Days 46-50: Vegas, Baby

Honestly – we didn’t take a lot of photos in Vegas…oops. The drive in to Vegas was uneventful… cept for a stop at In-n-Out Burger. 🙂 Heidi’s been talking about In-n-Out since we left Virginia. We even managed to find one that wasn’t in downtown Las Vegas. Also, the route down I-15 to Vegas from Utah goes through a chunk of Arizona. This trip has been a huge lesson in geography for the whole family. Tho things are a little easier out west where the states are bigger and squarier. Here’s the obligatory “next state” photo.

DefCon was at the Rio again this year. The Rio isn’t on the strip, but it’s close. The boys got a pretty good idea of what Vegas is like on this trip, even tho we were on the other side of I-15. The Rio is an all suites hotel so we had a lot of room to spread out. We also had a lot of time in town, so the first night we were there I bought a Wii U for the boys. They may remember that more than the con or the casino, actually. They really took to the Wii. Our room had a great view of the taxi line. Heidi managed to catch a glimpse of the hacker cab (the security folks in the audience will get the joke. The rest of you won’t 😉

Friday morning a bunch of hackers got up early to go on the 3rd annual Cycle OverRide bike ride. Friday morning was also the start of  R00tz Asylum aka DefCon kids, which Bobby and Terran wanted to go to. So Heidi and I split duties… she took the boys to DefCon kids. I went to the ride. But rather than riding, I drove the MCC to SAG the riders. JP carried the Cycle OverRide torch on friday morning. We ended up with 15 folks for the ride. Even with lining up for the group shot, the riders were still on the road right around 7am. Not too bad for a DefCon event.

The route was the same as previous years… ride out to Red Rock Canyon, do the loop up the canyon rim if you want, then back to the bike shop. This is a SUPER popular route with Vegas riders. For a weekday morning, there were a lot of riders on the rode. The MCC got a bunch of strange looks.

The ride is amusing. You start at ~2k’ in elevation, then gain about 1,500′ on the way to the entrance to the loop. Then the loop gains another 1k’ or so. Then it’s _all_ downhill back to the bike shop. It’s a bit of slog to get to the top, then the ride is over before you know it because of the downhill.

We had an amazing morning, weather wise. It was 74 degrees when the ride got underway, which is an amazingly cool temp for a Vegas morning in August. Even by the time everything wrapped up around 10:30, we were only in the high 80’s. I hope all the rides at DefCon are like that.

The boys had a great time in Vegas. Bobby hung out with an old friend and met a new one. He even got to play the kids version of Hacker Jeopardy. And even tho his team didn’t win, they still enjoyed themselves.  A big shout out to Robin and Joe for sharing the kid watching duties.

The rest of DefCon was filled with normal con fun.  Our time was spent talking with old friends, checking in at the Hack Fortress booth (where Dax amused the spectators by participating in the last minute kids round), and in general trying to not get to worn out by the con experience.  On top of that, JP and I gave a skytalk about the ride and teamed up for Hacker Jeopardy Pyramid.  (Edit – sorry. The brain got confused looking at the picture of Bobby.  JP and I participated in Hacker Pyramid not Jeopardy.)  Anyway Fun times.

Before we knew it, DefCon was over and we were back on our way to the route. The ride picked back up in Ely, which is about due north of Vegas. What’s also about due north is Area 51. On the way to Ely we took the Extra Terrestrial Highway. One of the locals gave up some rough directions to where Area 51 is but I didn’t listen very well, so we never figured out where the gate was. That said, here’s a shot in that general direction.

Next up, back on the bikes.