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.

But they can be created if you have a Mac. All with the power of Apple Script. Mac Geekery has a post on Using Keyboard Shortcuts to Rate Songs in iTunes.

The above is a little hard to follow so here’s a quick rundown.

1. Check to see if you have a folder located at /Library/iTunes/Scripts. If you don’t create one.
2. Open up Script Editor.
3. Create a script with the following code and save it as Rate as 0. This script will tell itunes to give a song a rating of 1 (itunes uses a scale of 0 to 100 for song ratings).

   tell application "iTunes"
       repeat with theTrack in (get selection)
           set the rating of theTrack to 20
       end repeat
   end tell
   

4. Create 4 other versions of this script and change the value of 20 to 40, 60, 80, and 100 and name theme accordingly. Rate as 1, Rate as 2…
5. Open up system preferences and the keyboard and mouse dialog. Click on the Keyboard Shortcuts section. Add a shortcut setting the Application to iTunes, the Menu Title to Rate as 1 and the keyboard shortcut to ⌘⌥1. Do this 4 more times for the other 4 ratings.
6. Open Up ITunes and get rating.

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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.