the geeks do zion (guest blog)

it was a slow weekend; in part due to conference, but mostly due to the fact the geeks were out of town. not only were they gone for the weekend, but they left me all day friday.... geek-free! pmk originally came up with the idea to have guest bloggers, however, he's been "busy" and is now just getting around to writing one. whatever. i think once his family circus was over he didn't have proper blogging material.

and with that i bring you brokeback zion....

Alex, jb & I spent the weekend in Zion. JB does a bike class there every year and alex & I decided to go with this year. When you have 19 students all meet together, it starts to get confusing who is who, so we assigned monikers to each of them about things we could remember. We had ‘The Prohpet’ (named after her cool Cannondale bike), ‘the Mormon couple’ (self explanatory), ‘the doc’ (starting residency) & ‘the guy with the long neck’ (you would have to see it to believe it.)

We head down to Zion and meet at Kolob Canyon for our 1st ride. Pouring rain w/ sleet. The hand dryer in the ranger station bathroom never felt so good afterwards. Great. We’re soaked and haven’t even set up camp.

A nice but cold morning in Zion Canyon.

JB requires each of the students to give a presentation at some point of the trip to pass the class. You should have heard some of the hack jobs we witnessed. I am really worried about the future of our college students. Some were actually entertaining. We heard about flash floods (The Prophet), some sort of camp fire banana abomination (the Mormon couple) and how to stop gaping wounds from bleeding (the Doc). That one could come in really useful after seeing the way alex & jb ride.

The most gratifying part of the trip was to see us ‘older’ folk kick some 20 something ass going up Kolob Canyon and out on the Gooseberry Mesa. Still good to know we’ve got something left in the tank.
Some of the slackers trying to keep up.

Sarah would have been appalled at the guest showers in the campground. The only person I know that is more neurotic than I am is Sarah. You go into these glorified bathroom stalls and stick you token into the wall timer for 10 minutes of hot water. The floor is caked in mud and god knows what else. You have no choice but to walk barefoot through the muck to the shower part. The air is freezing, but the warm water feels good. Your 10 minutes seems to go by in a nanosecond and you are stuck with the stark reality of cold air. Now the fun begins: you have to walk back through the muck and put your clothes back on without dropping them into it. I dropped a sock and contemplated leaving it there. Instead, I gave to Sarah as a souvenir. Hope she liked it!