waxing green

I have been having visions of my mother and my childhood home this last week.  I grew up in a house that my grandfather designed and had built in central New York.  It was a modest (by modern standards), two-story house on a nice street in a small town, but it had great maple hardwood finish work on the bannisters and around the fireplace that I admired even as a young boy.  And it had wonderful trees in the yard that Grandpa planted back in ’25.  The tamarak tree in the backyard was a virtual jungle gym for us kids.  There was room to rove when I was young as there were no streets or houses behind us for a mile or more, depending upon my direction of travel.    My grandparents moved back to their flat when Dad’s younger sister took ill from Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes.   It was easier to care for her from a single level flat than in a two-story house with all the bedrooms upstairs.  I am not sure how this all transpired as it was before my sentience, but my grandfather sold his dream house to my father for his growing family.  Unfortunately, Dad’s sister died after a difficult struggle in the prime of her life and broke my grandparents’ hearts.

The kitchen had a linoleum floor.  The old kind that was laid down in individual blocks.   The color was variegated green.   For some reason, it fell to me to wash and wax the kitchen floor every other month or so when I was a teenager.  I am not sure when it became my special household task, but I owned it for quite a few years until I fled my little hometown for college and the wider world.  I owned that one just like I owned spading the rather large garden each spring.   But I liked spading better than waxing.   Waxing was a big chore and I was not happy to devote a Saturday morning to cleaning and re-waxing the kitchen and back hall.  And spading, although a bigger job, was outside in the fresh air.  And it was once a year.  I spaded the garden willingly.  But not the floor.

Mom schooled me well in the task.   She had been a home economics major in college – that was a common curriculum for a woman destined to be a housewife and mother back then, even though she went to work as a school teacher when my brother was safely off to school.   She was particular in her housekeeping and I caught that bug from her.   In time, I took pride in removing all the old dirt and shining that floor to a high gloss.  I think this is why I came to own this job even when my younger brother was old enough to inherit it from me:   I did a good job for Mom.

Yesterday I finally finished stripping the old wax and grime from my new rental house and applying a nice new coat of shiny wax.   But this house is way bigger than my childhood home.   The linoleum on the main floor, laid down in sheets instead of blocks, covers a large kitchen, informal eating area, the hallway, half bath, and the laundry room, where it has suffered significantly from vibrating metal feet.  I would guess it is three to four times the size of Mom’s floor, and there is still more in bathrooms upstairs and down that I have yet to clean.  Although the fact that the linoleum is in sheets makes it easy to clean the fake joints between the virtual blocks, it also has little dimples that collect dirt and have been waxed over a few times to successfully preserve the accumulated filth.  I was down on my hands and knees with a stiff brush for hours scouring that blasted floor, but, satisfyingly, it did come clean.  And I knew just how to do it.

All this time I was having flashbacks to that green linoleum.  In fact, I was playing a sixties oldies CD that my friend Bobby cut for me and on it was “Wild Thing” by The Troggs.   I remember distinctly hearing that memorable base riff for the first time while I waxed the kitchen floor.   Wikipedia tells me that I was sixteen when I first heard that song, which reached number one in the U.S.

But more so, waxing that floor brought back memories of my beloved mother and my childhood home.   They were the real number ones, even if I did not typically acknowledge that sentiment at the time.

lunch jokes continue even though manager gone

My team at work has been broken up into three subteams that will be subsumed under other teams.   It is all allegedly part of a larger effort to streamline IT management at our company.   There is now one clear hierarchy for clinical development and one for business and financial software.  Our team was split between the two.   Six slots (4 Java developers and two FTEs) went to financial.   Five people (4 Java developers and my sorry database expertise) are going to clinical development.  A group of Oracle APEX developers are also destined for some role in clinical development, but supposedly not writing APEX web apps anymore.

I personally think this was largely motivated by a VP who understood that our previous manager was becoming ineffective due to her personal issues, but for whom the easiest way to get her out of her management position, and perhaps dispense with having to concern himself with our team, was to dissolve the team under the cover of the reorganization.  But, in truth, I really do not know.

There is a lot of potentially dangerous material in this topic, so I must be careful.  It is when I wrote the previous post about lining up so that the boss could see only one beatific face on the team in staff meetings that I made sure all references to my name were removed from the blog.   But, I now realize that this blog is tied in other ways to me that are discoverable by the committed researcher.

That previous lunch conversation blog entry was meant to be humorous (my wife thought it was lame), but it concealed a very real concern for our team.  We were writing great web applications for the corporation, but our manager was becoming an embarrassment for most of us.  We no longer have that manager, but then again, we no longer have the team.   This is a huge disappointment for many of us.   We really loved what we were doing despite the poor leadership.   And our manager did understand our mission well.   It is just that she could no longer execute her day-to-day functions effectively, at least most of the time.

Unfortunately for her, she is still occasionally a source of mirth at lunch.   The other day we were discussing how one of the subgroups will be moving to the same office building and floor where she now works.  One person expressed concern that she would be coming over to talk to him and confide her personal problems to his unwilling ear.  Another teammate had been showing us videos of the secret room he built for his kids over his garage last week.   Immediately we were joking about creating secret passageways through the office carrels so that this other person could escape when the old boss showed up at the only open end of his cube row.

Unfortunately, our company has made very little progress toward developing a suite of software that will be richly rewarded by the federal government in their laudable effort to spurn better electronic medical record systems.  A joint development arrangement with a much larger company has gone awry, and this, along with  the complexities of developing good clinical software, have prevented us from doing what needs to be done.  Now our little team of five is being asked to tackle one of the important requirements to meet the fed's meaningful use of electronic medical records criteria:  electronic physician order entry in the emergency department.  Amazingly, we are still doing this on paper forms despite the fact that all the orders must be captured electronically to generate a billing charge.  We are being given remarkable latitude to fill this critical need as a newly emboldened tiger team.   We will see what we can do.  I firmly believe that if anyone can pull this off, it will be with the guidance of our team lead.   The guy is an amazing programmer.  But this is a quantum leap more complex that anything we have ever done.  It may turn out that we will be the butt of other teams' lunchtime jokes before this is all through.

the great state of Utah wishes to deceive you

In Utah, the only place you can purchase wine and alcoholic spirits, aside from 3.2 percent alcohol beer, is in a Utah state liquor store.   Liquor stores vary widely in selection and the knowledge of the staff.   For example, the downtown store that specializes in wine has some very skilled workers who can guide you to that perfect bottle of wine or that excellent deal.   The new megawine store on 300 West has an enormous selection, but the staff are generally clueless about what they are selling.   It is good that they have such a wide selection, but you have to know what you want when you walk in.

The state liquor stores put little labels above some wines that have been rated by Wine Spectator or some peer-reviewed journal or other luminary body; these are what passes for advertising for wine in Utah since no other advertisement is allowed.   It turns out there is a big sale the first week of October in the downtown wine store to clear out the previous year's vintage, but there is absolutely no advertising of this fact.   You have to put it in your scheduling package well in advance or you lose out every time.  However, as to this wee bit of legal advertising, I have been told it is the wine vendors who provide these little placards.  But the state stores provide a bracket in which to place the 2 inch by 3 inch informational placard if the vendor wishes to tout a particularly noteworthy wine, spirit or high alcoholic content beer.

When I was in the downtown wine store some years ago, I noticed that a placard was promoting a vintage that was different than the bottle for sale that was in the slotted rack below it.   I called this to the attention of one of the employees and he immediately confiscated the placard and complained that the vendors sometimes do this to promote sales even when the highly rated wine does not match the year of the wine for sale.

On January 19, I visited the wine store at 5056 South State Street in Murray at about four in the afternoon.   My company has an office in the vicinity and it was convenient to stop there.  I was looking for a particular wine called Red Silk, but this store did not have the inventory to cover this wine.   While I was browsing for bargains, I noticed a wine called Predator that had a placard touting it as rated 91 and having won the Australian Gold Medal.   The normally $16 bottle of wine was on sale for $11.99, or something similar, and it was an old vine Zinfandel from Lodi that sounded attractive.   I was about to snatch a bottle or two when I noticed that the placard was extolling the virtues of the 2008 vintage and the wine for sale was the 2010 vintage.   Anyone who knows wine realizes that the vintage is everything.  Maybe it was great in 2008, but growing conditions or a misstep in processing in 2010 could have produced an inferior wine.  (A quick online search reveals cellartracker rated 2010 an 87; interestingly, the 2008 did not rate any better.  Maybe there is more here than meets the eye.)

I called this discrepancy to the attention of the young man ringing up sales.   He was totally unconcerned!   “We do it all the time”, he said.   “Nobody cares.   It is still the same wine.”  I objected heartily.   “It is not the same wine.   Wine varies year to year.   This is a deceptive sales practice.   The normal person is unlikely to note the difference in years and will walk out thinking they have the wine depicted on the placard, but they do not.”  Despite all my entreaties, he was totally unfazed.

In the ensuing week and a half I had a bad experience with a tire salesman trying to sell me a DT model Uniroyal Tiger Paw Touring tire as if it were the superior NT model.   They do not tell you that this tire is made in multiple grades, of course.  He was quite willing to drop the price to the inferior grade to entice me, but he had no intention of telling me there were two versions of the same tire and he was going to pawn off the inferior version as if it were the top-of-the-line model.  This whole issue of deceptive sales practices was starting to stick in my craw.

Today, January 27, I had the day off and a bit of spare time and I went back to state liquor store 09 at 5056 South State Street to see if this bottle was still being marketed as before.   I suppose there was some chance the young man had come to a new perspective and persuaded someone to reform their ways.   But no, it was still there.  91 out of 100 points; best buy.  I asked to speak with the manager of the store.   A young Asian-looking woman named Thao came out to meet me.   I explained that I believed this was a deceptive sales practice.   I stated that as a citizen I am part owner of this store and I expect the store to tell me the truth.   She noted that the year is listed on the placard.   What is there to complain about?   We went round and round on this for a few minutes and I could see that I was getting nowhere again.  I tried to explain how the 2008 vintage may have been very good, but the 2010 could be a “piece of shit.”   Whoops, that set her off!   She was incensed that I would use crude language.  From then on, that was all she could focus on.   Forget the real issue, I had used crude language and that was the only thing that counted.   I was clearly a low life and should be banished immediately.   I gave up and left.

All right, it is true that my language can be a bit crude.   I just had my right hip replaced and was off work for a month and my verbiage did deteriorate during that hiatus from work.   My wife and I even set up a “curse jar” where we deposit a quarter for every bad word we utter in an effort to keep from offending all the upright citizens of the great, peculiar state of Utah.  So I offended Thao with my language, but I think she was very ready to seize on that as an excuse to throw off the discussion from the real topic.  In my post-encounter fantasy, I wonder if she is not a Mormon convert who thinks that the customers who shop in the store she manages are beneath her and do not deserve her respect.  Mormons, of course, do not drink alcohol.   Perhaps she believes me to be an infidel.

In my humble opinion, if the state liquor store puts a placard above a bottle of wine that is not the same vintage as described on the placard, there should be a brightly colored sticker that declares this fact:  “different year”.  Any other approach is deceptive and misleading to busy shoppers who seldom have time to read every detail to ensure that their state is not trying to suck them into buying an inferior model tire.  

In a vain effort to change the system, I have forwarded this essay to my state senator and representative.   Amazingly, they are both democrats and may even have some sympathy to my concern.   But I really doubt anything will change in store 09.

where's the oomph?

It has been hot in Salt Lake City this last week.   Finally feels like a Utah summer.   Still, it has been cooling off to the sixties Farenheit most nights, which is quite good.   Riding in the lower elevations when it is ninety or higher can sap your energy quickly.   More quickly yet when you are older as am I and carrying fifteen extra pounds from a year of limited activity after foot surgery.  Well, at least that's my presumptive excuse.  

Although it cooled down nicely last night, in part due to a brief shower about eleven, it heated up quickly this morning once the Sunday sun started focusing its rays.  I wisely chose to ride at the top of Millcreek Canyon on the Dog Lake trail.   It is a wonderful trail (cannot figure out why it did not make the top 10 mtn bike trails in UT in the local paper last week), climbing on a long series of traverses up the north slope at the top of Millcreek Canyon through dense stands of conifers with lots of vegetation and some stellar views down across the canyon.  The climb is steady with only a few steeper sections, but it is unrelenting.   Old coots like me have to work hard to stay on their bike the whole way up.

The canyon was crawling with people, most of them on bikes.   I passed dozens of bikers on the drive to the trail and I could tell that the impulse to escape the heat by heading to the mountains was strong on this day.  I dismounted from my Rav4 about two miles from the top of the road and took to my bike.   The parking is limited at the top on such popular days and I wanted to spend a little time on a smooth surface as I had not ridden this Rocky Mtn ETSX bike since I bought my new Element 50 last fall.   The steep initial climb on the Little Water trail to Dog Lake is not the place to remember how an unfamiliar bike shifts.

The ride on the road was amazingly refreshing.   The raindrops still glistened on every leaf I passed and the fresh sense of rain and foilage was a delight.  This top section of the road is fairly steep and I quickly realized I had not taken the time to eat a sensible breakfast.   I was clearly running out of muscle fuel within twenty minutes.  When I reached the top of the road I stopped to eat a Clif bar and that helped me significantly, but I just did not have the oomph that I had only two weeks ago when I rode this same trail with Michael and Sherri.  I made it to the top, repeating the mantra that I heard a swimmer say on some NPR segment last night:   "I can do it if I try."  But I stopped maybe five times to let my heart slow down and recover a bit from the exertion.   Despite the freshness at the bottom, as I climbed, it became warmer and I just did not feel I had the strength I should have, even though I have been riding fairly steadily for the last two weeks in particular.

I am trying to ride consistently in part because we are embarking on a White Rim trail (and yes, this was on the top ten rides) six day trip starting on Labor Day.   Annie organizes a trip every two years and she is kind enough to invite me to go along.   It is a big social event with lots of great riding and amazing views of the surrounding Canyonlands National Park territory.   I am using this multi-day ride as a rationale to try to whip my butt into better shape so I will not shame myself riding up Murphy's Hogback and the Shafer Trail.   We will have to do Murphy's twice as flooding on the Green River makes the normal circuit impossible for vehicles due to deep mud, so we will ride the 54 miles out to Candlestick Butte and then turn back and retrace our path, ending on the long climb back up Shafer to the Visitor's Center instead of up Horsethief Canyon on the west side, our normal terminus at 80 miles.

Life is very busy.   But I like it that way.  At least until I retire.

beginnings

I began this blog some weeks ago after being inspired by my friend Andreas, as noted in my previous post.  I have been keeping a steady journal for over ten years now – I am now on my seventeenth composition book, in addition to various essays and letters of consequence I have stashed on my computers and external drives for safekeeping.   I actually started this process on a very early netbook class computer from IBM that I had been given at work so that I could be in constant contact with the network when on call for my position as an Oracle database administrator, but although the operating system and programs were stored on non-volatile memory, the user files disappeared if the netbook ran out of battery power.   I had written a very poignant and lengthy first essay about my difficulties with stress at work and it had simply evaporated when my battery unexpectedly drained.  Fuck technology.  Give me some paper!

                That technology seems a bit quaint now with smart phones, ipads, solid state disks, and full-scale laptop computers that are as small as that netbook ( for example, the new Samsung 13” Series 9 laptops) which I still have stashed in the basement office, waiting for a call from the Boston Computer Museum.  Although I am geezer light years older than Generation Y, I now read books on my Kindle.   But, I have not made the leap to smart phones.   My work pays for my phone and it is essentially free to me.  I should not technically have a subsidized work phone because I am no longer on call, but my boss has extended the privilege as a bow to my seniority.  Were I to press to upgrade to a smart phone, like the new Droid 2 that my wife sports (on my company-discount plan), I would be rocking the boat.   So I stick with what I have and use the savings to buy a little better bottle of wine instead.

                All of this is to say that I still write most of what I write in my composition books and getting that verbiage to this blog can be difficult.  I have little enough time as it is to accomplish my perpetually growing task lists and still get a few rides in for conditioning my elderflab and providing some opportunities for aesthetic appreciation in the mountains.  But I have delusions of writing for a wider audience someday and this blog seems like good practice, and fun besides.  So I will occasionally select some of the more interesting entries from my journal for this blog as well as write some items exclusively for the blog.

                Oh, and I must tell you that I may have come across the topic for my first book, if I ever write it.  Two of my college friends, a Nepali visitor from Singapore, and I went to the Wind River Mountains for the weekend of July 24, a big state holiday in Utah.  While hiking to Photographer’s Point from Elkhart Park our conversation was wide ranging.   I cannot reveal the topic or you will steal it from me like my friend Tim was scooped on his book about Jack Anderson, but I think it may be a good possibility.  I may have to wait until I retire before I get started upon it in earnest.  But I think it has promise.

Little Dell rides

Note:   This is a set of mini essays, I guess, that I wrote to Andreas as emails.  Andreas inspired me to begin putting my written material on blogspot because I enjoyed reading his blog (docandreas) so thoroughly.   I have kept a journal since 2000 (now some 15 notebooks), but have distributed very little of this for others’ purview.   East Canyon is not really correct: I have not been able to determine the name of the canyon that ascends to Big Mountain on the south side thus far.   The real East Canyon is on the north side.   But the freeway entrance says East Canyon and you have to believe the authorities, right? 

written Monday 5/23/2011

No dearth of water here.   Another three feet of snow in the high mountains last week.   Saturday was beautiful and I rode East Canyon again.   There was passage through the snowbank that had stopped me the previous weekend, but another blocked the way 300 yards further on about a half a mile from the pass.   It will take some weeks before the snow yields the summit at this pace.   There may be more snow accumulation at that elevation tonight, but it will warm starting on Wednesday, according to the forecast.   Off to Torrey for Memorial Day weekend and hope to see the desert in bloom.

East Canyon is a lovely ride with no Harleys and Porches roaring up and down the closed road to Big Mountain.  In the summer I mostly stick to the mountain bike trail to avoid the whizzing vehicles, but it is too muddy to ride now.  The near hillsides are open to full scrutiny without the foliage, which is only beginning to venture out in the lower reaches, and since there is no vehicle traffic, one can wander from side to side on the pavement to get the best views into the uphill hollows with their delicate yellow lilies and down into the swollen streams and broached beaver dams. The vistas across the valley to the southern Oquirrh Mountains and south into the higher Wasatch north faces, dazzling with snow, are superb in the bright sun and clear spring air.

The normally dry canyon is fully saturated.   Rivulets are plentiful in the clefts between ridges, draining the melting snow and saturated soils.  Creeks that are dry by the end of the summer are raging now.  Snow persists along the road and some slopes remain mostly white with only the tree wells having melted due to the solar gain from the wood.

Sunday dawned cloudy and I managed to get in two wind sprint rides up 21st South above Wasatch Blvd. for conditioning before the rain closed in again.   It cleared in the afternoon and Susan and I drank wine on the side yard while watching a wiffleball game develop in the triangle park in front of our house.   Susan retreated inside to her book and I joined the game as the full time pitcher since they were short of players.   It was good fun with kids from 7 through adults on the roster, the team makeup being very fluid as the kids from the various families ran off to their dinner summons and then came back again.   My foot keeps me from running very well, so I was not much of a fielding asset to either team, but it helped keep me neutral.  The game ended near sunset when another set of thunderstorms moved in.

Written Wednesday 5/25/2011

Monday remained threatening; the real rain held off until evening and then began gentle, but steady.   When I was up for an hour at two a.m., it was raining hard the entire time, although our metal-roofed back porch tends to amplify the patter and one has to open the window to get an accurate assessment.   Susan claimed the same was occurring when she was up briefly at five.  I drove to work in unrelenting rain on Tuesday morning and had no expectation of a bike ride that evening.

But at two it had cleared and by the time I left work, although there were lingering clouds on the mountains, it was looking encouraging.   When I finally pushed off for the drive up Parley’s Canyon about 6:30, it was quite clear.  It was in the fifties Farenheit, so I dressed warmly, including full pants.  Incidentally, both Jon Huntsman, Jr. and Mitt Romney, current presidential wannabes, are related to Parley Pratt, the canyon’s namesake.

No doubt preparing for a Memorial Day weekend road opening this Friday, the pavement had been plowed and cleared of the winter debris shed from the steep, crumbly conglomerate road cuts.  I was able to ride to the summit of Big Mountain, a total of about 8 miles, at least half of which is serious uphill.  The sun was setting and I was the only one at the top.   The mountains were bathed in beautiful salmon light, which later turned to pink alpenglow, as I put on all my warm clothes and headed down.

The remarkable thing was how much wildlife I saw on the way down.  Almost immediately I saw two white-tailed deer munching roadside grass, their large ears deployed like satellite dishes probing my intentions.  Nothing amazing – I commonly see a few deer on my rides.  But they just kept on coming.   Across from Affleck Park, there were successive sets of four or five, all feeding next to the road.  I slowed down so as to not startle them too much, not wanting them to expend too much energy due to my intrusion.   It was clearly dinner time for them and there was something about the roadside grass that was particularly appealing.  Does it grow faster on the soil warmed by the dark asphalt roadway?   I am sure the road is not plowed or salted in the winter, but perhaps there is more salt in this grass from early winter plowings.  By the time I reached the parking lot at the bottom, I had counted twenty seven deer.   Plus, I saw a thankfully shy moose, a scampering rabbit, and made a repeat sighting of a ragged porcupine, all at the side of the road.   At the parking lot, a couple were intently gazing at the ridges across the reservoir.   He lent me his binoculars and I was able to view three large elk grazing in a clearing on the ridge.   I do not see elk very often -- they are very wary, so it was a fine finale to the cast of evening wildlife.

Written Tuesday, 6/21, the summer solstice

I bought a solo canoe off the internet and have taken it up to the Little Dell reservoir in both of the last two evenings, which is where I park my car to go riding up the canyon on the Pioneer Trail.  The first time was on Sunday, 6/19, the fourth rainiest day in June since westerners have been keeping weather records, with over an inch of rain at my house in the desert and up to a foot of snow in the higher mountains, yet again.  There is so much snow this year that even Snow Basin ski resort near Ogden reopened for weekend skiing and Snowbird is still going strong.   We will have another extended season when one can ski the tram on the Fourth of July, recapitulating 1983 and ’84.  The good thing about the surfeit of water is that it fills up the reservoirs so that the “bathtub ring” that mars the scenery later in the year during the drawdown is covered.   Little Dell reservoir stores culinary water for Salt Lake City and we consume that aqua to keep our lawns green.  I can almost imagine I am back in the Adirondacks where natural lake water levels remain fairly constant throughout the year. 

It rained so much on Sunday that I had to cancel all my outdoor activities and even took two naps – unheard of for me – due to forced inactivity.   Finally, about seven p.m., the sky started to clear for real.   I had started out the door to put the canoe on the 4Runner once before only to be met by yet another shower.   This time it held.

I had purchased a portable canoe cart earlier in the day, again through the vibrant internet marketplace, to carry my 45 pound boat between heft onto and off of my tall SUV.  I am getting old too fast and the arthritis in my spine makes lifting much more difficult.  Maybe it was those 200 pound rafts I used to carry by myself in West Virginia in my prime that hastened my punishment now.   The cart was perfect, allowing me to wheel both the canoe and my gear between storage and auto, auto and launch, with ease.

Off to Little Dell, joining the 7x24 constant stream of traffic on nearby Interstate 80.   I was there in a short 10 minutes.  It was cold, but very beautiful with lots of clouds and interesting sun patterns on the vibrantly green hills and valleys; by now all the trees had fully leafed out and the grass was knee high and abundant.  There was absolutely no one at the reservoir except the gate attendant and I gladly paid my $5 entrance fee for exclusive access.  Only as I exited did I see one family on the shore within the park confines.

With almost no wind, the paddling was smooth and I started out toward the inlet.   The water was up in the trees and I worried about the ashes along the edge that are fully inundated:   can their roots survive the immersion?  But I reassured myself the water has been higher than this in the past and they have survived before.

As I approach the log mass floating at the inlet, three Great Blue Herons startle to flight.  I think to myself I should have been more careful to watch for wildlife, but no matter.   I will see them again several times along the shore as it turns out.  I have often startled Great Blues in the backwaters of the Adirondacks.   This is a good omen.

At sharp contrast to the motor-overrun Sand Hollow Reservoir near Hurricane where I first tried out my newly purchased canoe, this cistern is quiet and filled with birds.  Diving ducks I do not recognize, Canada geese, mallards, and other birds are abundant.   Even the outhouse near where I launch has two rows of mud nests near the roofline housing swallows that swarm out as I approach.  I even alarm a bird that looks suspiciously like a loon along the shore, but has different coloring than eastern loons.  With the rapidly rising water, I fear for its nest, from which I suspect it is trying to lure me.  I leave fully satisfied at sunset, if cold.  On the way home I am compelled to stop yet again to gaze more at the gorgeous pink sunset reflecting off the clouds and the alpenglow illuminating the Wasatch Front.

The next day I make it a double header.   Due to my many naps the previous day, I am up at five thirty and to work by seven.   I am done by three fifteen and hasten home to load both my bike and my canoe in my faithful 4Runner.  By five I am parked at the upper lot at Little Dell and riding up the still-barricaded road to Big Mountain pass for the first installment.   The beauty of the ride has been marred by road crews who probably think they are improving the roadway.   Instead, they have scraped away the vegetation the deer were eating just a few weeks ago, wantonly run over and destroyed most of the reflector markers, and even have managed to badly bevel the tarmac with the grader blade in a couple places.   There is gravel all over the road, which is not biggie if you are on a mountain bike, but quite a hazard for the road bikers.   It is time to change over to the mountain bike trail.  The road is much less attractive than it was.  Long gone are the neat little piles of elk scat that punctuated the roadway three weeks ago.

The reservoir, however, is just as lovely.  I paddle for a couple hours, seeing only one Great Blue, but savor the accomplishment that I saw him well before he fled my approach.  The fish are rising, bugs are out now that it has warmed up, and I have another wonderful time during my second event.  I have the knack of this canoe and it tracks true and travels fast.   I leave a bit earlier and am rewarded by a magnificent view of the orange sunset as I emerge into the city and note the northing of the descent point of the sun on this day before the solstice.

I am so lucky to live so close to such vibrant natural beauty while at the same time having all the opportunities of a large city.  I give myself credit for capitalizing on my opportunities, but I am fortunate indeed. 

Addendum  20110720

I was walking Susan’s Scottish Terrier Whisky last night and two and a half blocks down the street a little boy exclaimed “Is that Whisky?”  “Yes indeed” I answered.   I am used to Whisky being better known in the hood than I.  It was dark and I could not see him clearly, not that I would have recognized him anyway, but he carefully informed me that he had played baseball.   I replied “Oh great.   Was that today?”   “No,” he said, “it was last week,.. or maybe a couple weeks ago…”  It took another thirty seconds of this stumbling dialog until I finally realized he was talking about the wiffleball game that he had played with all of us on that Sunday evening.   I asked his name and he said “Jackson.”   Then it all came together.   He was one of the youngest players and everyone was very careful to be sure he had a fun experience, allowing him extra swings and forgiving running errors.   He clearly had had a great time and was stoked to play again.  Of course, I encouraged him and praised his playing skills.  He proceeded to show me his Dad’s new car and bragged about how roomy it was inside and that it had a curtain that came down to shield him from the sun.  Such a delightful encounter. 

Funny conversation at lunch with new employee

It’s Monday, so staff meeting is coming up at 1 just after lunch.  A group of us are up eating lunch in the cafeteria and enjoying the respite from coding.

Boss is on vacation, so will not be there.   Someone comments to the effect that this is a good thing.   New guy asks if the meetings are boring or something.

Trying not to bias him too badly, I diplomatically observe that sometimes the boss can be long-winded and can waver from what would be considered a straightforward presentation of the subject matter.

New guy asks how long the staff meetings last.

Someone says they are scheduled for an hour but can take up to three.

Those of us trying to keep the new guy from being aghast quickly point out this is an exaggeration, but some observe accurately that the meetings can span two hours despite being scheduled for one.

It comes out that the boss has frequently publicly chastised the team clown and others for not paying attention during these extended staff meetings. 

Someone then comments that Boy Scout, who often nods off during long meetings, typically sits at the far end of the table in direct view of the boss.  She cannot help but notice.  Bad idea.

Java Whiz, who also has a hard time staying alert during the long, winding road of a boss soliloquy, is wise enough to sit off to the side where he is less obvious.   But no one is allowed to sit behind the boss, although a select few try to get away with it when they can.

Bringing your laptop to the meeting unless you are presenting is strictly prohibited as you are sure to be surfing the web when you should be paying rapt attention to the proceedings.  Sometimes if you will be presenting, you can entertain yourself for a bit while you act as if you are working on the presentation materials.

The team clown jumps in with a previous joke that I strategically sit behind Night Rider in a direct line with the boss so that she cannot see me clearly, then look down at the floor so that when I cannot keep my eyes open fully after I lose interest in the proceedings, she cannot see that and cannot call me on it.   We joke that Night Rider is blessed with a friendly, beatific face and the boss never berates him for not paying attention in the staff meeting.   Hiding behind him is a stroke of genius.

Then Team Clown says that what we should do is all line up behind Night Rider.  We imagine a meeting where everyone is carefully positioned in a line behind Night Rider so that she cannot see anyone but Night Rider’s pleasant visage.   I am laughing so hard at this point I have to wipe my eyes.  “You guys crack me up!”, I gasp.