Where no Fiat has gone before

Through work, I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Gluecon 2015.  It is an amazing conference, attended by technology superstars like Adrian Cockroft.  The focus this year was on devops, APIs, microservices, and containers.  More thoughts on the tech in a later post.

My colleague Brandon and I got to Denver in the middle of the afternoon.  He had never been to this part of the country, while I worked for a Denver-based company for about 6 years.  We took this opportunity to go up into the mountains and do some hiking.

Arriving at the Enterprise desk, I was thrilled to be able to select a Fiat 500 - much more interesting than the Hyundai Elantra.   

It is an impossibly tiny car, reminding me of the Civic Si I was fortunate enough to drive in late high school.  As an aside, I loved that little car, it had such a great engine/transmission, and looked something like this:

This was a great little car

Classic Italian driving position, arms way out, steering wheel angled up.  Single instrument pod design.

Nothing says "I don't care about my job" more than the no smoking sticker in this picture

Remarkably thick B pillars.  Nice little engineering touches - rear wiper is on a delay by default, but goes active when you shift into reverse.  2 USB ports (1 is charge only) and a 12V plug.

Plenty of headroom!

We hopped in and headed west on I-70, winding our way up into the mountains.  An uncharacteristically thick cloud cover and rain came down as the powerless little car struggled up the mountains, feeling increasingly anemic with each foot of altitude gained.

Pounding along at 6,000 rpm, barely maintaining speed

That said, things got pretty, very quickly.

We popped off of I-70 and took 6 up over Loveland Pass, where it was snowing.  Nice, fresh, wet, beautiful snow.

The little Fiat that could!

We drove down the other side on 6, watching the skiers and snowboarders enjoying some late May slope time at Arapahoe Basin.

We were surprised to see some camouflaged prototypes running around, probably getting their high altitude testing done.  Not sure what the SUVs were, but we definitely saw some Ford Fusions prowling Route 9 near Breckenridge.

We saw some unbelievable scenery, as the rain cleared off and the sun smiled upon us:

A Colorado native friend of mine pointed us to some great hiking spots, so we proceeded to try and find them.  This should have been slightly foreboding:

Undeterred, we gunned the little Fiat up the mountain like a rally car.  The traction control was going crazy as we slipped our way up the hill...

...until it would go no further:

The problem was the traction control - we couldn't figure out how to turn it off.  Looked all over the place for the button, hunted through the manual.  Made multiple runs at the hill, and I just kept thinking, "wheelspin, I need wheelspin!"

Finally, Brandon found the button - it was right next to the gear selector!  From the driver's seat, it's obscured by the giant shift knob.  Hooray!  Let's charge ahead!

Lots of mud and snow spray ensued as we bounded our way up the track, until it became clear that our Fiat could no longer do a rally snowplow impersonation:

A beached Fiat 500 in the mountains of Colorado

So, after pelting the car with some snowballs...

...we reversed down the mountain, since there was no way for us to turn around.

We tried a few other spots, and got to a place of unbelievable beauty.

Boldly going where no Fiat has gone before

Yes, that is a snow cloud descending

Beautifully flocked trees

We thought we would go hiking past the gate in the background, but the snow was too deep for sneakers:

"foot deep" in snow

Brandon looks pretty happy

Scandinavian Flick?  Rally Turns?  No....

We headed off towards dinner, stopping in Breckenridge to get some Rocky Mountain Chocolate for our respective families.  Shopping done, we headed off towards a tasty dinner at the Mint in Silverthorne.

In no particular hurry, we enjoyed a couple more breathtaking vistas:

Clouds below the mountaintop

Sunny on the left, snowing on the right

After drinking in the scenery like the terrain-starved midwesterners we are, we arrived at the Mint.  One of my favorite places, simply old school:

I bet the decor hasn't changed in 50 years.

We order steaks and giant Fat Tires, and celebrated our amazing fortune at having lived what felt like a month inside of just a handful of hours.

All in all, a great little mountain jaunt before getting down to one of the most stimulating tech conferences in recent memory!