A different view/perspective

Danielle and I took another hike on Wednesday. More pictures are still to come, but first let's review a previous hike that we did to give you an idea of exactly where we were on Wednesday. The first three pictures below are of the Cathedral Rock hike that we did a month or so ago.

Here is Cathedral Rock as seen from the parking lot. It's way up there isn't it!!

Here's a picture I took as we neared the top of Cathedral Rock. It's looking down at the avalanche chute that we crossed to start the climb up onto Cathedral Rock. Gettin' pretty high, aren't we!!!!

Here's a picture that I took standing on top of Cathedral Rock looking down at the parking lot where the first picture was took. Man, that's high!!!!!

And here is a picture that I took on Wednesday. See anything familiar in the picture?

In case you don't recognize the perspective and angle that the picture was taken from, that linear green area in the middle of the picture is the same avalanche chute from two pictures above. The rock structure just to the right and in the foreground of the chute is Cathedral Rock!!

The hike on Wednesday was composed of starting up the North Loop trail, hiking to the Raintree, taking a detour to Mummy Springs, hiking to the intersection of North Loop and Trail Canyon and then hiking down Trail Canyon trail. This one took two cars, which was a first for me. We hiked about 6.7 miles, it took 6 hours and 20 minutes (including many stops to rest and eat) and we got higher than on any hike to date, over 10,000 feet.

The elevation changed over 1500 feet in the first two miles and it really had me sucking air several times. But it was REALLY worth it. The views from before Raintree all the way to the trail intersection were AWESOME.....the best out of any hikes so far! So I'll try to get more pictures up in the next few days.

Winterman's Query

Winterman over on T2V recently asked the Board where I currently deal in Las Vegas. I thought it would give me a good excuse to refresh everyone's memory about the circuitous route that I've taken around Sin City since I first arrived 2 and a half years ago!

I broke in here. It was a classy joint! But after I left after 7 weeks, everyone was so crestfallen that they tore the whole place down and built the Eastside Cannery in its place.

In a move that still baffles me, I sought refuge from the $1 craps table at Nevada Palace and got a job at the mecca of break-in joints, the El Cortez. However, less than 24 hours before my first shift at the Elco, another opportunity presented itself and I called-in telling them that I would be a no-show the next morning. At Elco, they are so used to this happening that the employee has to pay $50 for their drug test and will be reimbursed after a set period of time working. Since they kept my $50, I kept my nametag as a momento. I just wish I had the balls to tell them to print "Tommy Boy" instead of "Robert" on the tag!

Believe it or not, I also passed an audition and was on my way to starting at the Fitz as well. My plan was to quit Nevada Palace and work both the Fitz AND Elco for a while until something better came along.

The day before my start at Elco, which was also the day after my drug test at the Fitz, Sunset Station in Henderson called me in for an audition. I passed the audition and they offered me the job on the spot! At the time, it appeared to be a phenomenal opportunity. Above you can see the actual tables that I dealt on for nine months of my life. I told Elco and the Fitz to forget it and started at Sunset not long after. Nevada Palace found out and served me with resignation papers the day after my audition. I thought that was a bulls**t move on their part, but I didn't care. I just knew I'd be escaping from Boulder Highway forever!!! Uh, wait a minute....

Nine months after starting at Sunset, they inexplicably hired a whole bunch of dealers away from Palace Station, made them full-time (competely passing over all extra board dealers like myself) and then completely f****d over me and about 17 other extra board dealers by laying us off....claiming they were over-staffed!!! So once again, anyone who is thinking about spending a dime at any Station property, DON'T! They suck monkey balls!

Apparently, the folks at Station casinos felt bad for me and some of my fellow dealers, so they did some of us a "favor" by retroactively transferring us to Boulder Station, which as you can guess, is located conviently in the slums of Boulder Highway. I spent about two months at Boulder Station dealing to the same damn degenerates that were flushed out of Nevada Palace when it was torn down. Unlike Nevada Palace though, I had the pleasure of dealing to pieces of s**t gangbangers who would roll into the casino around midnight every night drinking their Corvoisier, smoking their disgusting black 'n' mild cigars while propping themselves to death and stiffing the dealers. Boulder Station is where I truly started to learn to hate people! I would not have been a dealer very much longer if I had stayed there. I would have either quit, or more likely, done something to get fired.

Forunately, something better came along. This could possibly be a picture of me floor supervising at work last night. My employment may or may not currently reside on the 52nd floor of the Palms casino.

Focus on this for a while!

Nothing new to report these days, so why not take a break and jam out to this rare tune for a while! Feel free to hit all three parts, but at the very least, give the first 6:20 of part 1 a chance!

The Horse Whisperer

WAY too tired to write up a long post right now. It's approaching 2am, I gotta work at noon and Danielle and I made our most aggressive hike to date earlier today (Tuesday).

Quick facts:
- Mount Charleston area - Upper Bristlecone/Bonanza trails
- Out and Back
- 10 miles total (our best estimate...I'd be shocked if it were less than 10). It would have been more, but some animals of the equine persuasion decided we needed to turn back about a half-mile before we intended to.
- Anywhere between 1300-1800 elevation change, really not too sure but it kicked my sorry ass!
- 7 hours and 10 minutes
- 1 deer
- 4 wild horses
- 1 one-armed mountain-biker that scared the living crap out of me

Danielle took a picture of me around 9,500 ft.

Danielle took a picture of me taking a picture of a HUGE pile of horse crap.

Danielle took a picture of the wild horses standing directly in our way on the trial.

Danielle took another picture of the wild horses.

Mt. Charleston - Bristlecone Loop

Last Tuesday we knocked yet another hike off the list as Danielle and I completed the Bristlecone Loop hike at Mt. Charleston. This loop is actually made up of two trails, the upper bristlecone trail and the lower bristlecone trail. We parked at the lower trailhead but walked the mile or so along the paved road to the upper trailhead so that we'd finish up the hike at our car instead of having to do that connecting walk at the end. In total (including the connecting walk) it's about a 6 mile hike and we did it in 3 hours and 50 minutes (including two main rest stops for snacks and rest). The upper trail was two miles long and the lower trail was three. However, the lower trail is basically an old gravel road, so we like the upper part way better! After the Bristlecone hike, we kept our streak intact of doing more than one hike in each trip and drove to the Sawmill Loop to knock that one down again. The Sawmill is an extremely easy 1.3 mile hike that we did in 34 minutes this time. If we didn't come across another hiker with an EXTREMELY aggressive dog, we might have hit it in the half-hour range! We refer to the Sawmill as our "dessert hike". Yes, 'dessert', not desert!!

About half-way through the Bristlecone hike (where the upper and lower trails meet) an intersection is found with the end of the Bonanza Trail, which is a very long 13 mile trail that goes all the way to a neighboring little town called Cold Creek. Only die-hards attempt to make the entire Bonanza/Bristlecone hike.

We've basically exhausted all of the normal/shorter hikes in the Mount Charleston area. At this point, if we were to start a trail that we haven't done before and finish it, we'd have to do the Bonanza, North Loop, South Loop trails in their entirety, which involves extremely hard hikes with the South and North leading all the way up to Mount Charleston peak. None of those will be attempted anytime soon.

However, we can make shorter day-hikes by combining some of the trails together. For example, this Tuesday we're planning on going back up to the Upper Bristlecone trailhead, walking its two miles and then detouring onto the Bonanza trail for about two hours or so. Then we'll simply retrace our steps the whole way back, thus creating a new hike for ourselves using two different trails.

Here are some pics of the Bristlecone hike.

This is "kind of" our starting point at the upper trailhead. It wasn't really because we parked at the lower trailhead and walked to the upper, but this is where we officially started the trail itself.

Random scenery on the upper trail. I'm pretty sure this was taken at a rocky ridge overlook not long before the high point of the trail.

Here's looking back at the intersection with the end of the Bonanza trail. That's where we'll be turning on Tuesday to explore the first part of that trail (which has some switchbacks, so it might kick our butts a little).

The front sign tells hikers how long they've already gone. For us, we had three miles left, but they were really easy miles with a gradual descent on an old gravel road.

This is looking off in the distance at the Mt. Charleston ski slopes. Believe it or not, we can still see the very final signs of snow up there in the higher elevations.

Random scenery including a very creepy looking dead tree!

Here's a good picture of the trail/road that we walked along the final three miles.

Here we are back at the car on the lower trailhead parking lot.

Hopefully you can click to enlarge this map. The solid red line is the entire Bristlecone trail. The squiggly red line on the left is the Bonanza trail.

Pink Floyd Moonhead

With the anniversary of the first moon landing coming up, I found this very interesting article on the web today and thought I'd share. It's David Gilmour describing how Pink Floyd was allowed to simply free-jam on the BBC during their broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The article can be read here.

You can enjoy the jam below.




Oh, and I just found out today that on July 4th, two of the greatest guitarists of all-time were spotted on stage together!!! On a side-note, the female bass player's name is Tal Wilkenfeld who's something like 23 years old!

My Summer Vacation

So here's the official post from my week away from the desert during the final week of June. The Cliff's Notes version of the itinerary went as follows:

Wednesday - Danielle and I traveled to Columbus via Southwest Airlines and stayed at my sister's house just visiting with my parents, sister and her family.

Thursday - We all went to COSI in downtown Columbus. A fun time was had by all! Later that night, Danielle and I went to Matt's house to spend the night and get up in the morning for Comfest!

Friday - COMFEST!!!

Saturday - COMFEST!!!

Sunday - Went back to my sister's to celebrate my nephew's fourth birthday and then made the drive with my parents to Sandusky. We stayed at my parents for the next three nights.

Monday - We all made the planned trip out to Kelleys Island in Lake Erie. My parents took the van over and drove around the island while Danielle and I went on two separate hikes and also walked the island for a while. We had a great dinner there at the island's microbrewery/restaurant. However, the boat ride to the island and back made Danielle sick. Nevertheless, we stopped at Tofts on the way home and had the best ice cream in the world!

Tuesday - The planned day at Cedar Point was called off due to Danielle being sick and also the fact that it was supposed to rain on-and-off the entire day. Instead, we had a great lunch at a local favorite pizza place (Chet and Matt's) and had a fun dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse. We also stopped over at Tony's house to visit for a while and see their new baby twins! In case any Sanduskians are wondering, we were originally going to go to Cameo instead of Chet and Matts, but Cameo didn't open until 4pm and we already had dinner plans to the Japanese place. I slightly prefer Cameo over C & M, probably due to the atmosphere of the old place.

Wednesday - Drove back to Columbus and flew back to Vegas on another non-stop flight on Southwest.

Here are some pictures!

Oh, before the pictures start, I want to say that there is a pic below of a band called TV Eye, who we saw on the Friday morning of Comfest. Actually, I think they were the second band we saw as we fled some horrifying screaching chick on the main stage and made our way to the closest secondary stage. Feel free to check them out at their myspace page here. There are four songs that can be streamed on that page. Of the four, Take it All and Catch the Breeze are my favorites and I'm pretty sure they played them both at Comfest. According to their page, a recording is in process, which I will be purchasing as soon as it becomes available.

The very first picture of my summer vacation on the Friday morning of Comfest.

The second band that we caught on Friday were called TV Eye. They were pretty damn good!

From left to right is Michele, Mike and Matt. Mike shaved his "Jack Shepard on a bender" beard between Friday and Saturday.

Here's where we set up camp near the Main Stage, which is where we spent the majority of our time on both days. It was home-base!

After we parked on Saturday morning, I found this sign on the side of the road. I guess the original maker of the sign found his ride.

I guess there was some sort of crazy decorating car contest. I'm not sure, I was pretty drunk when I stumbled onto this scene.

Just a random shot of a bunch of people at Comfest!

Skip ahead to Monday when we took the ferry out to Kelleys Island.

The sign to the state park welcoming visitors. Things to do in the park include a great campground, beach, hiking trails, the glacial grooves, boating/fishing, etc.

Here are the glacial grooves on Kelleys Island. These are the biggest example of glacial grooves on the entire planet!

A view down the other end of the grooves.

Near the glacial grooves is the trailhead for one of Kelleys Island's two hiking trails. This is the North Shore Loop Trail (by far our favorite of the two). It was a little over a mile with almost no elevation change. It was a nice walk through the woods and much of it hugged the north shore of the island.

This is my favorite part of the trail. It's a little side trail that leads to the shore. There is no beach on this part of the shore, just rocks that you can go out and stand on. If you can enlarge this photo, you can see South Bass Island off in the distance, which is where Put-In-Bay is located. It's also where Perry's Monument stands, which can be faintly seen in the picture (a little above and to the right of Danielle).

I'm out on the rocks looking east in the pic.

Just walking along the North Shore Loop trail.

At one point, there was a little side trail that led to this creepy looking old building......so we thought the best idea in the world would be to walk right in!!!

And this is what we found. Pretty much nothing.

As we walked from the North Shore Loop Trail to the East Quarry Trail, we stopped in the campground's bathroom. I thought this sign was funny.

Here's a picture near the beginning of the East Quarry Trail. I guess this trail was kind of interesting, but it wasn't as nice or as well maintained as the North Shore trail.

This is actually part of the trail. The grass in the part reached over Danielle at points! We had a map of the trail while hiking it, but it was hard to follow and it just seemed like hardly anybody ever used this trail. It was about this part of the trail that the mosquitos started making an appearance!! That's a variable that we don't have to worry about in southern Nevada! There were a couple of other turnoffs that we could have explored, but the bugs drove us off the trail and onto the island streets to walk back and meet my parents.

One thing that happened each night we stayed at my parents were fierce games of Scrabble! This is from one of my impressive victories. The key move of this game was placing 'risk' on the triple-word score while the 's' turned 'haven' into 'shaven'! Also note the very first word of the game in the middle. :-)

Some crazy fire tricks at the Japanese Steakhouse!

Here are my parents enjoying the steakhouse. Danielle's nose is enjoying things as well!

We Don't Need No Stinking Badgers!

Wow, has it been eight days already since I got back from vacation!!!

As referenced a couple posts ago, many things have priority over the blog......but I HAVE been very lazy in getting something new up on here! So to keep me honest, I WILL work on a vacation post and maybe some other stuff after getting off of work Thursday night. I promise.

Oh, and thanks to Mikey for proofreading my last post title. I always get desert and dessert mixed up!!

Oh, one more thing, my results in the Ohio State football ticket lottery were the Iowa game! Very quick math tells me that only about 2-4% of the allotted tickets were for that particular game (most being the first game of the season against Navy). So, in theory, I was very lucky in the lottery! However, my trip home in the fall will be for the road trip to the Indiana game and then I plan on going to the Wisconsin home game the Saturday after before heading back to Vegas. So I'm advertising it to ANYONE that I am in need of two OSU vs. Wisconsin tix on October 10th and I'd certainly be willing to trade you the two Iowa tickets for them!

Back in the desert!

I just got back from my 8 day trip to Ohio and received some good news upon arrival. NO jury duty!! I don't know if I mentioned this on the blog or not, but I got a new summons after that initial one a while back and I deferred the report date until tomorrow (7/2). I did this so that I would not have to go back to work the day after getting back from Ohio and also to try to get out of jury duty. Since tomorrow is the day before a three-day holiday weekend, the theory is that they won't need jurors to come in (I think it was Lars Vargas who tipped me onto that).

Success! I do not have to report tomorrow and "my service is complete", meaning I won't be getting any more summons in the mail anytime soon!

So hopefully I'll be able to rest up tomorrow, get some laundry done and maybe write a little about my trip. Stay tuned.