The last section, the mud section, of the Mad Mud Run in the Providence neighborhood of Las Vegas, NV from May 21st, 2011. The total run was 4.6 miles capped off with about 20 yards of crawling though mud with crowds cheering.

Basic idea behind this event is run a long way, deal with obstacles, and finish off by crawling in the mud.  There are more photos here of the Mad Mud Run, in a slide show format, if you want to see them all now, otherwise they’ll appear over time.

Zombies climbing the stairs at City Center during the Las Vegas Zombie Walk

Lifeguard Games - Relay Races

This is one of several upcoming images that are variously going to be from First Fridays, a Las Vegas arts fair-ish event held, well, every first Friday of each month.

This particular image, and the others with the pillows to come, are from a mass pillow fight held for the first time.  You didn’t really think I could pass on a mass pillow fight did you?  Hell no.

So Erin and I went to a campaign event for Senator Harry Reid’s re-election effort.  We figured it would be fun, free food, and we’re big fans of being able to buy health insurance.

I’ve been to a lot of campaign events in my days, but none that I can remember as just a person, a citizen, usually it was as a journalist.  It was a fun change of pace for me.

One of the humourous little things I saw though was the campaign volunteers handing out signs to the attendees.  The campaign didn’t allow people to bring in signs but would hand them out to attendees.  That’s one way to keep everyone on message I guess.

To be fair, this is nowhere near as bad as some of the other stories I’ve read about other campaigns, but it was funny to see.

Actually we found out about something to do on that day and then found out that it was National Public Lands Day.

I received an email talking about a wildlife restoration project an hour and a half north of Vegas near Amargosa at Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.  We would be planting native grasses.

See, this valley has a lot of natural springs in it, apparently about 10,000 gallons a minute pour out of the earth after having worked it’s way to this traveling underground from Utah.  Upon discovering this, some wise man many a year ago decided that this would be a great place to farm cotton and cattle.  Cotton…in Nevada…Really?

I never doubt the dumbness of humanity.  Anyway, this person failed.  Excellent.  In the process though he totally wrecked the natural landscape and oasis.  Hence, we planted.

It so happened that some friends of mine from Aloft Aerial Dance were in town doing some performances as part of their El Circo Cheapo Get Rich Slow Tour.  So I, of course, wanted to stop by and take some photos.  That’s where the performance images that will be appearing over the next week or two came from.

If you happen to be in Chicago I highly recommend you go see El Circo Cheapo.  It’s worth the money, easy, and a really fun Friday night.

(There are some small issues, tiling to speed load times and low res previews while full res load and that kind of stuff.  Just give it a minute to load and look around while you listen to Damien describe his ecovillage.)