We spent the day hanging out at Gabe’s .. Super nice being here.. I got soem work done.. thne Mostly we played with Nova while Gabe works on his dissertation.. We all got out for a dog walk in the middle of the day. Got to hear Gabe work on his mandolin playing.. he is sounding so great !
later on we went to Sivali Thai, one of our favorite thai places in walking distance ( there are at least 10 thai places in walkign distance which is part of qwhy we love portland !). .. On the way back we stopped at Movie Madness.. THe self proclaimed largest surviving collection of rentable DVD’s . its also an amazing museum of movie memorabilia .. ..
one funny thing is that they have a copy of the Colony Season 1 and 2 .. I left one of my mad sceintist biusiness cards with a short note in the Season 1 case. I hope soemone finds it !,.. who knows if anyone ever will
Today we lft utah and headed to Las Vegas on out way to Portland . We woke early, finished packing the house, took one last soak in the hot tub.. then headed west .
We’ve really loved being here.
THe drive down from Duck Creek Village UT to Las Vegas was about 3.5 hours.. It took us through soem amazing countryside.. The peak of the road was near the beginning at a feet under 10,000 feet above see level..and drove down to about 2000 feet in Las Vega.. That involved driving from two very different geological regions Colorado Plateau into the Great Basin
Once we crossed the Hurricane Fault at Ceder city, the scenery changed immediately from mountains to desert planes.
We were listening to an audio book. : “The Revenge of the Tipping Point”. by Malcom Gladwell. Its him revisiting the messages in his 1999 best seller “The TIpping Point”
Both books talk about how little things can make a big difference. Gladwell talks about how public opinion can shift suddenly based on the influence of a very few. He talks about some tough topics.: teen suicide, thow the covid pandemic spread , how we talk about the Holocost, and public views on gay marrieage.. Heavy stuff.. but he’s such a great storyteller.. We’re enjoying the book . Gladwell a great storyteller. Hs message on what makes public opinion is really interestign in these mixed=up times.
We got to Vegas about 11.. Being here always reminds me of this scene in the Big Lebowski…with Bunny Lebowskie singing ‘viva las vegas’ completely off tune
Arriving in Las Vegas is always a weird thing for me.. I’ve been here many, many times… always for some sort of work conference. Usually when I’m arriving, I have some sort of talk or panel to give.. which is a strange mix of excitement and terror. .. I remember some of my first small talks here back in the 80;s .. and my biggest (an 18,000 person keynote) . they all had the same arc.. I arrive nervous and stressed up to the time of my talk… then. gave the talk.. then I get to relax and have fun…. Its interesting to be able to reflect on all that needless stress and worry l put myself through
I think this is the first time I’m here just for fun… .. even if its just for an afternoon.
Our main goal was to visit MeowWolf Las Vegas..aka Omega Mart. It;s located in a huge complex called ‘Area 15’ which inclused MeoWolf , a bunch of very cool retail, interestign food and some other tech art venues. Outside is a bunch of awesoem tech art. .. very much like tech art ones see’s at Burning Man.. Check this out
we went inside for our 11:20 tickets.. The Area 15 interior is very cool.. imagine a shopping center only lit by black lights !
Then we went inside.. We had a list of thigns we specifically wanted to see that Max and Becky had worked on. It was really fun having a shoppign list like that..
Here are a zillion piuctures from our 2 hour visit
first was the market itself.. a bunch of m,utant produc5ts, soem real and soem not.
Then .. in to the main room.. .. 3 .. maybe 4 ? .. stories.. stairs goign every where.. interestign sound scape
we found the soul sucker, happy greebles, and see see Tee Vee that max helped create
Becky had a hand in almost everything.. The “Boop’ experience is whjat Becky’s most known for.. Like the other meow wolf venues, Omega mart has a back story.. At omega Mart is a mutant grocery store run by the mysterious Dram family (a nod to aldous huxley, it think).
You can purchase an employee badge that you ‘boop’ at stations around the exhibit.. that opens up new experiences of training, background etc. and pulls you intot he omega mart story .. Super fun.. its oen of the reasons people keep coming back to dig even deeper into the story. We read one reveiw where a person had spent 6 hours in Omega mart booping his way around to figure out some of the weird mystery of the story ! Becky was the head booper !
We also found an easter egg to Becky on the factory control panel .. (Becky’s last name ie Neil 🙂
there were so many cool things to see .. Here are tqwo pieces that Becky pointed us at.. we likeked thmw both ! This one is pixelmapped a bit like fluffy
this one is made of 10 layers of sidelit plexi
here ae a few other fav’s
Then it was time to go.. what an amaizng place !!!!..
we grabbed a quick bite in Area 15 (masle your own poke bowl) .. then headed tot he airport.. we got there at 2 for a 6PM flight due tot eh rental csr check in time.. .. so had as long time to hng out in both LAS and SFO between short flgihts.
Gabe picked us up just around midninight.. e drove is to our airbnb.. we got in, unpavked then wuicly fell asleep
gld to be here with gabe and novs ! more tomorrow ..
Woke today at 4AM to watch some fun stuff happening back at work in VT .. Not sure I can talk about it yet.. but this video gives you an idea of the last couple of weeks. Im so proud of our company.. and so happy to be part of this team.
I got a few more hours of sleep.. then DIane and I packed up and heaed to Bryce Canyon our 4th National Park/ National Forest of the trip It was an hours drive.. and it was not until the end of that trip that we actually found a place open that had coffee ! .. though we did find this throwback sinclair dinosaur.. Kind of a weird mascot for an oil company.. no ?
We are listening to Malcom Gladwells’ “Revenge of the Tipping Point’ .. its gladwell revisiting soem of the themes from his 1999 book ‘Tipping Point’ .. I see that its been getting some mixed reviews.. but we like it !
We got to Bryce Canyon about 10 AM and chose a figure 8 trail that included the Navaho Loop and Peekaboo Canyon loop. All in all about a 6mile hike..
it was simply amazing. We’ve had some great hikes this week across Utah.. an we’ve done a fair bit of hiking in other parts of the US and other parts of the world, but nothing I can remember compares to this.. It was an amazing combination of geology, colors, plants, weather zones.. Everywhere we walked was another beautiful vista… and like always I couldnt resit takign pictures… lots and lots of pictures.. Its liek taking pictures of a sunset.. the picture is never is as good as the memory.. but I put all this pics here to help me preserve my memory of this wonderful day
We wwoke to about 3 inches of snow this morning.. which was beutiful… but not so great for the FWD car we rented an the steep driveway of our airbnb..
After a bit of shoveling, we were able to get out. It was blustery anand clod.. so we’ve decided to put off our Bryce Canyon hike until tomorrow when it’ll be a little warmer.. So .. today wwe planned to stick near ‘home’. which is duck creek village , UT.
Diane foudn a great hike called the Virgin River Rim Trail.. It was about a 5 mile out in back only 7 miles from we’re we’re staying. It was a great choice.. it was several miles down some beautiful unplowed dirt roads. .. so driving the 2wd Rav4 with all season tires was not at all like driving our AWD with studded snows.. Still we got up there ok.. and foudn we were the only ones there. THe hike was beautiful.. and untraveled since the snow.. It did soem switchbacks up to the ridge.. where we had great views of the canyons on each side.. we also had high winds and low temps. we figure it was in the 20s.. and even colder with wind chill..
the clouds were really beautiful..a nd were moving fast. it was very cool watching them
THe views at the top were magical !
On the road back we were the obly car.. so we stopped to check out this ancient lava flow.. evidently its one of the longest and higest in the world
SUch a nice day,. really fun being just the two of us traveling
