And This Place

ARE THE SAME PLACE.

I recently got a fancy new camera so I decided to take it down to Moab with my friend Jack and get some photo’s taken. I’d been there 2 years previously on an awesome trip that had river rafting and Hummvee rides and other cool stuff. This time we just stuck to the 2 national parks that are in that area, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park.

We think it had snowed fairly recently because the place was covered in the white stuff. I am familiar that in can snow in a desert but knowing that and seeing it are two completely different things. I regret not getting any pictures on the drive up as it was amazing seeing a desolate white and brown landscape. I think I more than made up for that though.

Last time we I went to arches we only got to see the delicate arch from a distance.

This time I got right up there.

It’s a pretty tough hike that was probably tougher in the shade than it usually is.

It was worth it in the end though.

A nice thing about the delicate arch is that death resides under every foot step.

Once we were done with lunch beside a bone crippling rock we headed off to Sandstone arch. This was somewhere I’d been previously. Look back at my older photos it’s crazy the difference a bit of snow makes.

With the photos taken we moved on to Landscape Arch. The trail was brutally cold in the shade. But it was well worth it to get up to the arch.

After landscape arch we moved on to the windows arches. I’d seen one window on my previous trip and I got to see the second on this trip.

It was getting late so all we had left to do was watch the sunset and then head home.

As you can see the roads have been covered in snow and that this particular patch of town doesn’t see that many plows. Normally I wouldn’t drive in this weather but I was hungry so I set out to secure nourishment.

I was not alone on this journey for I was accompanied by The Trusty Kar.

Here you can see The Trusty Kar in it’s winter coat. The darker red/dirt colored areas are a form of camouflage that prevents predatory Trucks from hunting down The Trusty Kar and destroying him.

We set out upon the freeway in search of half of the required daily allowance of calories and vitamins. The snow had delayed the commute of hundreds of Utahans and the going was slow. With a low battery on the music making device The Trusty Kar and I decided to forgo the tunes. Initially it was cold, almost as cold as the desert night I spent under the stars in Moab last summer. I was lucky though for contained in The Trusty Kars internals was contained a magical device which saw the ambient temperature rise to a warm 80 degrees. Except for the weather, and the dawdling 10 mph speeds we travelled at the journey and the acquisition of sandwich was uneventful.

The return journey however, was fraught with danger. We were now traveling against the flow which meant we hurtled along the freeway at a blistering 40 mph. Not a single flake had fallen for 10 minutes. Those that had come before had used the awesome power of friction to melt the snow into thin tar colored gullies. But not all danger had passed.

Certain patches of the road held enough slippery stuff that a simple tap of your breaks could have resulted in The Trusty Kar careening down the high way at an angle 90 degrees to direction it was heading and indeed it nearly did but The Trusty Kars tires held true.

We safely made our way off the highway and began the journey through the abandoned back roads. It was here The Trusty Kar discovered that fresh white snow when placed between tires and tarmac has a higher coefficient of friction than dirty brown slushy snow.

With sustenance safely secured we arrived back at the Kar Kave. We said our our Goodnights! and went our separate ways. I to feed, the Trusty Kar to dream of dreams of adventure and mountain pass drifting.

I went to Hobby Lobby – it’s a walmart for arts and crafts, it’s something – and as I was getting all my cool stuff rung up I noticed that Jo, who was doing the ringing, had an irish accent. She also noticed mine. We had a quick conversation as I paid for the stuff about Utah. She has lived here for 15 years, was originally from Dublin and retired last year. She worked a couple of nights a week for Gas Money and something for the grand kids.

Kinda makes me wonder if Utah is a bit of a black hole. Once you enter you can never leave again.

All was going well. Until I tried to take them out. I needed the practice as I had trouble doing the same thing at the optometrist. It took me something like half an hour.

Then when i put the contact back into my left eye, I managed to put it in backwards. It turns out that this is quite painful. I of course didn’t feel like removing the contact straight away so I left it there for a few minutes. I think I got used to it since it stopped irritating my eye.

Removing the reversed contact was quite challenging but I eventually succeeded.

After a fun filled day I decided to finish it off wearing my glasses.

The next day, Sunday, I awoke bright and early at 2 p.m.. I put in the contacts and headed out the door for some food. While pulling into the food hole I inadvertently clipped the curb which crushed the side while of my tire and gave me an instant flat. I was a little pissed off but this was only the beginning.

The 90 degree heat had caused my sweat glands to open and completely cover my face with water. While wiping this off I think I wiped my right eye a little to hard. All of a sudden everything went blurry. Kinda. Closing my right eye everything looked cool. Closing my left resulted in a view of the world as seen through a piece of see-through ice.

My View Of The World (Photo courtesy of George Lessard*)

While getting my tire fixed I attempted to correct my contact**. Seeing as how I had been wearing them for a grand total of 4-5 hours this mostly consisted of rubbing my eye.

After one particularly sweeping rub I noticed something watery. Further investigation revealed it to be my contact! I had rubbed it off my eye.

Not knowing whether I should try and re-insert it I decided to go one eyed. Everything still looked weird.

When I got home I took the other one out. It came easy that time and I was full of glee.

Monday was a work day and was the real trial. Wearing contacts was a bit of a revelation. I could see everything. But my eyes felt weird all day. I took them out when I got back home and I haven’t put them in since.

I’m going to wear them some more over the weekend and we’ll see how that goes.

* This picture is under a creative commons license.
** I was gonna post about that here but this got a bit long. I’ll rant at about it later.

I don’t.

Which is a problem. Bits on my current phone keep breaking. Just yesterday I had to glue my earphones back together.

I could have got one last week when the lines weren’t too long. I elected to spend time with my brother instead. Now the lines are longer at 8:30am than they were at any time last week.

I think I’m just going to have queue up at around 8 Saturday morning and get one. That is if they haven’t sold out of them in the state like I believe they have in others.

This all started at 7pm last night. We first heard of it a little after 7, Which brings me to the title of this post. The two most annoying words in the english language are Breaking and News. You’ve all seen it in the movies, something big happens so the news station breaks into the current program and tells you what the big news is. I was kind of excited when I saw this. It’s not something that I’ve ever seen happen on Irish TV.

The thing they don’t show you in Movies though is that they keep interrupting what ever it is you are watching. In our case it was an incredibly gripping episode of 24. One thing we noticed while all this was going on was that they wouldn’t interrupt the ads. In fact there was one case where the sound dropped out and it looked like they were going to cut away to the news room but then the sound came back. Then 24 went to an ad. Not a minute after 24 was back Bob was back on the air (did I mention Bob was the anchor? I hate Bob).

We contemplated switching over to another channel and watching the rest of 24 later but a quick look showed that they were all breaking the news as well.

That was my first encounter with breaking news. And I hated it (I still hate Bob more).

Tune in at 9 to find out more.

I had at this stage gotten to grips with driving on the right and the automatic gears. The next thing I had to deal with was the spiders web that is the Interstate.

From the first turn we were headed in the wrong direction. After turning around we were going in the right way but I now had to contend with the speed limit. Speed Limit signs here aren’t the handy black on a circular white sign with the red border. Instead they are white or yellow with seemingly any combination of numbers on it. And I’m pretty sure everyone was going faster than it. But what’s important is that I was driving on the interstate. A four lane highway. With cars over taking me on both sides.

As I was driving I had trouble maintaining a steady speed. I eventually figured out why the buttons on the left side of the steering while weren’t doing anything to the radio. They were for the cruise control. Knowing this I set about trying to figure out to get it to turn on. Many a wheel jerk later I was dancing a jig on the floor with the cruise control working and Johnny G freaking out.

Half an hour later we were on the outside of what we think was Park City. Now we just had to figure out how to actually get in there. We ended up flippin a bitch twice. The first time in a cul de sac, the second on a road I thought was a one way street which I was going down the wrong way.

It was getting late so we decided to head back to SLC. We were ten minutes out when Johnny suggested we find somewhere to turn around and head back. This was my turn to freak out. I thought we were going to Salt Lake. Turns out my sense of direction is that bad. We were nearly in a little place called Worship, which is definitely somewhere I want to visit. I bet there are loads of Polygamy loving mormons there. We turned on a ranch exit and headed back the way we came.

A half hour of uneventful driving later we were eating delicious hamburgers from wendy’s and everything was good.

One of the things I’m really looking forward to with my new car is going to the shop and buying sixty cans of Mountain Dew. And lots of beer too. I might look into getting a microwave as well. Oh the fun.

I don’t know what I’m doing tonight but you can bet you britches that it will involve driving there. I won’t be eating from the food court either. Now that I have wheels Salt Lake City is literally my oyster.

Ahhhh yes. I expect lots of things to happen this weekend. I shall you keep you, my loyal reader, informed as they do.