Geeks in the Canyon

Next morning we got up and had a little surprise. 2 of us were missing because of "her" having to undertake surgery. Appendicitis sucks.

The remaining 5 of us started our hike at about 9 am. Mircea and I were warned that we should not stop every 2 seconds to take pictures. The plan was to take a break at every 30 minutes.
Ohhh and btw Mircea and I were packing 3kg of photo gear and a couple liters of water.
This piece of information will be relevant pretty soon.

We've chosen the Bright Angel Trail which is labeled strenuous. The distance from the rim to the bottom of the canyon is 4400 feet and the road is 19 miles long. Most of the people that go down and back up do this in 2 days. We descended 3000 feet and climbed back up in 6-7 hours :D.



The scenery is beautiful and until you get there you can't realise the scale of the canyon. It's huge. I mean it ...it's huge.
















The funny part about having google t-shirts is that a lot of people talk to you. They ask you if you're really working at google, they tell you that they love google and stuff like that.




In the next photo you can see a falcon. They were flying in circles above us. Sadly for them none of us fainted so they could feast on us :).


"Googlers invade the canyon" seems like a good title for the next pic.














A small .....chipmunk ?:D












After 1-2 hours of descent we decided it was time to stop and head back up otherwise we would have lost the helicopter ride.
I think that we descended 3000 feet or smth and there were 1400 feet left until we reached
the bottom of the canyon.


The ascent was trickier than we expected. Let's be honest ...we're geeks. The only exercise we get is when we go to the minikitchens searching for phood.
Mircea had a really tough time in this ascent and at some point we started carrying his backup swaping it beetween us. Kudos go to Andrei for taking good care of Mircea and helping him complete the hike.







Marius carrying 2 backpacks :D. GG mars.

A quick pit stop.


When we began the descent the sun was shinning, it was hot and extremely dry. At some point
we were fortunate enough to get some cloud coverage but this turned out to be a double edged blade. When we were almost near the top (perhaps half an hour away) it started raining "cats and dogs". We were soaking wet. But as this wasn't enough the rain got a little more ...solid and pieces of ice started falling from the sky. Pretty cool. You should have seen the five of us and 2 fellow hikers trying to take cover behind a small rock. Kinda' pointless. Some of us were lucky enough to have a t-shirt or smth with them and we've changed out of our wet clothes.
Finally we reached the top ... some of us later than others but ...we've all made it.
As we looked down into the canyon we realised that it was a good idea not to go any further. Rain and lighting make a bad combo in the wild :D.


This is me playing with a software tool that creates panoramas.

Mars & me.(courtesy of Andrei)

Mircea & me (courtesy of Andrei)

This was a little chipmunk eating a twix that it stole from us. Damn thief.(courtesy of andrei)

Me(courtesy of Mircea)

The gang. By mircea.

Next: helicopter ride and trip back home.

Geeks do Vegas

Once upon a time in America ...the geek squad went to Vegas.
We left Mountain View at 3.30 and we took the plane from SFO. After a flight that took ~2h we got to Las Vegas.

Do you know how you can figure out that you are in Vegas??? You see the slot machines in the terminal. In Vegas there are slot machines everywhere...we were joking about having slot machines in the restrooms. Somebody pls remind me to tell you about "testing on the toilette" and "unit testing". You'll have a blast.

Let's rewind.... we were in Vegas. One of the guys rented a car big enough for the seven of us so after we got the car we went on a search for the hostel where we made reservations.

A couple of days before this story I was talking to somebody who said that I'm a pampered little brat that's not used to living in less than idyllic conditions. Well ...let's say that even if it was true then it's not anymore. We shared the room with a russian or smth and both mircea and I slept holding our camera bags. It was so lovely we could die.

But before that we hit the casinos and stuff.Some pictures:



First we went to Bellagio.
Long story short ...OAUUUUU. You could almost smell the $$$ in the air. There were a lot of people playing games, shopping and just wondering around. Looking around you saw all kinds of ppl from the filthy rich guys in custom made suits, walking around with their high maintenace women to .... us :D.

But everybody was having a great time...here are some pics:







Of course the next thing we did was to go and see the famous fountain. No it wasn't playing "Time to say goodbye".
There's a list of 20 songs that it can play and that you can find here.

The fountain and the music are beautiful and we sat there mesmerized for 3 songs.One of those was "All that jazz"(cool song, btw do u remember Cabaret-the movie?). The others I can't remember.

Here are some pics(outside view and fountain):

















When we figured out that we had enough of the show we went to Caesar's Place to grab something to eat. The waiter there was very friendly and when he heard we are from Romania he began to tell us about how much he enjoys travelling and that he will come to Romania in Oct-Nov to see Sighisoara,Peles and Draculas' Castle.





After that we hit the casino floor for some action and i won a couple of bucks at Blackjack which I later lost at a poker table but ....easy come easy go.

The next pictures were taken from the ~100-ish floor(350 m) of the Stratosphere(the highest building in Vegas).

Let's say this: the view is breathtaking. And especially the view from the rides on top of the stratosphere. ;)




There is one called BigShot which at 1,081 feet (329 m) is the highest thrill ride in the world. It's like a giant ejection seat that thrusts you at 4G in the sky. Again and again :D. Pretty decent fun if you ask me. Let's add to this the fact that you have the most incredible panorama ever ....

There's another ride there called Insanity the Ride, opened in 2005 which at 900 feet (274 m) is the second highest thrill ride in the world. It dangles riders over the edge of the tower and then spins in a circular pattern at approximately forty miles per hour.
As it was closing time there were no other ppl on the ride so Mircea and I had the whole thing for ourselves.
More fun ..yey.

Pictures:


That pretty much covers our night in Vegas.
The next day we got up early :



You can see the love in her eyes.

Mircea looking towards the future.It will hurt my friend ..it will really hurt.




and we started our long road to the Grand Canyon.





The road goes through the Hoover Dam but sadly we didn't have enough time to stop and take pictures so these were taken from the car.

We had a long and dangerous ;) road ahead:



Addendum: I forgot to mention. The hostel is called "Sin City" and in the words of a great man it was "Scandal". And I'll say only this: the neighbourhood made us feel part of a gangsta movie ;).
Pics taken by Mercia:




pt ultimele 4 poze ©Mircea Bardac 2007.