In Moab

Thursday (4/30) we drove out to Arches National Monument. Like everywhere else around here the scenery is spectacular. We stopped at the Visitor's Center and met a couple of guys riding from Grand Junction, CO to Tucson, AZ.
The flat thing on the back of the bike is a solar panel. They're using it to recharge cell phone batteries, cameras and et al. They are recording the trip using a cell phone, camera and the internet.


Rider number two is towing a Bob trailer.

/* begin rant
When I was working, I routinely resisted meetings dedicated to quality circles, process improvement, stating our assumptions and our go forward positions, and all the other manufacturing specific jargon. It just seemed to me to be a painful elaboration of the painfully obvious. If your business is manufacturing, one should seek the most efficient way to make the product. If an error is detected, find the root cause, eliminate it, and improve the product. But no, apparently this is not the way American manufacturing works. I have not one, but two, more examples of this.
We were driving down huge hills Wednesday, the brakes started moaning and vibrating. It's a warped front brake rotor, rotors shouldn't warp at 10,000 miles. We called the Moab Chevy dealer, he's quite familiar with the problem, they're seeing a lot of it.
The pocket door in the RV is broken. The screws for the track are coming out of the ceiling. We called the dealer in Durango. Oh yes, they see this all the time. They have developed a fix and can make it better.
Why has QC passed from the manufacturer to the customer?
/* end rant

Ok, enough whinging. Friday we got the truck fixed. While the truck was being fixed we rode the mountain bikes on the road. We went into the Arches National Park, which was a very pleasant climb. Here are some Moab pictures.

This is a lovely pedestrian bridge that parallels the Hwy 191 bridge. It was quite pleasant riding across it, away from the giant trucks on 191.


Friday morning seemed to be Ride Your Jeep Off-Road Day. There were large groups gathering before driving out onto the desert. There is a service in town that will guide groups out into the desert so they can do whatever it is that 4-wheelers do. I personally think they should all get bicycles.

Balanced rock. Someday it will fall down. The rock supporting it is eroding faster than the top rock. There used to be a smaller balanced rock there, but he fell down in 1975.

More rock.


Today is unpleasant. It's overcast, the wind is howling and it's spitting rain. Ah yes, the sustained wind speed just increased a bit. We did laundry yesterday, so perhaps we will go for a drive in the truck with our shiny recently turned rotors.