 feet in the air and spinning.  

A highlight for me was that we got a chance to speak with Robert “Hoot” Gibson who may have the most impressive resume I have ever seen.  

Aeronautical Engineer from Cal Poly, First in his class at the Naval Academy, Top Gun graduate, 14,000 hours of flight time in literally hundreds of different aircraft, 300+ carrier landings, years as a Navy Test pilot, and a 5 time shuttle astronaut.  He was the pilot that docked with the Russian Mir and shook hands in the historic photograph with the Russian Astronaut through the airlock…  Sheesh…

Perhaps this handshake will be equally impressive in years to come...

Mr. Gibson spoke with the group for an hour and answered every question the kids could come up with.  It’s really wonderful to see brilliant people come and speak with kids and motivate them to work hard and study hard to achieve success.  The message was vastly better than ESPN’s version of success, and for most of us, more probable.  

Space Camp was loaded with smart people.  I felt a touch out of my league, but Bryce and I fit in well personality wise.  It’s a place that reveres and promotes unabashed geekdom.  It was unusual.  For instance, when kids were asked "What are you going to be?" they wouldn't just say a race car driver.  They rattled off careers like a Cardio Vascular Surgeon.  (and can pronounce it correctly) You may think that Ocho Cinco, or Dirk Nowitsky are cool, but they can’t do orbital mechanics…

Bryce couldn't wait to fly the MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit) simulator.  Which, by the way, is a nifty little hovercraft contraption that floats across the concrete floor.  It was designed to teach shuttle astronauts how to fly the un-tethered propelled backpack.  (Untethered = Scary at 17,500 mph with no air and that whole fiery death thing)

Oh, you've seen this picture before?  

Guess who took the shot?  

Yep, Capt. Robert Gibson on the STS-41...

In a shuttle Science Mission Specialist simulation.  Bryce was the specialist...I was merely simulating special...

Bryce and I got to go through a few different space shuttle launch, mission and landing simulations, which were remarkably real.  Covering ground control, checking pressures in tanks and O2 supplies, while paying attention to about 20 different indicators, switches and mission clocks was actually somewhat difficult.  I can only imagine when one is dealing with actual launch and landing type conditions.  My hat is off to the men and women that run the programs at NASA.

Our days at Space Camp were filled with activities.  The day started at 6:30am with someone calling wake up from the door and we would work/play until 9:30 at night.  It was very much the way the actual astronauts live with specific timetables, but the benefit of having late nights at the Camp was we had the run of the place for an hour or so, and this included the massive Saturn V building.  

The museum had a full Saturn V rocket split into it's stages horizontally across several football fields of space.  At the end of this monstrous room, was the payload.  The Apollo capsule.  The photograph above is the Apollo 16 capsule that was used a few months before I was born.  April 1972.  We pulled this amazing technological feat off multiple times (including our greatest failure) with a mere 166KB of computing power.  Yep.  Your phone sneezes out more than that when it re-boots...

As to the space program now that the Shuttle program is discontinued, we don’t have a goal anymore.  Or more precisely, we don’t have an achievable goal.  We as a species have reached the end of what we can do practically.  We have learned so much and now are realizing that with our abilities to travel, we may have reached the achievable limits of humankind.  

Going to Mars is an achievable goal, but with the 5 years away from the earth to make the flight there and back plus the time in orbit and on the surface, I have a feeling that this would be a one way mission.  If we got the astronauts back, they would not live long due to radiation exposure in space, muscular atrophy, and bone decalcification in microgravity, never mind the mental impacts of being confined in a small tube for several years.  Anything further out from where we are, when it comes to manned spaceflight, is impossible.  And I mean impossible.  

Even if we find the elusive engine that will propel us 90-95% of light speed we are talking at least hundreds of years of mere travel time in an environment in which it is impossible for us to survive.  A one way trip in other words.  We as a world do not have the money or desire, or need to do something like that.  I say need loosely there.  Of course we have a need to try because, by definition of what we know, our time on this planet is limited.  We have a need to survive, but the attempt will most likely fail due to our frail bodies and our unfortunate lack of understanding.  There is an idea that it may save the species at some point, but we would need many generations of people during the transportation segment of getting to a new world and then the difficulties of setting up a base there would merely extend the human race a short time rather than save it.  


That fate coming true or not is up to the smarter kids of future generations that will follow well behind our short years on this planet.  The most amazing and comforting thing to me is that, above and beyond all that we have achieved thus far, it has been proven over and over again, that with determination and need, we humans have made some formerly impossible things...possible.

Enjoy the video.  Bryce's head is going to spin when he sees it... "Where are the light sabers!" he will say...  Heh Heh...

A real JEM -- not apologizing for that one...

Ah, the final Utah mountain bike video that you have been waiting for, or quietly wishing I would accidentally forget about editing...

I can't tell you how much footage that Nathan and I took over the course of the trip to Utah.  The number of hours of video was a little over the top, but it has been loads of fun re-watching some of this stuff and trying my hand at editing together questionably interesting videos for others.  I do like to share these videos because it lets other people see some of the views that we got to see.  Bikes are great in the sense that they are quiet, you still can appreciate the views without the confinement of a car, you connect with the outdoors, and you can ride out into places that it would take many hours of walking and overnight camping to see.  Plus, it's a heck of a fun hobby.

I wanted to ride this loop from the first day we got there, but the rains kept us away and the trail a mess, so I had to wait until the last day before we were going to head up to Bryce Canyon.  Nathan opted to ride part of the ride with me, but wasn't in the mood to put up with the first half which included some grueling uphills to get to the top of the JEM trail.  Hurricane Rim was the first segment and it skirted the edge of the Virgin river and offered up some great views.  This ride also pointed out that I am totally directionally impaired.  I had a map and the map said that the trail turned to the right.  The trouble being that out in the wide open area, there were multiple jeep trails and other random single-track looking trails that were probably cut by animals walking through the tumbleweeds.

I ended up taking the wrong track and heading down into the canyon by the river at one point.  At another offshoot, I found that I was off in no man's land trying to follow the rim of the canyon around.  After about 45 minutes of riding, hiking, and fussing at myself liberally, a vulture flew close over my head.  It wasn't just cruising, it was checking me out.  I decided that was a sign to just find my way back to the original trail and head up a different direction.  I was furious.  I could still even see the house where we stayed out in the distance, but I couldn't get there because of a canyon in the way.  Nor could I call Brenna and say my ride plans had changed because cell service in the middle of the desert is sketchy at best.  I was officially not having any fun, so bailing out and just riding up part of the loop and coming back down seemed like the best way to salvage what was supposed to be a fun ride.

I rode up the JEM trail about a mile and magically found (drumroll please) the rest of the Hurricane Rim trail.  I don't know if that didn't tick me off even more because the map didn't say that the Hurricane Rim and the JEM were the same trail for any length of time.  I can't really blame the map.  I'm a little thick headed sometimes and probably just didn't read the map right.  Anyway, I was off again and had only wasted an hour wandering in the wilderness.  A true Moses ride -- thank goodness it wasn't 40 years of wandering, even though it was beginning to feel like it.

I found Brenna and Nathan an hour later in a parking lot looking worried.  I was after all, pretty late in my estimates of when I would meet them there.  The Goulds climb was looming across the road where I would head up a steep road for quite a distance before linking up with the Goulds trail and then the top of the JEM.  Nathan wisely opted to meet me on a side road where he didn't have to put up with the climb.  I being a little thick headed, as I stated before, wanted to ride up the thing.  The effort is cathartic in a way.

The ride was definitely better once I had a buddy with me.  It meant we could at least laugh at each other if we managed to get lost again.  The Goulds trail wound around the colorful reds, whites and even green looking sand/clay at the base of Gooseberry Mesa, and it was fun, but not the main event.  We were ready for the 8 mile downhill where we had seen signs that bike traffic was one way, and that bikes achieved "dangerous speeds" so to be careful.  That's a great advertisement for mountain biking if ever there was one.  Besides, there was nobody around for miles and we could enjoy the expansive desert views whilst tearing around as fast as we could get the bikes to go.

That's enough typing about a subject that most of you couldn't care less about.  I'll let the video show you more of the ride instead.  I hooked my camera on facing backwards and it worked pretty well, but it worked its way loose on the way down, so the video gets a little floppy in places.  I need to build a better mounting system, but the rear facing view was perfect.  We would get footage of both of us as we went flying through the tumbleweeds.

Enjoy.

They named a canyon for Me? -- Bryce Canyon

My son has been enamored with the place ever since he learned of it.  "They named it after me?" he says.  Perhaps not, but and after hiking around the entire place, I'll have to take him there someday.

I'm glad that he didn't go this time though.  He would have passed out within the first 2 miles, and we hiked until even Brenna stated,  "Not one more step.  It's hot. I'm tired. You can get the car." as she found a heaven sent log bench after climbing back up to the rim of the canyon.

I know I need to wrap up my posts about this trip, and I can't seem to find time to edit together the last big a "Moses Ride"(i.e. seems like you are lost in the desert for 40 years) video. I'll get to that next, but for the sake of getting a story written, I'll jump out of order and write up Bryce Canyon.

Of all the strange geological formations we have seen out in Utah over the past 2 trips, this pretty much tops it.  Arches national park was cool, but Bryce Canyon was something else.  It's high elevations and alien rock forms "hoodoos" are a true miracle to see and explore.  It's actually not a canyon, but a ridge where water has been eroding away the sides for millions of years dissolving the softer rock compounds away and leaving constantly changing spires and deep cuts in the rock.  The hoodoos look like giant drip castles from the beach.  Eventually the erosion will cut deeper into the high ridge and level the whole place out.

What struck me most was the color.  Every hour as the sun would move the colors would be different.  From a deep orange and white in the morning to pinks and tans in the afternoon.  The shadow effects were remarkable and made for photographs that you couldn't really get wrong.  Utah, makes my total hack photography skills better just by being there.

And with that, I see this post turning into one of my literarily (perhaps even literally) lazy posts and more into a slide show.  Hopefully you will enjoy it just the same.  Assuming that anyone even visits this link at all.

You enter Bryce Canyon NP from the rim and hike down into the base.  The trails wind all over among the walls and spires.  The place is actually named after a Mormon settler that famously mentioned that Bryce Canyon was "A heck of a place to lose a cow".  Fortunately for us, we weren't looking for any large animals down there.  The joys of a relaxing vacation...  I'm also glad we were up at 10k feet because I could tell even at the mid day temperatures in late spring that for much of the summer the canyon would be dangerously hot.

I love the twisted gnarled nature of the junipers and pines on the slopes all over the canyon country in Utah.  The environment is so harsh that they are just clinging to life on craggy hills, but they seem to keep growing just the same.

The rain hung over the far mountains, but never made it to us.  You don't realize how small our horizons are here in the southeast until you get to a place like this.  We are always surrounded by tall trees in the Appalachian and you can only see maybe 100-200 yards at any given time?  Out west you can see for miles quite regularly.  Not a bad thing, just an interesting observation.  If you grew up out west and came to the southeast it might be a pretty claustrophobic place.

We got up early to catch the sunrise over the park, and realized that we didn't own enough clothing for the high altitude temperatures.  

We were standing on the rim overlooking sunrise point (aptly named...) with the temperature reading 29 in the car as we pulled up to the park entrance.  The interesting variation is that when we finished the day the car thermometer read 98 degrees.  That's quite a change for one day.

The sun flashed above the horizon and the glow crept slowly down the rock faces as the sun cleared the mountains and mesas in the distance.

May 25th and there were mounds of snow 10 feet high still on the ground.  I have no idea how much snow this area must have had just a month before.

We climbed to the top of a rock outcrop to look back at the tourist laden observation area.  It does amaze me the amount of people that will drive everywhere in these parks and just hop out for a photo and drive on without exploring or even trying to hike around.  They are really missing out.

Hiking shoes got a few miles on them during this trip.

One of the many arches that are found everywhere if you look for them.

Bryce Canyon, a place I highly recommend visiting if you ever make it out to Utah, and as I keep finding out, we could spend years in the state and not see everything that we would want to.  I'll try to edit up the JEM / Hurricane Rim/ Goulds trail ride video for the next post.