Monthly Archives: June 2009

How to Spank a Mountain Lion

Posted on by
2

Get up at 5am while it’s still dark out.  Put on your work pants and climb into your Subaru. Drive down a dirt road high in the Colorado Rockies and turn right onto the blacktop county road. 

Watch for rocks rolling down off of the hillside, deer standing on the road, geese at the edge of the road, ice on the curves, and Marble quarry workers driving upvalley on the wrong side of the road.

When you get to Bogan Flats campground, group site, notice something running up the steep embankment at high speed on a collision course with your car. Step firmly, and without panic on your brakes, hoping that it won’t be a big splat. 

As your car deaccelerates to about 3 m.p.h. notice that the animal directly in front of your grill is an adult mountain lion, running for his life. 

Because you had not been able to come to a complete stop yet, bump the mountain lion on his keister and watch him stumble, like a football player who almost got tackled, but didn’t quite fall to the ground.

As the lion regains his balance and jets up the hill side into the dark timber, roll your window down and look at the tracks he left in the snow at the edge of the road.

When your heartrate goes back down below 190, put the car in gear and continue your morning commute to work. You just spanked a mountain lion with your Subaru. Good morning from Marble, Colorado.

Phantom Chicken Vibrations

Posted on by
Reply

 

It’s hard to know exactly when the phantom chicken vibrations began. Perhaps it was on a Monday during a particularly low air pressure system. In any event, they have only grown stronger…

When I was a Wilderness Ranger in Wyoming, I would travel through “the largest road-less area in the lower 48 states” for 10 days at a time. Although I had brushes with raging rivers, grizzlies, and poachers, I didn’t have a radio or a cell phone. They were worthless. And I loved it.

Teaching skiing in the 90s I guided clients and students down some of the most amazing ski runs in North America. Sometimes we found waist deep powder, steep tree runs, chutes, cliffs, and all kinds of snowy challenges. And I didn’t carry a cell phone. Fantastic.

When cell phones became fairly popular I poo poohed them. They were unnecessary. My ski clients almost universally carry them; friends and family live with them; and it’s almost assumed that you DO have a cell phone.

“What’s your cell number?” they ask as they hold up their phone, ready to add me to their address book.

“What makes you think I have a cell number?” I sometimes reply. They usually don’t know what to say.

Now my summer job requires me to carry a company cell phone. I’m a heavy equipment operator for a prestigious excavation company in the Aspen area. Which leads me to the phantom chicken vibrations.

As an equipment operator, it’s difficult to hear a phone ringing over the din of the machinery, the construction site, earplugs, and a radio set on volume number “30”. So a wise coworker helped me set my cell phone to “vibrate”.

Scrolling down the preset ring tones, I picked out a rooster crowing. Boy, is that rooster crowing popular with the temp laborers. When I go into the temp agency to pick up some help for the day, sometimes the phone goes off on maximum volume. There I am, standing in my black Carhartt pants with a rooster crowing loudly. 30 or 40 guys from not the US are all staring at me, smiling. I look at them and say “Wake up! It’s time to go to work!”

Elvin began to call my cell phone “Cheekin Leedle” and the name stuck with the other workers.

Now, whenever someone calls me, the phone vibrates against my right thigh muscle (the phone slides neatly into my Carhartt leg tool pouch) and crows. This brings me to the medical problem known as phantom chicken vibrations.

Sometimes, I go to answer the phone, only to find that there is no one there. I’m sure that I felt the phone vibrate over the bouncing of the machine. And didn’t I hear the rooster crowing? Maybe that was just a soundbite of Hillary Clinton on the radio. Similar pitch and tone.

Now I feel phantom chicken vibrations while driving my car, shopping for cheap milk, and laying in bed. Are they real? Am I just paranoid that I’ll miss a call? Who knows.

I know of a guy who was a professional trucker his entire life. His wife once told me that he used to shift gears in his sleep. Maybe I’m in good company. I’m just glad that I don’t throw knives for a living.

Checkpoints Violate Your Rights

Posted on by
Reply

Wow. Sobriety Checkpoints. What a concept. Take precious public funds, pay officers overtime to set up roadblocks at night where they eat Dominos pizza, stand around, stop citizens without probable cause, and question them in hopes of making some DUI arrests. 

The group Checkpoints Violate Your Rights has been tracking, observing, and protesting Sobriety Checkpoints in the Aspen area since the very first one was set up on Owl Creek Road a few years ago. That checkpoint was the brainchild of the Colorado State Patrol. Police agencies came from many miles around to participate and be trained in the fine art of detaining citizens on public roads for no lawful reason.

 
How do I know?  I was driving home at night on a sleepy little country road, only to see lots of police cars, and lights, with cars stopped, and being pulled over.  I found this to be a bit disturbing, especially, since the "checkpoint" was being operated in a tactical fashion that I had read about in  a military manual-essentially "place the checkpoint on a curve with no advance warning, so that motorists will be surprised and cannot turn around."

I thought at the time "This is a terrible place for a checkpoint. It’s not very safe, and these guys are supposed to be helping to keep us out of danger whenever they can." Sure enough, when the officer waved me around the car ahead of me, a car came downhill, around the corner and almost hit me head on.

I drove home, angry that our public servants were harassing citizens, causing near misses with cars, and something about the stopping for no reason seemed like life in a communist country. I went back on a bike, in the dark, with binoculars, and rendezvoused out in the bushes with a friend.
The police set up other roadblocks that summer, and we were there at every one. We gathered more people who were opposed to the checkpoints, and began showing up with signs, flags, and pamphlets.  Our protests have always been peaceful, well planned, and informative. We want the public to know that they are being ushered into a totalitarian state and that the U.S. Constitution forbids the behavior of the police.

It’s interesting to note that for a while, the police backed completely off of the checkpoint operations. Perhaps the officers got tired of looking like the "bad guys" and the departments weren’t getting as many volunteers to work a late night-pizza or no pizza. Or maybe the signs that began popping up at visitor centers, city "welcome" signs, and Interstate 70, put checkpoints in a bad light. Whatever the reason, I believe that our group Checkpoints Violate Your Rights singlehandedly shut down checkpoints in the Roaring Fork Valley.  Now, after a hiatus, the police are coming back.

This past Memorial Day weekend, a checkpoint was announced and we sprang into action.  We drove into Glenwood Springs, CO and went right to the County Police yard to see which agencies would be participating.  Who was the first person that I talked to? A SWAT officer from Grand Junction, CO. As a matter of fact, the entire SWAT team was there with their SWAT vehicle, tactical holsters, Army digital camo, and all. They told me that they were in town for "training". But they denied knowing about any sobriety checkpoints which were about to take place. Hmmm. These agencies need to talk together more often; especially if they are visiting another town, or hosting guests with machine guns from other towns.

Monsoon rains fell that night, and no checkpoint appeared. We happily went home early and we were able to get up an get to church on time the next day.

Stay tuned for some funny stories from our checkpoint escapades.  In the meantime, you can download a copy of our brochure. Put one copy in your car, and give one copy to your local peace officer. There’s nothing quite like standing up for your rights. Believe me.

Checkpoint brochure - yellow. Checkpoints Violate Your Rights. 

Continue reading →

Copy of a Tax Protest Letter to Gunnison County

Posted on by
Reply

This is a copy of my tax assessment protest letter to Gunnison County, Colorado.

Mr. Jerry L. Begly

….

Marble, Colorado 81623

June 1, 2009

Gunnison County Assessor

Ms. Kristy McFarland

221 N. Wisconsin Ave. Ste A

Gunnison, CO 81230

Dear Ms. McFarland:

The purpose of this letter is to formally protest our 2009 Real Property Notice of Valuation. The properties in question are Lots _ and _, Filing _, ____ __ ____, Marble, Colorado. The taxes that we paid this year were too high for the following reasons:

  1. The “SQUARE FEET LIVING AREA” is 0, not ___. The house is unfinished.

  2. The Real Estate market has dropped in most places in Western Colorado, including neighboring counties and towns like Carbondale, and Aspen.

  3. We did not add $_____ worth of materials or labor into our house in the last two years!

  4. The entire economy of the United States is in a downward spiral in case you haven’t noticed. Increasing taxes is anathema to the recovery of our family and our country. You are one of the few people who can “stand in the gap”, and have the power to make corrective decisions.

  5. We are not getting even the most basic government services for the taxes that we DO pay. Although our house is located on a county owned road, in a platted subdivision, with over 24 houses in 3 miles, we get NO road maintenance, and NO snowplowing at all. Do you have any houses at all in Gunnison county that are in the same situation? Please list even one house, in your response letter.

     

    I’ve had to walk ________ miles to get to my car by 6 am because the county doesn’t plow the snow off of the road. I’ve hauled groceries and propane, uphill in a sled, many times because of lack of county road maintenance. The ambulance, EMS, fire truck, and police can’t get to my house because of unmaintained roads. Apparently, the only government agent who can make it to my house is the TAX ASSESSOR.

  6. In addition to the lack of road maintenance, there is NO public school provided by Gunnison county within 45 minutes of my house. If my kids attended public schools in Carbondale, the commute could take as long as one and one half hours, one way, in the wintertime!

     

With taxes increasing, and NO basic government services, the term “Taxation without representation” comes to mind. Our founding fathers were more than just a little bit upset over their version of “Taxation without representation.” I especially think of this while digging my car out of a snowbank late at night during a driving snowstorm; all because my tax dollars aren’t coming back to me in even the most basic of services: public safety.

I am writing this protest letter as a husband, and father of seven children.  Presently, I am laid off my job. The welfare state, as it now stands in America, is reprehensible. Therefore, we have taken NO government assistance up to this point. But with increasing taxes, unemployment, a bad economy, and the need to feed and house my family, maybe we will need government assistance in the future.

That would mean you, your family, and friends will end up supporting us. You might be able to sleep at night now, but you’ll remember me every time you open your wallet.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Jerry Begly

P.S. Visit my blogsite at www.jerrybegly.com for more tax reform info.

(This letter has been slightly modified from the original.)