Climate, Cars and Crowds

 So we are back in Utah, unpacked but yet unsettled, two weeks late.  This is home but it seems different, weird with the cold and the clouds, snow and the mud.  Something is just not right.  

We had a nice two day drive home, stopping for some friends in Flagstaff for lunch and in Kanab for a 'Kalzone' and the night.  Pulling into Park City with our snow packed driveway was bittersweet with the mountains covered in new powder but with mud season at its peak in the backyard and meadow.  

We started unpacking an unreal amount of luggage and bikes, beds and chairs, motorcycles and golf clubs, antiques and accessories, with the relaxed realization that we did not have to do it all in one day.  We were home for the summer and the long haul.

Driving the van home for the first time in months helped me regain my freedom, liberty and independence and was another baby step in the right direction.  It also helped to remind me that there are some real bad drivers out there who don't pay attention, anticipate or drive aggressively.  The best defense is a good offense, I have always thought, and I have been told that my driving is very offensive.

I have ridden a two wheel vehicle over 100,000 miles in my life and a 4 wheel vehicle almost a million but now I get in the car maybe once a week and go down to the big city maybe once a month.  I don't miss it.  I still ride bikes and Motos a lot but mostly for entertainment and exercise on back roads, not to go anywhere in particular.  When I do, I am surprised by the speed and stupidity of the real world, as manifested by driving habits.  It is mostly people expressing their individual rights to drive dumbly.  There used to be a silent, social contract we had with each other to drive our 3 ton missals right next to each other without crashing.  Not so much so any more.

Apparently we have forgotten this contract and it is now do-what-you-want-to.   It is more apparent and acute when riding a bike or motorcycle where someone else's mistake could rag doll you or turn you into a big slice of pizza.  I was driving my moto next to a weaving young Latino woman texting wildly in an early model Saturn.  When we stopped at a light I caught her eye and gave her the two finger pointing symbol meaning 'eyes on the road'.  She understood and promptly gave me the universal one finger salute.  At least she had moxie, if not common courtesy.

Now that we are home in the Park, perhaps two weeks early, it is cold and snowing again with only indoor reading and writing and short bike rides, just like we did in Tucson when it got too hot.  You can't always find a place where it is perfect all the time but we try.  Climate isn't everything and we hate to be ultra-mobile climate snobs, but we are.   First world problems.

Tucson is nice in the morning but hot in the afternoon, Park is cold in the morning but warm in the afternoon.  The summer sun in Tucson comes up at 5 o'clock in the morning while the it doesn't go down up north until after 9 or 10 o'clock so you have to pick your moments and adapt accordingly.  Tucson has a lovely winter but also had 100 days over 100 degrees last summer and 50 days over 105 degrees with no real Monsoon rains leaving them with 4 inches of precipitation out of and average of 12 inches per year.  It may be unlivable there by 2050.  

Park City is a international skiing destination mecca but has only a 40 day growing season, not necessarily in a row, and it has had limited snow and precipitation the last few years with the biggest snow storm this year finally coming in mid April.  It may be un-skiable there by 2050.  We used to think that water would be the limiting factor in Park but if you have money you have water.  Now I think it is traffic that will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  You can't buy you way out of a traffic jam.  

Our secret beach town of Cayucos California on the temperate Central Coast, which has a stable population and a dog friendly beach, a sea level rise of a six inches could wipe out the beach and the houses that hang over the coast making this surf town untenable by 2050.  We might not be the only ones needing to adapt accordingly in the next few years.  It is ironic that to beat the growing Utah crowds we have to go to Arizona or California.

So we surf the wave of substantial home equity in our mountain ski-home and rent monthly in the desert and on the beach, off season, for roughly what the owners are paying in taxes.  We don't need to own and although we are losing substantial equity gains in the VRBO game, we have no worries, nothing to fix and nothing to paint. At this point we don't need that, we don't like that and don't want that.  We just want to simplify.  

Park City is our home, with all of our friends and associates, so we will stay there while exploring different places and changing climates.  It may have to be far from the maddening crowd or have a noxious component that keeps people away; like lack or water, ski lifts or an international airport.  We are looking for a place without exploding traffic or mindless growth, and a place that is neither too hot or too cold.  A place that is just right.