Day 7: epic

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There are so many bad things in this world I thought today I’d focus on some of the good things.

Love, that’s pretty good. Beer, of course, is good, especially with a slice of pizza. Huge glassy waves on remote rivers are good. Books. Golden retrievers, except when they hog the bed and take over all the pillows.

And snow. Lots of snow. Ridiculous and absurd amounts of snow:

Day 7: epic: posted to my Flickr account.

Day 7: Snow Plowing gomers destroying my line on Sunnyside: posted to my Flickr account.

Today was seriously epic. Certainly not the deepest pow I’ve ever skied. 10″ or so new, blown in to knee deep in places. But lovely texture and absolutely no crowds. Headed straight to Motherlode for first tracks on Fool’s Gold, Gold Rush, Mountainside Meadows. Single Jack to Thaynes. The trees off of Keystone over and over and over (stellar). The Desert (!). Crescent from the very top.

So tired but I couldn’t stop. Just one more, just one more.

More lanes on I-80 between SLC and PC?

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I was listening to KCPW this morning. Rick Broth had a report with Utah state senator Kevin Van Tassell (R, Vernal).

Van Tassell suggested that additional lanes needed to be added to I-80 to alleviate congestion in Parley’s Canyon between Park City and Salt Lake City.

Apparently, Van Tassell has never driven on an LA freeway and knows nothing about herding mentality. Adding lanes never alleviates congestion but only makes it worse.

Hey Kevin, how about this? How about adding a commuter (NOT Trax, but a heavier and faster rail line akin to the Long Island Rail Road in the highway median? That might actually do something to alleviate congestion.

Maybe a quick visit to Albequerque is in order to check out their rail project between Albequerque, ABQ, and Santa Fe. Great foresight in that state!
Or maybe just go on down to SLC and see how TRAX could be expanded for sensible canyon mass transit.

religion sandwich

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People often categorize both Utah and Kansas as being religiously extreme, and for good reason. Kansas is backwardly so, what with its suburban megachurches and school board battles over “intelligent design”. Utah of course is the reddest state in the union and home to the Mormon church. Utah spelled backwards is sometimes pronounced Hate-U.

But the meat in this sandwhich is decidedly Colorado. Home to such illustrious figures as Ted Haggarty — the meth-taking, gay prostitute frequenting hypocrite — Colorado takes the crown as the bizarro religious capital of the country. Have a spin through the FM and listen to all the loonies if you want to see what I mean. Normally, these stations are confined to the lower reaches of the dial. Along Colorado’s Front Range, they are all over the place. It makes it almost impossible to stumble on dangerous programming such as NPR.

On a recent trip I listened to Dr. James Dobson rail against companies trying to be inclusive by using “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. This was characterized as a “War on Christmas”. Is it really appropriate for a religious leader to use such a metaphor? Which century do this people live in?

Further in which field is Dr. Dobson’s degree? The only degreed people I know who insist on using the honorific when being addressed are MDs trying to maintain mystique, underachievers with weak egos, or those trying to get free upgrades on flights. I fall into the last category. It works.Aside from that, it’s just plain pompous.