Squares 2 and 9

Aha! This clever title is yet another reference to our long-ago Camping Basics Class, but it has nothing to do with camping and everything to do with touristing.

Everything else you need to know about the bridge you can find out at http://www.hooverdambypass.org/faq.htm.

I thought I would show you the safety tips you'll see when you get there, and the view you can expect. The one and only photo of myself (besides the super cute one with Amanda) makes for an ugly profile photo, but hey! Is that the greatest engineering marvel of the 20th century behind you there? Why yes! Yes it is.

Safety tips.

View. 

Two words: bathtub ring. 'Nuff said. 

I shall pass this way again on Saturday. Until then, loyal readers. 

Back to Square One

You may remember from our Camping Basics class at REI (shameless self-hyperlink) back in January 2012 that Step 1 is NAVIGATION: know how to stay oriented.

For you Vegasphiles, I challenge you to identify the famous Las Vegas landmarks in the following photos from Top of the World:

1. 

2. 

3. 

4. 

I am proud that Amanda and I were able to identify directions and landmarks, and it only took us a combined total of 14 years of living here to be able to do so.

The views were fantastic, and the marketing was clever. The restaurant rotates, but the tower doesn't. So a cart of faux desserts sits on the tower and twice in an hour-long lunch, you rotate past the dessert cart. Here was the view of my dessert:

And for the entertainment of everyone involved...

No skyjumpers flew by during lunch. But we did get to wave to some riders on the Insanity.

For your further photographic love of Vegas, see Krista's interpretation of the Boneyard (another self-hyperlink) over on the Wannabe.

Tying the Knot

First of all, it's good to see Pastor Dana of Kaleidoscope Faith back in business! She's been gone so long I almost forgot how to spell "kaleidoscope."

In other news, I started thinking about tying knots when I put a knot-tying toy on my amazon.com wishlist sometime last summer. I received this for Christmas from my parents:

First of all, let me just say that in the current political climate, when women are not being allowed to testify on the House floor about women's health issues, and Rick Santorum calls unwanted pregnancies, "a gift from God," far be it from me to advocate a sexist toy.

Therefore, please forgive me for a moment while I let my sarcastic show: BECAUSE GIRLS DON'T NEED TO KNOW HOW TO TIE KNOTS!!! *huff*

As my foray into knitting proves, apparently in order to learn a skill, my particular style requires that I:
1) read about it      2) see someone else do it in real life and      3) watch a ton of youtube videos about it.

Therefore, I followed the instructions in the All-American Sexist Knot-Tying Toy and then went to a knot-tying class at REI, where I experienced loads of social anxiety due to the absence of Miss Gokey. Soon, however, I was enjoying practicing the knots the instructor showed us, and then forgetting how to tie them IMMEDIATELY after we finished and moved on.

I supposedly "learned" a square knot (which I think I can do like a champ, but Amanda says this guy is doing it the right way, and this way is nothing like the way the REI instructor did it), a fisherman's knot (I can do this, but only with the help of the youtube video), a bowline knot (whaaaaat?), a clove hitch (this will require more practice), a taut line knot (I did this successfully in class, but I can't seem to make heads or tails out of the video), a figure 8 knot (huzzah! and [in the case of the video] British!) and finally a water knot which I'm not even going to hyperlink because it seemed so confusing and useless to me.

So...that's how you can get for free what I also got for free. Thanks to the sexist knot toy, for a little bit of someone else's money I also have a practice set of ropes and a tiny hitch.

Since I know that by this point you're saying, "surely these knots aren't the only reason I'm reading this post," when really they are, I'll go ahead and tell you what disasters are trending today on the Doomsday Dashboard. It seems nuclear war has overtaken pandemic as most popular, ringing in at 27%.

Duct Tape Holds the World Together

Following is a list of all the full moons in 2012:
January: 8
February: 7
March: 8
April: 6
May: 5
June: 4
July: 3
August: 1, 31
September: 29
October: 29
November: 28
December: 28

It's a shame we only have eleven more full moons to enjoy this year, or ten if you believe the Maya mystics. I got this handy list last night while attending a workshop on Night Hiking with the intrepid Miss Gokey. We learned again about the "Ten Essentials," outlined in my Battling the Elements post from a while ago. I'm sure you noticed duct tape in that post, listed under "repair supplies" along with trash bags.

The official word, of course, is that you need a patch kit. The instructor for the workshop stated that duct tape will suffice to tide you over until you get home safely and can properly repair your gear or... if we follow the advice of James Wesley Rawles, get this: duct tape can actually be used to hold major wounds closed until you can get to qualified medical help IF it is clean. Maybe you already knew that. But I didn't.

On another blog, I posted 1.5 summers ago about a little girl in Highland, IN who taught me how to make duct tape flowers. For this post, I wanted to link to her etsy shop, but I can't find it with a zip code search. If I ever see the little girl again, I will correct my error.

In the meantime, here's a link to duct tape activities that you can use to waste your duct tape stash until such time as you absolutely need it for other things. I'll warn you, though, that if you're thinking about selling your crafts online: etsy is rather saturated.

For my part, unless I get super motivated, I will save my own duct tape for trade and barter.

Battling the Elements

REAL blogs, blogs like The Wannabe, post often and on a regular schedule.

Yeah, this blog isn't like that. Instead, I'll post when I find something interesting. Lucky for you, I've been joyriding around the paradoxical city of Las Vegas, burning up the fossil fuel and increasing my carbon footprint. This particular post cost $1.97 in valuable, dwindling fuel according to Road Trip America. 

I feel like many of you already know these things, but it's new to me, so hopefully there are one or two of you out there who will be able to use this information. 

I think it's important for me, as I prepare for the possible apocalypse, to better use the resources available to me in order to learn skills. To that end, I attended the Winter Camping Basics class at REI (bougie outdoor gear store that gives classes designed to get you to buy things) this evening. I attended the class with Miss Gokey, who thought the instructor was quite attractive. I tried to get her to flirt with him, but she refused. Since it was a free course, I don't feel bad about ripping off the content, adding my editorializing, and passing this gold on to you. I believe this is relevant to surviving the apocalypse in case we end up on the road in the winter-time. 

Like the copyright-wary social studies teacher that I am, I'll change the notes just enough to not get sued. 

The handout gives us ten essentials for winter camping: 

1) Navigation: know how to get where you're going. Map, GPS, compass, whatever you need to stay oriented. 

2) Sun protection: sunglasses and sunscreen. 

3) Insulation. 

#3 includes clothing: a base layer, an insulation layer, and outerwear. NO COTTON! Wool is the way to go. Personally, I recommend flannel pajamas! I'm partial to the sledding penguins, but that's just because my parents bought them for me for Christmas. 

4) Light: flashlight/lantern/headlamp + extra batteries

5) First-aid kit

6) fuego

7) repair supplies: knife/duct tape/trash bags

(You'd be shocked and weirdly pleased to know how useful trash bags and EXTRA trash bags can be.)

8) Food. Lots of food. Especially carbs. There were images of fancy camping stoves, but something about the idea of carrying a little canister of kerosene into the wilderness still freaks me out!

9) Water. While at the bougie store, I did pick up some Potable Aqua Chlorine Dioxide Water Purification Tablets, which kills Bacteria, Viruses and Cysts including Cryptosporidium. But I also learned that this steri-pen exists! The steri-pen is exciting because it uses batteries to channel UV rays that neutralize bad stuff in the water. It works, according to the "teacher" of the workshop, in the third world. Anything that prevents third world amoebas is alright with me! Haha. 

10) Tent, shelter, etc. 

One more note: 5,000 cubic inches in a backpack is "relative luxury." Just so you know. 

On that happy note, having taken up too much of your time already, I bid you adieu. 

Like a proper teacher, I have "taught" you the word bougie so that you can understand its contexts in posts of the near future. 

Thanks for reading, and remember, "the map is not the territory."