The first weekend.

This past weekend was the first overtime one for the show for me, and there are only going to be more until the end of the show, or whenever I get pulled off of it! On Saturday I worked an eight hour day, putting my last week total to a conservative 53 hours. Yesterday I didn't get a chance to relax that much, waking up at the break of dawn to head out to Arroyo Canyon near Pasadena and Angeles Crest to do some hardcore mountain biking with a coworker and pals.

When I mean hardcore, it was not beginner stuff, and quite different from my excursions out into the North Shore wilderness of North Vancouver. While the North Shore has difficult trails as well, the trail we went on yesterday was a different kind of difficult! It was 14.3 miles of downhill, on a precipitous singletrack trail along the side of the canyon, with drops ranging from 5 to 50 feet on one side of the trail. There were some uphill sections, but most of it was downhill, through a couple calf deep stream crossings, lots of rock gardens, and lots of loose leaves and shale. Check out the trail map! We did the trail with five riders, two full suspension rides and three hardtails. I got two flat tires in the first 3 miles of the trail, a snakebite on the front tire, and then another one on the rear about five minutes later! I crashed twice, once slamming into a Yucca plant (ouch! i removed a thorn about a 1/2 inch long from my thigh later in the ride) and another endo into thorns in a rock garden near the end. And of course, the usual assortment of bruises and cuts that come with handling a mountain bike over rough terrain (chainring scratches and gouges, mostly). Overall, it was great fun, and I think I need to upgrade my brakes, one of the most necessary items while descending a cliff wall among loose gravel and rocks!

In other news, we have parsed some VFXWages graph data into the site, so be sure and see if your occupation has some graphs! I know off the top of my head that we have a world compositor graph set up, but we'll need more data to get those other occupations up, as well as people with more years of experience to contribute! If you're a beta user, check out the Wages section. Later this week we hope to release another incremental and usability update, I'll keep you informed on both this site and the news section of VFXWages.