Crankworx Report From Taylor

Wow! What a road trip this turned out to be! I have been meaning for some time to completely photo document one of my trips this year, just for fun. And fortunately, with what might be my last big road trip of the year, I finally remembered to snag my Dad's fancy Nikon camera before I left. So enjoy the pictures that go along with the story!
As the blog entry below states, I did in fact pull out of the Crankworx race this past weekend. It just was not worth the $60 entry fee (plus $40 for a lift ticket) that they charged me. I wont go into details about the whole thing, but I will not be returning there next year. I will however, be attending the MSC race at SolVista just a few minutes down the road. I should have done that in the first place! I wound up just riding for a few days up at SolVista with Jay and Jim, and would have raced if I was able to get some extra time off from work. So instead of giving a race report this week, I decided to just cover my road trip!
My trip took me over 2,100 miles round trip through Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and finally Colorado. The first photo was taken from a rest stop on the I-70 in Utah. It's scenery like this that makes sitting behind the wheel of a car for 12hrs tolerable.
My hotel of choice was the Viking Lodge in Winter Park. And yes, that really is it in the second photo. My room was directly above the bike/ski shop on the bottom floor. My deluxe accommodations cost me $40 a night, just a smidgen more than camping. My room was... um... cozy. When getting out of bed I had to choose to step over my gear bag, or around my bike. Getting out the front door sometimes turned into a bit of a circus balancing act. My single window was more of a port hole that peered out onto another wall that looked onto the hallway. I can't really explain this window situation, so just look at the picture and try to figure it out for yourself!
The Cranworx festival itself was fun to attend, the big highlight being the freestyle and big air competitions with some of the sports biggest names in attendance. Cameron McCaul was out in force this weekend, pulling off some amazing stuff. Thats him doing a back flip with no feet! This was definitely worth checking out!
Some say that the Universe operates on a system of Karma, I am a firm believer in this. After a fairly cozy hotel room above a bike shop for 3 nights, and a really crappy downhill race... I felt that I was in need of some sort of compensation to make up for this lousy trip. Fortunately, Las Vegas pulled through for me and salvaged this trip. I decided to make a pit stop in Vegas for the night to break up the road trip a little. Checking into my room at the Tropicana Hotel, I was told by the front desk staff that I had been "upgraded". This little "upgrade" landed me in a top floor jacuzzi suite at no charge! The dam place was twice the size of my apartment, and even had a sauna! So I spent the last night of my road trip sitting in my private hot tub, overlooking Las Vegas and sipping champagne. Well, maybe not champagne... more like a 24oz Heineken. But, you get the point!