Tag: Las Vegas

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Transcendental Bob Uncategorized

Feed your head

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I’m driving toward Mount Charleston on 214 this morning, watching the sun rise orange and hot in my rearview mirror and listening to NPR. Billy Bragg is talking about the Newport Folk Festival, and he gives a hilarious account of Gillian Welch fighting airline delays to arrive 30 seconds before her set starts.

Disoriented and surreal, she broke into a version of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” which NPR offers a snippet of. “Feed your head … Feed your head.”

Maybe it’s not quite what the Airplane was thinking when they wrote the song, but that’s exactly what I’m doing as I ascend Mount Charleston, watching the temperature gauge drop steadily while my truck climbs to 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 feet. When I get out to start hiking the Bristlecone Loop at 7 a.m., it’s 48 degrees. After the heat of the Vegas valley, it’s like a cool, pi

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Transcendental Bob

Geeking in the shadow of eternity …

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I hiked the North Loop on Mount Charleston a few weeks ago, following the trail up to a 3,000-year-old Bristlecone pine tree. It’s magnificent. And while I’m standing there admiring it, a few guys wander up wearing Zappos T-shirts.

We talk for a while, and I ask them about the Zappos shirts. Turns out they work there, and they’re my neighbors (Greenspun Media Group is within spitting distance of Zappos’ headquarters). One is a programmer and the other works on search engine marketing initiatives, so it isn’t long before we’re standing in the shade of this ancient tree talking about open source code, SEM strategies and my feeble efforts to find filthy lucre on the Internet.

Suddenly, I pause. Look at them. What the fuck are we doing talking about this crap. With a smile and a nod, we continue our separate ways, lost in the beauty of the refreshing desert mountains and the bristlecone pine.

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Paddle Bob

Paddling Callville Bay on Lake Mead

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My first kayak trip on Lake Mead taught me a quick lesson in scale. I thought Lake Loudon was a big lake. Mead dwarfs it.

For some reason, I decided to put in on the north shore of Mead instead of near Boulder City. I was wanting to avoid a trip across Hoover Dam, which can be a pain when there’s traffic, and I also wanted to explore a bit. I settled on Callville Bay, which isn’t too far from here. But I was wondering why I couldn’t find much on kayaking up there.

Now I know.

I put in at the marina there before 7 a.m. on Sunday. It’s a nice facility, but launching the kayak was a little tricky. The area near the boat ramp is rough. In fact, it looks as if the boat ramp itself is pretty rough as the’ve extended it numerous times t chase the drought-depleted waters of Mead. But I set off, out of the bay and after surveying my options I decided to head southwest, mostly to keep the sun at my back and because I could see chunks of shade in the mountains up there.

It wasn’t long before I spotted Sentinel Island. I started paddling toward it. And paddling. And paddling. It was a lot farther off than I’d realized. It started dawning on me how big the lake was when I noticed how tiny boats motoring along the south shore appeared. Just crossing the lake