murals in san francisco

Almost a year ago now, Heidi and I were in Mexico City, at the Diego Museum. In there I read there were more Diego murals in San Francisco, than his home town of Mexico City. Since it's so close I thought it would be fun for us to go see some for a day trip. While looking up where exactly to find them - not all of them are seeable on the weekends, I discovered this website :  Murals of San Francisco . So I planned a full tour. And as best plans tend to go, we got about 1/4 of the way round. We started with a personal favorite of mine. Actually on the Chase building in Daly City.

The next on tour was on the way to a friends house, we visited.

Stumbled passed this one where we parked, quite colorful and hard to miss.

Origin plan was to go to Coit tower next, but it was really foggy, So we decided to walk around the Castro where we already were. The street art is less mural, and more political statement, though Diego himself was quite political, his art was more subtle.

I can't say I understood all of them though, with art I think the viewer can enjoy it in the way they see it.

Some stand out from the rest of course. Either to a generality or personal impression.

Sometimes the message is stronger than the quality.

or maybe just abstract...

This on was my favorite, pretty sure it is meant to be Carlos Santana.

Somehow I had never been up Twin Peaks before we stopped there on the way out of town. Good view of San Francisco and Golden gate bridge.

So in the end, pretty far from the intended Diego style, like this one on Dolores and 18th. We'll hit Coit tower another time.

Mt Lewis

Returning from Salt Lake City, Wayne, me, Glen and Lauren decided to try fly Mt Lewis. Thanks Zac for the waypoints. While the mountain is unlikely to win any scenery of the year awards, I think at almost 10,000ft it is the highest launch I've flown from.

The wind was light and variable which at the peak of a 10k mountain was eery.

Glen launched first, we watched as he ran and ran and ran into ~7mph slight right cross. Wayne and I waited and scoped out other launch possibilities but ended up taking the same launch and waiting what seemed for ever for a good cycle.

The climb out was pretty easy, but the thermals were not well behaved. They topped out just 3k over.

Which was surprisingly little wiggle room for glide. We flew south, looking for some scenery.

Didn't find a whole lot...

So with the long drive ahead we corkscrewed down.

And all landed totally different directions. One thing I noticed on descent were what I thought were water lines, (channels water would run or drain off in) I look at these for slope indication (you don't want to land downhill), anyway these didn't seem to make sense. After I landed I noticed shoeless hoof prints. Ah wild horses! of course. You can see one such channel to my right. 

Dinosaur awards and more hiking.

There would be no more flying in this meet, results can be found here. It was great to see so many new (to me) faces, I would say up and comers, but as you can see they are flying so much better than that! Well done Kelly, Beau and Nathan. A huge thank you to Terry and Chris Reynolds for putting on the meet, G.W. Meadows for running it, and J.Z. helping out too. Despite the weather I think everyone had a great meet, safe, fun and educational and incredibly scenic.

At the last minute Glen was passed by a very slim margin by Zac for the big win open class. Replays of the race remain viewable on airtribune : I am still laughing at how far offtrack I got day 3

Wayne and I took one last hike in Dinosaur on the way out of town.

The Sound of Silence trail we'd seen the day before looked too good to pass up.

The sound of silence was actually thunderous, standing on the ancient sand dune was not a great idea. But look at the layers ! Very cool. We were back in the car just as the rain started. Until next time Colorado :)

Dinosaur Bones

It would not be right to go to Dinosaur and not see the world famous dinosaur bones discovery. The theory goes that there was a flood or sequence of floods and this river bend happened to collect the dead animals which got covered by sand and fossilized. The river bed was then turned on its side by plate tectonics. You can read more about it here : A shelter was built around the remaining fossils, which is now the museum.

What we get to see here is just a fraction (~1/6 ?) of the original cliff. Other pieces were sawn up and shipped to museums around the world. Still very impressive though, and somehow more moving when still connected to the earth. Especially when you can recognise the pieces of  these beasts.

Walking around outside the sandstone colors are vivid.

I'm not very good at identifying snakes, other than "hey look! SNAKE". I think this is a Glossy Snake ?

Split Mountain, celebrating diversity.

down at the Yampa

We flew Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and while I appeared to be really rusty at the competition flying (and possibly a little unlucky too) the scenery was amazing. On the Wednesday task, I made a navigational and tactical goof. Instead of waiting for the clouds to reform, I chased a group of pilots through the first start clock. They all ended up landing shortly thereafter, and I drifted in the weak lift and strong wind, waaaaaay off course. I never recovered from that choice, veering something like 28km off course and the best I could do was get within 10km (downwind) of the first turnpoint in the 38km/h wind. But I *was* still flying and over amazing terrain to boot, so I decided to go with it and take in the scenery, after all that is what I came here to do. I pretty much flew the length of the canyon and landed at the goal field. My biggest regret was not taking a camera. Above is a google earth rendering of the terrain.

So the next day, after the task was cancelled, Wayne and I headed down the canyon (to Echo Park) and saw it close up. We were not disappointed !

Above a Goose and a Crane passed each other on their morning commute. We hiked around a bit and took a swim in the Yampa, there was no bad angle to take pictures! 

The water was a very pleasant temperature, and pretty clean too.

On the way back out to the first plateau, we stopped in whispering cave, it goes pretty far into the sandstone, with an amazing cool breeze, outside it was 87'F inside a refreshing 68'F. Next stop was the Chew Family ranch house, now a museum.