It's been a long time since I've been out to see the big pit, at least 10 years.  A lot has changed since then.  They moved the visitor's center, since the hole is a lot larger.  The most noticable thing, at least at first, is the increase in security.  From zero to the President sleeps here.  Last time I was there you just drove up to the visitor's center, walked out to the rim and took pictures.  Now you have to check in with Security at the front gate.  They give you a pass to hang on your rearview mirror, jot down the # of people in your car on a number coded stub from the hanger and charge you $5 a car.  A sign tells you that you are only permitted to take pictures at the visitor's center, and all the way up you are reminded not to stop and not to take pictures.  And there's a security dude in his truck at the center to make sure you follow all rules.  Jeese, it's just a hole!

One of those bigass tires that go on one of those bigass trucks that haul the dirt and ore out of the pit.

My pciture of their picture of the pit from the air.

Gilgal Gardens is a small little place in the heart of Salt Lake City.  Originally it was the back yard of a private residence, but when the house went up for sale, to prevent the destruction of this little oddity, Salt Lake City purchased the property.  Thomas Child started working on it in 1945 and worked on it until his death in 1963.  It's full of rock carvings like this statue of the sphinx with the face of Joseph Smith.  Rocks with engravings of scriptures form pathways and walls all over the place.  There is a statue of himself and one of his wife.

Below is a rock carving of a Mormon Cricket.

In the center is a sculpture of Thomas Child, surrounded by what looks like tools he used for farming and the carvings themselves.  One of the groundskeepers, an lady in what I would guess is her 70's, told us that he did all the carvings and engravings himself - except for the faces.  He didn't do faces so he had a friend of his carve all the faces for him.

A little set up of stones with scriptures, both standing up and on the walking stones.  I told the lady that I used to come here with my friends back when I was in high school and that I remembered it being a lot more overgrown, and that they had obviously cleaned it up since the city took over.  I also asked if anything had been moved around during the cleaning up or if everything was still in it's original place.  She told me that nothing had been moved, everything was in the place that Thomas had put it.  She also said to me, in response to my telling her that my friends and I visited there back in high school, "So, you and your little friends were some of the ones that used to sneak in and smoke marijuana in the corner there?"  Uh, no, not me!  She just smiled, chuckled and went on telling us about the history of the place.

Some sort of garden of stone body parts. If you click on the link below you can see them close up.

Some of the things you'll see at the Days of '47 Rodeo:

Look down in the bottom right-hand corner, it says "Let me hear it" with lasers.

Bucking broncos

Cattle rasselin'

Rodeo clowns.  Here he is trying to shoot a hotdog, bun and all, up into the stands.  As you can see (methinks) the air gun pretty much shredded the hotdog.  For those of you not familiar with rodeos, the clown is not just there for entertainment.  As you'll see in a later photo, they are trained to distract the bull from a fallen rider.  I was amazed at how close they got to the bull, and somehow kept from getting gored by one of his horns.

Calf roping.  A few times the announcer talked about the "animal athletes".  It kind of reminded me of the one time I went to a WWF (pro-wrestling) match and commented on how it was all faked.  The people next to us argued 'till they were blue in the face that it was all real.  At the rodeo the announcer went on about how the cowboys weren't the only athletes, and about how much the animals really enjoyed their part in the rodeo.  Now, I don't want to get into a discussion about whether or not you can call this animal cruelty.  Part of me agrees with that, part of me sees the rodeo as a part of Western American culture and the animals do walk away seemingly unharmed, and they do look well taken care of.   But, I can't see how you can say either animal in the picture below is actually enjoying the experience.  Yet the audience hooted and hollered in complete agreement with the announcers claims that the animals were having a good time.

Wagon races.

A monkey riding a dog corralling sheep.

Awesome rope tricks.

And, of course, bull riding.  Here you can see the rodeo clowns heading to intercept the bull.

Looking down into the valley from Little Cottonwood Canyon.  No, it has nothing to do with the parade, but I did like the picture.

The LDS First Presidency.  Not surprising that the parade had a LDS theme to it, since the pioneers were members of the church.  I liked the "Men in Khaki", which I'm assuming are the Church's version of Obama's secret service men.

What aliens have to do with the pioneers, I have no idea.  But it did occur to me to ask "is he or she an illegal alien?"

Randy "I'll pave my grandmother for a hundred bucks" Horiuchi, our Salt Lake County coucil member that seems to believe in shopping malls on every corner.

One of the more colorful characters, and she wasn't even in the parade.  When our Senator Bennett drove by she yelled "Health Care for All" at him and she also had comments for pretty much every politician that drove by.  Very vocal lady.  And impeccably dressed, too!

This guy had enough clout (money) to get the Utah State Legislature to force Salt Lake County to pony up several million dollars so he could build his new soccer stadium.  Even though the county voted it down, the mayor and the majority of the populace was against it, and they had a perfectly good place to play up at the University of Utah.  Yeah, it's nice to know our legislators can't be bought.

And this was just a cool picture of a purple-haired clown with one of her soap bubbles behind her head.

The back yard, with the truck sitting in it.

The nice, thin driveway we had to get it down.

Oops, hitch mistake #1 of several.

Finally, it's out of the back yard.  Now we just have to get it out without hitting anyone's house.

We had some trouble getting it to move at first, it had sunk a ways into the dirt.

Fixing hitch screw-up #2.

Hmmm, not too bad on this side.

Uhhh, now we're talking close.

Finally, past the houses.  As you can see if you look in front of the truck pulling, there's a car squeezing past as he tries to get out onto the street.  Even better was the lady in the maroon minivan coming the other way.  The truck was about a third of the way into the lane, still moving and she pulls almost into the gutter to squeeze by.  I don't think she got the sarcasm when I yelled "Thanks for being so patient" as she went by.

On the other side of the street.  One of the chains broke, so we had to fix hitch screwup #3, which wasn't so bad since they wanted to pull from the front anyway.

Pulling into traffic.  At least the red Dakota was kind enough to stop for us.

And awaaaaay we go....

The back yard, without a truck.  Now I have no excuse for letting it go to weed rather than doing something with it.

.... Older man is standing by one of the wine racks.  He places a hand on the rack and starts to grimace.  For about a minute or so. The grimace goes away, he stands up, shakes his leg.  Something brown drops out the bottom of his pants and he kicks it under the wine rack.  He walks away.

Brigham Young et al.

This is a statue honoring the sea gulls that came and ate all the crickets and saved the pioneer's crops.  The irony was the bird poop in the guy's eye.

Brigham Young's farm house.

Not only was the zip line no more than a hundred feet above the ground the whole time, and only about 400 feet long, but you sat completely strapped into a seat.

Not much more dangerous, or thrilling, than riding a ski lift.

As opposed to the zip line in Puerto Vallarta:

.... I have a friend that works at the liquor store in Sugarhouse and I was chatting with him when I was there last night. We were talking about walking to work, he lives close to the liquor store, I live close to the Chevron. He said that he was a little wary about walking home since the shootout at the Tesoro two blocks from his store, and the arrest right at the liquor store.

.... He was working there when a transvestite, who goes by the name China, came in. The cop on duty that night recognized this person as someone wanted for murder. My friend doesn't know the details of the murder, but he did say that the cop tried to arrest China as he left the store. China put up a fight, wiggled free and started to back away. The cop shot his taser gun at the suspect, with no effect. No effect? you ask. Yup. Seems he hit the suspect right in the breast. The fake breast. Rumors of cast iron bras aside, falsies do not conduct electricity. So, the cop had to chase down the transvestite, tackle him and handcuff him before he was able to bring him in.

.... Now, murder and transvestites are not really that funny. The taser hitting the fake breast, well, is, and it reminded me of a story my maternal grandmother used to tell. She grew up and lived most of her life in Harlem in NYC, and worked in the garment district making hats. I think it was sometime in the 40's or 50's, she had breast cancer and had one removed. One thing she loved doing at work was freaking out the newbies by using her fake breast as a pin cushion. She'd pull a pin out of a hat she was working on and just jab in it and watch the jaw of the person next to her drop to the floor. Yeah, she was a funny lady in her early years.

.... I went down to Best Buy and got a new version of the old router I used to have. There were several to choose from, but I figured since I knew that brand, I'd stick with it. Yeah. Considering the troubles I've had with the old one (all the memories came back as I was cursing at the new one), I should have known better. The software saw that it was there, recognized it but just didn't want to configure it for me. An hour later, and several thousand uses of the 7 words you can't say on TV*, I decided to just bring it back and get the other one I was looking at. Got the new one home, put in the disk, started up the wizard and was told SUCKER!, I don't work on Vista 64 bit, HAHA. Ok, not exactly in those words, but you get the idea. Just before I threw my drink into the computer, I noticed it listed a Manual Installation. I figured it couldn't hurt to spend another half hour trying to manually configure it before I destroyed a couple thousand dollars of computer equipment. I was pleasantly surprised. Netgear's manual installation was a whole lot easier, and effective, than LinkSys's Installation Wizard.

.... I turned off everything like it said. I hooked up all the network cables, like it said. Turned on the modem and waited 2 minutes, like it said. Plugged in the router and waited a minute, like it said. Turned on the computer. And it worked. Both computers can get on the internet, I can get my email and (hopefully) once the domain name server catches up to the IP address change, srossi.net will be back and so will all the pictures on the blog. (Oh, if you see the pictures here, then all is already well.)

.... Your patience in these times is appreciated.

*George Carlin; 1972; monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"

How do you clear out a Starbucks?  Walk in and yell "Someone's stealing a kayak off the roof of a Subaru out there."

  Well, as you (hopefully) can see, someone has chosen to cross into the elitist territory of Subaru owners. That's your basic 2-door speck.  I think it's actually a Daihatsu.  A 20 year old Daihatsu.  In used-and-abused shape.  And, ok, it's a canoe.  But still, someone is trying to delve into territory that has been reserved for the yuppie-Subaru crowd.  And although they have every right to, I still think it looks pretty damn funny.