The sWARm

I was bummed I couldn't make it to RAWROD this year, but I did watch the Swarm event Saturday morning with Kade. It was crazy, fun.

What is Swarm? 57 guys flying remote control aircraft trying to crash into stuff. Meet the loonies:

 

 I took some video. And, no, I wasn't drunk. (Kade is in the blue hoodie with black-stripes.)



It started off with free-for-all dog fighting, then kill-the-beast, and finally the limbo contest (3 points for going under the lower line, 2 points for middle, 1 point for top; first to 10 wins a round). There were more events but Kade was getting bored and I had a ride scheduled.

The Ride. Steve and I went up to Park City and rode the Glenwild / Flying Dog loop. Felt good to ride a mountain trail this early in the year. There was a little mud in the trees at the top of Flying Dog but otherwise the trails were in really good shape.

So, a pretty good Saturday. Not RAWROD good, but I'll take it.

Office Graffiti

I've been at my new job at Fusion-IO for 4 months. There are crazy days, but overall I'm still enjoying it.

I've noticed graffiti pops up around the office. I blame the over abundance dry erase surfaces. Here are some examples.



This started off as just "the cloud". Then "the inversion" was added. And finally "the asthmatics".



IT installed some radio devices that, I've been told, detect and block unauthorized wireless devices. So someone pointed it out as a "death ray generator".



This showed up in the break room.



This week it was updated.



There are cameras all over the building and this one got an Eye of Sauron addition.



All engineers have a Do Not Disturb sign for when they are working on critical tasks. This engineer had this on the back of his sign.



This isn't graffiti, it's sanctioned decoration. The Marketing department turned our environmental chamber into a Tardis.

I get a kick out of all this. Nice to have a work environment where people have a sense of humor and employees are free to express themselves.

New Moab, Day 2

The night before we hired Coyote Shuttles to take us to the top (north end) of the Mag 7. We met at 9 am and were off.

After a mile down the Gemini Bridges road we turned off onto Bull Run. It goes along Bull Canyon with some very nice scenery and was a fun trail to ride.





We stopped to see Gemini bridges then continued on Great Escape, a new trail for 2012. This was a our favorite trail of the weekend. It has good flow, a little technical spice and great views.





Great Escape tees into Little Canyon, which we rode up and back. It's also a good trail.

At the end of Little Canyon we bailed off onto the Gemini Bridges road and took it out to highway 191 and back to our van. So we shuttled it, I'd do it again.




Next up was North 40, another new-for-2012 trail in the Brand trail network. It's a fun trail that snakes through some hills with a few tech moves.

This area looked like the fossilized remains of crashed UFOs.







We thought about doing some more trails, but a storm was moving in and we'd had so much good riding we were satisfied.

With the growth of trails in Fuita and St. George over the last 10 years, it's been easy to forget about Moab. But the flurry of trails built in Moab over the last 5 years have been mostly really good rides. Long live the King!

New Moab, Day 1

This trip is called New Moab because every trail we did was new to us and none of these trails existed only a few years ago.

We left Saturday morning and stopped at Klondike Bluffs. There used to be just one trail there but now there's a nice trail network with some good riding.

We started with the new Dino Flow trail. It had a lot of sand and loose dirt but it was better than riding dirt roads. We only took it as far as Baby Steps.

Does it look like you could put a trail through this?



Well the Moab trail builders did, it's called EKG. We climbed a little ways up Baby Steps to the south end of EKG. What a fun trail. Lots of up and down, mostly on rock. Fun technical with little burst moves here and there.





Then we climbed Mega Steps. Another good trail. It feels like you're a hundred miles from nowhere.





Next we took an old double-track, that I didn't like much, down to Little Salty. It started off bland but got better. Next time I'll take north Baby Steps instead.

Then we took EKG and Dino Flow back. While we were out a new trail, UFO, was added - new maps were put up. Looks like UFO will be a good connector to the middle of Baby Steps.


We drove to the other side (west) of highway 191 and rode the Monitor & Merrimac trail. We parked at the kiosk but you can drive farther south and there is a huge parking area and a smaller one right before Mill Canyon.

There was some sand at the start but after pushing up a sandy slope it was miles of slickrock.





The views were outstanding.





The end through Mill Canyon has more sand. I'd say the sand slogs were worth the good slickrock and scenery.

After the ride we drove into Moab to shower, eat and sleep.

Next up, Day 2.