Monthly Archives: September 2009

Get Back In Your Car

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The push to get people onto bicycles is bad for us. We are watching a 17 mile long bike trail being built along Highway 133. Who will use the bike trail? Certainly not locals who are commuting to work. The only person I’ve ever seen use that road for non-recreational use was a boy peddling home with some groceries. He was on the wrong side of the road, if that tells you anything.

No, the push to get people out of their cars is bad for the economy. Compare what a person spends on automobile costs versus a bicycle. Cars take gas-lots of gas. $3.71 per gallon gas where I live. What does it take to power a bicycle? A granola bar. Car mechanics? $75-$100 per hour. Bike mechanics? Jacques will fix your bike for free if you invite him to dinner. Purchase price? A 9 passenger van at the Ford dealer will cost me about $25,000 plus $8,000 for a Quigley conversion to four wheel drive. On the other hand, I can pick up 9 bikes for free at the dump, and have Jacques fix them.

When it comes to cars, bigger is better for me. If I want to drive a go-kart, I’ll go to the local go-kart track. No, wait a minute. That was torn down and replaced with expensive storage units which nobody is renting. (Maybe replacing go-kart tracks with storage units was the beginning of the economic downturn. It would support my car-economy theory.) Anyway, a Suburban with a third seat, front bench seat, and large roof rack is almost big enough for me. Almost.

When our family had to leave ranch work, and crashed on the shores of Marble, Colorado a few years ago, gas was almost $4 per gallon. The move about clobbered us financially. But think how good it was for the economy for us to rack up hundreds of miles with trailers loaded to the sky with dressers, beds, and several “mystery” boxes. (You know how it is when you move. By the time you get to the last load, you are so fed up with the process, that you pack a can of brake fluid, 3 lost forks, your wedding photo, grandma’s china bowls, and a flywheel from your first Volkswagen, into one box.)

Don’t think that I don’t like bikes. I do. We have several around here. Most of them should probably go to the dump, though.

In the Aspen area, we have a lot of look at me environmentalists. They put their bikes on the back of their cars and drive around, looking like they must bike a lot. They don’t all bike a lot. The real die-hard bikers peddle out of town and go miles and miles on local trails, or clog up the busiest highways by riding two abreast.

If you want to really see the economy turn around, encourage people to get back in their cars, drive to the mall, buy an auto air freshener, go to the grocery store, pick up picnic supplies, and head for the park where they can watch joggers, parents with baby strollers, and bicyclists.

As the Park Ranger in Smokey Mountain National Park said to me once, “Get back in you car!”

The Tweety Bird Effect

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“We’re lookin’ for a home life, and clean smellin’ sheets,

and all the soft places to fall.”

Willie and Waylon

(Poncho and Lefty album, circa 1985)

Flint and I used to sing that song at the top of our lungs while driving his little Toyota pickup truck through Utah. We were going to go teach rock climbing. How appropriate.

I also sang that song with the other Wilderness Rangers in Wyoming a year earlier. We rode horses into the Absorka Wilderness, and dodged grizzlies, moose, lightning, hypothermia, broken legs, drownings, bad cooking, and poachers.

Now here I am in Marble, Colorado, building my own house with the help of my wife and kids. As I cut the 2×12 lumber for roof blocking, it drops onto the floor. Some of the pieces crack, and some of them actually break into two pieces. So looking around for a solution (“Dad, they’re hitting the ground too hard”), I set out the Tweety Bird chair.

The Tweety Bird chair was bought by a friend in San Antonio and given to one of my children a few years ago. It’s a nylon fold up chair with a Tweety Bird sporting a 12 inch head and 3 inch body. I put the chair under the overhanging wood, and when I cut the board off with the saw, the wood would fall and be caught by the Tweety Bird. Every time the board landed without breaking, I would yell, “Tweety Bird!”. That kept the nailers warned that product was on their way in good condition.

Enter: “The Tweety Bird Effect”. The Tweety Bird Effect is when you try to keep things from breaking by giving them a soft landing when they fall.

Barack Obama must think that he’s the big Tweety Bird in Washington. He’s trying to catch the falling auto industry. He’s trying to catch the falling bank industry. He’s trying to catch the falling healthcare industry, falling education system, falling military, falling bike path industry, and falling travel trailer industry. And don’t forget the falling environment of the entire world.

As the big Tweety Bird in Washington, our President will pretty much keep you safe in EVERYTHING. The only thing you have to do is give him your money, time, and life. It’s that easy to be kept safe.

 

The only thing is, what if Barack Obamais a bad cook, or an unconstitutional poacher?

How To Move A Cactus

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So there I was, untying a cactus from a tree. Not just any old cactus, but a 7 foot tall cactus. No, make that two cacti. They weren’t exactly up in the tree. They were leaning against the tree. I’m the one up in the tree on a small branch. As I’m struggling with the knot, I’m thinking to myself, “I hope this branch doesn’t break, or I will land on the cactus.” Of course this was taking place just one hour after Jason and I saw our first dead moose laying on the side of the road. Man, living in Colorado is challenging.

 

There are two things in this world that I hate working with: sheep, and cactus. Yesterday, 1000 sheep went walking by onto our road as they were being driven home out of the high country. Today was Seven Foot Tall Cactus Day.

 

I’m struggling with the knots on the cactus while wearing rubber gloves. How rubber gloves are going to protect you from the prickers, is anybody’s guess. The guy who tied the knots, never intended to untie them himself. He must have tightened them with vice grips.

 

I got the cacti untied, climbed down, and Jason showed up with a hand cart. The owner said that we could wrap the thin white cloth around the cacti for transport, and that way we would “hardly get any prickers” in us. Brother! I told Jason that I wanted to go back to the truck, get a machete, and chop the top 3 feet of of the impending disasters off. When I suggested wrapping cardboard around the towering pincushions, everybody agreed. Jason and I went wheeling the flopping cacti to the truck and loaded them in.

 

On the way back to the store where we were delivering the cacti, Jason hit a bump, and when we opened the back door of the delivery truck, the cacti (which had been strapped down as best we knew how to strap flopping seven foot cacti in minuscule pots , down) were laying on their side. More cardboard, more ropes to hoist the cacti onto their feet, more tape. We just about lost Jason and one of the cacti off of the hoist lift on the back of the truck. Can you imagine laying in the bushes with a seven foot octopus full of prickers on top of you? “One Adam Twelve. See the man laying under a cactus at _______. Be advised to wear welding gloves upon arrival…”

 

We got the cacti into the store, unwrapped them, and leaned them up against a wall. They were so floppy, that the previous owner had the gardener remove them from the house, and tie them to a pine tree outside, so we could come and remove them.

 

What a day. I even got into an argument with the GPS. I knew full well where we were going. I had just been to a birthday party near there a few weeks ago. These GPS contraptions often take you the long way around. ‘ Turns out the GPS was right. And she’s never even been to that part of Colorado, before.

 

I’m not sure. If you had the choice, would you rather lay under a seven foot cactus, or a dead moose?

redneck laptop

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In our modern house, we have a real laptop, and a redneck laptop. I’m typing this on the redneck laptop.

 

The redneck laptop began with a genuine computer desk. You know them. They are the kind where you put the monitor on the top, the keyboard on a sliding tray, and the mouse pad holder actually swings out toward you. It’s a tidy little package, and one that I’m proud to own.

The computer desk came to us by way of the Aspen Skiing Company. About 8 years ago, they were going to throw it away because it was cheaply made and the thing was falling apart. The keyboard tray would literally come off the hinges and fall in your lap. I studied the thing which was sitting in the locker room with a FREE sign on it and decided that it was just the challenge for me. I took the wobbly little desk home, ran a half inch all-thread rod from side to side, tightened down the half inch nuts (which will hold up the Brooklyn Bridge) and voila! A functional desk.

Fast forward to today. The nifty little swing out mouse pad holder finally snapped off. My whole family uses the mouse by setting the holder on our laps. Or we use a telephone book. Or we drive the mouse around on our pants, or skirts, or the baby’s head.

The computer desk is laden with a broken pad holder, a cup and spoon that probably held chocolate water (you know how 5 year olds are), composition books, picture books, yellow electrical tape, a Bible (KJV), drawing pads, and I’m not sure what else. Oh look. Floppy disks.

All in all, it’s a place of refuge, a place of creativity, a place to do your schoolwork. It works for now, and that’s what matters. I just hope that the duct tape holds the monitor to the wall a little longer…