Weekend at the Ranch

My brothers and I have some property up in Duchesne (dew-shane) county that we call The Ranch, short for Back of Beyond Ranch, a reference you’ll understand if you’ve read Edward Abbey’s book "The Monkey Wrench Gang”.  I went up there this weekend, and got some much needed relaxation.  I went up Friday afternoon, and spent until about noon Saturday there all alone.  Just me, a few rodents and a ton of insects, but we pretty much left each other alone.  I took a ton of pictures (surprise), some of which you’ll see below, others will show up in time lapse videos (more surprise).  I also got about halfway through another Edward Abbey book, “The Fool’s Progress”.  Man, does he like to talk about his penis.  It is somewhat germane to the story, and seems to be few and far between once you get past the first chapter.  I’ll most likely finish it, since I started it, but unlike “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and “Desert Solitaire”, it’s not a book I’m bound to re-read every few years.  (Yeah, Writer, I know I’m stealing your thunder by talking about books, but you have had posts about cars too.)

Noon Saturday my older brother and his wife show up.  Younger brother and family were busy with the kitchen remodel so they didn’t come up.  The three of us sat around and talked, had dinner, basically just relaxed and had some great conversations and laughed a lot.  We were going to stay up late looking at the stars, but since it was still cloudy out we called it a night around ten. 

Sunday we got up, had a leisurely breakfast, sat around some more and then decided to clean the windows of the cabin.  Then my brother and I went up to check out the south forty to see what new damage the local (or vacationing) ATV users did to the property.  As surprising as this may seem, instead of taking the RR tie laying across their new road as a sign that maybe, just maybe, they should leave things alone, they simply drove around it.  Fer Rude!  There is a huge dead tree right on the edge of the trees that we plan to cut down and put in a strategic spot (which we have already identified) that will make it really inconvenient for these inconsiderate ATV maniacs.  After that we came back, packed up and headed home.  Since there is major construction going on in the west bound lanes of I-80, we decided to take Guardsman Pass home instead.  Probably didn’t save us any time, since it is 50% dirt road, but we got to see some nice scenery instead of sitting in traffic on the interstate for an hour.

Sunset behind the trees at the campsite.

Took this picture of the flower, didn’t even realize there was an ant walking across it.

Rossi Draw at dusk.

Looking out over the Uintah Mountains, at dusk also.

A bloomin’ cactus.

3 miles of this kind of road from the highway to our cabin.

Lost dog signs are not uncommon, but I’m not sure how useful they are 4 miles up a dirt road, at a point that gives access to only two different people’s property.  Now, they may be counting on one of those schmucks on ATV’s that end up this way despite all the No Trespassing signs, locked gates and RR ties blocking their newly made roads to notice both the note and the wandering dog, but I wouldn’t.

Looking out over the property from the upper (hill wise) south end.

Me and my Subaru, cruising up the newly formed, unwanted, ATV road that those aforementioned schmucks keep using despite the RR tie we put down to block it.

A rain storm came in as we were checking out the ATV damage.  You can see it on it’s way, and if you click on the picture you get a good look at the rain falling and spreading along the ground.

Here, if you click on the picture, you can see the rain falling, but because of the low humidity, it is evaporating before it gets to the ground.

I just liked this picture of the clouds and the field below.

Another picture of the virga, or rain that evaporates before hitting the ground.  This is also the view from right outside our cabin.

Halfway up the road to Guardsman Pass I need a pit stop, and saw this.  I guess it is fitting, since it was, in a sense, on a men’s room wall.

Snow in July and $5.70

Blooming cottonwood trees and big winds make for an interesting effect.  Hidden Hollow, which is right by the Chevron, must have a bunch of cottonwood trees because at one point I looked out the window and for a second thought it was snowing.  I couldn’t get a good picture when it was really “snowing”, but from this one you can see some of the pseudo-flakes.  It looked really cool when they were blowing in full force, it really looked like a light snow storm.

I love my swamp cooler.  Short of the entire body rusting through, there’s only 3 things that can break down.  The fan motor ($90, 20 yrs), the water pump ($30, 3 yrs) and the fan belt ($5.70, 8 yrs).  Guess which one I had to replace today?  Yeah, last night I noticed that the fan was blowing the same amount of air on both high and low.  I got out of the Chevron right around 8 tonight, looked up at the sky and thought “yeah, I have enough time to check out what’s wrong with the cooler.”  So I climbed up on the roof, popped out the side and looked at the belt.  Hmm, little cracked.  Not good.  Held the motor wheel tight and pulled on the fan wheel – it turned.  Not good either.  Oh, and I got the old belt off without loosening any of the bolts.  Another bad sign, but convenient for repairs.  Got to Home Depot and back, and had it installed before the sun went down.  Yeah!  Went into the house, turned the fan on low and checked the air flow.  ‘Bout the same.  Clicked it on to high, checked again and was quite happy about the result.  Actual, full fledged normal high air flow.  I’m gonna sleep great tonight.

iPods are not machine washable.

But I sure tried.  I was doing laundry and left mine in my pants pocket.  Fortunately, I thought, I caught it before putting it into the dryer, which I was sure would fry all the circuitry.  I left it out on the counter for three days hoping it would dry out and at least be re-formatable. (That’s not a real word according to my text editor).  So, after the three days I plugged it in and watched it flash on and off for a while.  Nada.  Disconnected it, started up iTunes and then reconnected the iPod.  Niente.  So it’s toast, but at least it’s nice and clean.

MEET ME AT THE CORNER OF HHLADD AND OOH.

Methinks it may be time for a couple of new streets signs in the Holladay area.  These two streets actually do cross, although the signs are not at the same intersection.

And finally, just a couple pictures of a cloud at sunset.

 

Flabbergasted

I just finished my 17th year of teaching.  Yesterday was the first time I’ve ran into a student and was totally, completely amazed at who he had grown up to be.  I’ve been surprised, impressed and glad to see some students change their lives around.  But not a total 180 degree about face in their personality.

This kid was obnoxious in junior high.  He was self-centered, went out of his way to make my class miserable, and often seemed to enjoy making other students miserable too.  Definitely a smart kid, he still flunked most of his classes.  I figured he might get his act together sometime, at least academically, so I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him succeed.  But I assumed he would end up in some self-serving career like used car salesman, sports promoter or manager, PR man for BP, politician.  Something like that.

I, never in a million years would have pictured him volunteering with Greenpeace, spending the last few years protecting rain forests and whales.  I also would have never expected him to admit that before Greenpeace he received his EMT certificate, and gave that up because he couldn’t stand the sight of other people’s blood.  His junior high bravado would never have allowed him to admit that.

Well, he plans to go back to school sometime, once he decides what he wants to be when he grows up (he’s 23 now).  But until then he’s thinking of more volunteer work, off in one of several 3rd world countries he mentioned (that I can’t remember).

Well, good luck man.  And thanks for rejuvenating my faith in humanity (and junior high kids).

2/4 of July and a parade.

For those of you outside of Utah, we don’t celebrate the 4th of July on the 4th of July when it falls on a Sunday.  Coming from Lexington, Massachusetts (the “birthplace of American Liberty”) I found this anomaly both confusing and annoying.  After all, I was used to a week long celebration with the big finale on the 4th, no matter what day it was. But due to this anomaly, we end up with big fireworks displays on both the Friday and the Saturday before the 4th, different entities choosing a different day to celebrate.

This year South Salt Lake had it’s huge fireworks display on Friday, on the football field of the high school I used to teach at.  Now, this was kind of cool, because since the school was closed and my old principal is still overseeing the facility we got “Fireworks Access Only” passes.  That meant we got to sit on the sidelines of the football field, with the fireworks set up in the middle of the field, during the show.  Most awesome fireworks experience ever!  We could see them from when they left the ground until they exploded in the sky right above us.  We could feel their boom as they were launched, and then when they exploded.  We had to dodge the burning embers as they floated to the ground around us.  Actually, for the most part that wasn’t a problem, until the wind shifted near the end of the show and started blowing them

right over to us.  Fortunately there were less than 50 people in the area, so we had a lot of room to move under the trees where we could avoid the embers.  Nobody got burned.  The video attached isn’t of the best quality (taken from my cell phone), but it gives you and idea of how close we were.  We even got a pre-fireworks show when a couple of guys being chased by the police jumped over the fence.

I saw the come over the fence, then notice the cop who was with our group running towards them and heard him say “they just came over the south fence” into his walkie.  Then next thing I noticed there were about 7 cops jumping over the fence from 7 different places converging on the two guys.  The guys must have fought back because at one point it looked like one of the cops had pulled his gun on them (someone later said it was a tazer, they noticed the rid light on it).  Despite being over 50 years away from the action, it still got the blood pumping.  Overall the night was quite the experience, one I’m glad I was there for.

Then this morning was the South Salt Lake 4th of July Parade, which I got to drive my convertible LTD in.  I’ll do a separate post on this when the pictures come in, but suffice it to say that after getting home from the fireworks around midnight, and not getting to sleep until after 3 am, I had to be at the parade sign-in by 7 am.

The parade was over by 10:30, I came home and got 3 hours of sleep, just to get up and head out to the Chevron.  For the 4th of July fireworks at Sugarhouse Park.  Since the Chevron is right across the street, this is the busiest night of the year.  There are so many people coming in to the store that we have to block off the parking lot, shut off gas sales, just to prevent total chaos.  Except for the two people who run the morning shift, the entire staff is there, including the manager.  That means that instead of 2 people running the store, there are 7 or 8.   Anyway, of my 5 hour shift, I spent three non-stop ringing up customers.

Now, just a couple of things I need to vent regarding the general public and tonight.  First of all, if you see a huge green Ford station wagon blocking 3/4th of the entrance, a car pulling out with an employee standing right there ready to move a trash can into the remaining 1/4 of the driveway, anyone with half a brain should figure out not to pull into the lot.  Nope, not this moron.  And he gets all belligerent when I tell him that we are closing the lot because of the danger with all the people in it.  “I ain’t f---ing backing up.”   So I let him pull to in to turn around, and as he passes me the a-hole says “after I go in and get my ice.”  I end up having to stand there an extra ten minutes waiting to let him out.  The guy after him was reasonable enough to just pull in, turn around and go out.  Yeah, it still bugs me when people get rewarded for being total jerks.  And his girlfriend gave me this smarmy smile as they pulled out.  I mumbled a few choice things under my breath, but remained (outwardly) professional.  Second (and final) vent – people who get all bent out of shape because we close out bathrooms for the night, despite renting a really nice triple-stall outdoor bathroom trailer with actual running water toilets.  Not your run of the mill porta-potties, this thing is hooked up to the hose faucet and runs just like a regular bathroom.  We have to close the indoor ones because of shoplifting, but we still have people pointing at the big “Indoor bathrooms closed. Bathrooms are outdoors.” sign and rudely asking “what do you mean you don’t have bathrooms?”  Duh!  Ok, venting over.  thanks for listening, I feel much better now.

Well, that was my weekend so far.  I’m quite beat, it’s been long with little sleep, but a pretty exciting weekend overall.

The DMV & Me.

I got to go to the DMV today and play Mr. Gearhead.  Actually, it didn’t take any playing since they never asked who I was.  She did read Mrs. & Mr. Gearhead’s names to me, to confirm that it was their car, but never even said anything about me being Mr. Gearhead.

Now, the really amazing thing is that I got there right around 11:00 am, and was done and out of there by 11:36 am.  And that’s on the first day of the month, which is usually busy.  Woo-hoo!

Raffi