Las Vegas (again!)

I left SF two days ago to start my journey east. Riding I80 over the Oakland bridge, over the mountains and into the desert, I made it to Reno around 6pm. At the airport, the racing was done for the day but I was able to walk through the pits and see some of the racing planes up close. Fortunately, there was a catholic church just down the street that was renting out campsites to race fans, so I stayed the night there. In the morning I got an early start, took advantage of the free continental breakfast offered by the church then headed to the airport to watch some racing. The championship races were later in the week but there was plenty of qualifying laps and heat races to watch. Before I left at noon to head to Vegas I managed to see some racing from all four of the major classes; Sport, bi-plane, war-bird, and jet. The race course is set up so that spectators have a view of the whole thing. With the planes never going higher than a few hundred feet, some reaching 500mph as they go down the front straight past the grandstand, it is quite exciting to watch. After seeing a quick aerobatic demonstration, I hit the road for the long ride to Vegas. The original plan was to make it there in two nights but when a gas station attendant told me about a short cut that would shave an hour off my time, I decided to push on and make it to town just after nightfall. The short cut turned out to be one of my favorite roads of the trip. The road that took me up through the mountains had more curves and dips than some roller coasters. At some points the valley walls rose straight up from the side of the narrowed road. Fortunately, I didn't meet anyone coming the other way. Probably because on that stretch of road there were 130 miles between gas stations! Arriving at Jeremy's house around 9, after 9 hours on the bike, I went immediately to sleep. I spent the morning around town picking up supplies. In the afternoon we practiced a little long range target shooting with Jeremy's M4 rifle, then tried our hand at Geocaching. Geocaching is kind of like a scavenger hunt for adults. There is a huge online Geocaching community where members post GPS coordinates to hidden objects around the world. There are thousands in Las Vegas along. Our cache hunt took us north of the city to red rock canyon. We spent an hour clambering over boulders and up the side of the canyon but were unable to locate it (an orange Tupperware container, we were told). Oh well, it was a neat hike anyway and I got this great picture from the canyon wall as the sun was going down. When we got back, Jeremy and Franny treated me to an amazing home cooked meal. This morning I'm preparing my gear to continue east. Hopefully today I'll make it across most of Arizona and maybe into New Mexico!