Tear it Down - Build Back Better

 

Back in 1985, my friend Pete bought a house at the top of Main Street on three city blocks for $75k.  That was a lot of money then.  He was so excited with the house that he went to spruce it up directly from the closing.  He cleaned up a bunch of loose finish wood around the house and started a small fire in the fireplace and sat back to enjoy a beer.  Before he knew it, there was smoke billowing from the old, single ply chimney pipe and his upstairs was on fire.  By the time the fire department got there and did their thing, half of he house was burnt or damaged.  Bummers for him. 

Pete luckily got some money from his insurance company but the first contractor he hired took half of it and moved to Mexico on a hand-shake deal gone bad.  Now all he had was enough money for materials and beer so we went up there to help him rebuild.  We spent the summer demolishing the charred portions of the house, and some connected good parts that needed wiring and plumbing, while dreaming and drawing up a new floor plan.  By September we were still tearing things out when the snow started and we realized we needed to stop tearing stuff down and start building stuff up, or it would be a very wet and cold Christmas.  Bumacious for us.

Alternatively at the Holiday Village Cinema they had 3-5 nice conifer trees growing along 248 that had been growing for 30 years and shaded the building from the road and Vice-Versa. Then after one of the restorations of the cinema, they cut the trees down.  When I asked the manager why he did that, he said, “we wanted people to be able to see our sign”.  I went out and looked at the damn sign and it simply said, “see our web page for information”.   Bumaroonie for them. 

Down south in Torrey town, across from our camping property, someone built a gigantic Cowboy Bar that failed twice since Torrey has 200 people and half of them are Mormon.  The owner threatened to build a huge bright gas station out of it to extort the townspeople to buy it to protect the un-paralleled night sky.  The plan was to build a  Community Mercantile out of it for all the Mormons, hippies and farmers to sell their wares, like beads and bongs, quilts and comforters, pies and pears, zucchini and lavender to the tourists going to Capital Reef NP.   Meanwhile they could charge their Tesla's from the proposed windmills and solar panels.  Sweet.

But first the committee went in and tore out all the bar and kitchenware and sold it for pennies that they used to tear down the sign and timber Portico share and paint the place orange.  It sat there empty for 3 years with only a State liquor store to pay a little rent.  I thought we should just get anyone to set up shop in there, for peanuts, to develop a buzz and create some critical mass.  That wouldn’t do since we would lose money, and having bills to pay we were asking market rate rent.  So, it stayed empty and we lost money anyhow.  The Merc went belly up and we are still looking for a buyer.  Probably a gas station.  Bummed my total head.

Finally,  5 - 10 years ago Park City bought the 5-acre Bonanza parcel with a plan to build an arts district with the Kimbal Art Center and the Sundance Film Festival.  That got expensive real quick and Sundance moved to Boulder and Kimbal moved to the Junction of the same name.  But first they tore everything down, including the Mexican Market with the best avocados and the Maverick with the best doughnuts in town.   Now we have a junk yard to look at and no tenable plan.  Bummage.

The moral of the story is to not tear things down before you have a plan, an answer, a solution or a real need.  Our land-fill is full of the remnants of thousands of perfectly good kitchens that had to be torn out and replaced by other perfectly good kitchens.  Perhaps it is human nature to create the need for improvement when no improvement is really necessary.  Perhaps it is blind ambition to better ourselves when the status quo is just fine.  Perhaps it is just getting the cart before the horse when we don’t know where we are going.  Nonetheless, think before you tear down.  Have a drawing and not just a dream, have a destination and not just a demolition, have some funding for a long-term outcome and not just your immediate needs is critical. 

Before we tear down a house, a business, a neighborhood landmark, or a working system, we should pause and ask whether the reasons are honest, whether everyone affected has been considered, whether the change will strengthen the community, and whether the result will truly benefit the people involved. If a demolition cannot pass those tests—or if there is no workable plan for what comes next—the wiser course may be to repair, reuse, recycle or improve what we already have.  Remember that when acting locally or thinking globally, especially at this time of year when so much lies in the balance; tearing things down is easy, building them back-better is hard.

Call Things by Their Real Name

 

It occurred to us the other day that climate deniers like to call what we have experienced in the last 20 years as a’ drought’.  It is not a drought.  Droughts end.  This climate won’t end for at least 200 years, even if we address right away.  The massive heat sink of the oceans has taken 100 years to heat up and will take at least that long to cool down.  The last best chance we had to fix this ‘drought’ was with AL Gore, but he turned that election over to Bush/Cheney, Haliburton and the oil companies. 

Call things by their real name, this is Climate Change, Chaos, Calamity, Catastrophe.  Drought is natural weather fluctuations, our climate is changing, accelerating, a rates that have not been seen for 4 billion of years.  It is the rate of change, or delta, that is unique and alarming.  Weather or drought is like velocity or momentum, that we don’t feel when we nap on a fast airplane.  M = (m x v).  Climate Change is like acceleration, like when we take off or land, that we feel and notice statistically and anecdotally.  (F = m x a). 

 

 

So it is with The Great Salt Lake that is drying up because of Climate Change and overallocation to agriculture in the upper Provo, Bear and Weber river basins.  The State could allocate more water to the lake under the Public Welfare clause in Water Rights, but the legislature removed that clause last year to avoid costly lawsuits and build more Data Centers.  They could also limit water use with priority date restrictions but that would be economic and political suicide.  The lake needs a lot of water and It will cost billions to pay the farmers not to flood irrigate a hundred dollars’ worth of hay at 8000 feet. 

So, they pay lip service to it and craft nice conservation adds to get us to take short showers but, in the end, we are hosed.  They don’t want to get too involved with a sinking ship.  They would rather let it sink and then blame Joe Biden.  But the current pedophile President says he wants to save the lake with Federal dollars and our Governor said if he did, he could call the lake anything he wants.  So, we will get The Great Trump Lake and become Trump Lake City.  Airport code TLC.  Oh, the horror.  It will become a benefit - cost comparison between cheap agriculture and toxic dust storms in Temple Square and he city, lowering Church attendance and property values.  In the end it is always about money

Likewise, Lake Powell Regulating Reservoir is draining fast because of Climate Change and too much allocation to low dollar agriculture.    By next spring, given an average winter, the level will be too low to make power and provide the proper allocations to the downstream states.  They will play with water from Flaming Gorge and to Lake Mead, but it will happen sooner or later.   So, it will become a very expensive flood control and sediment storage structure.  At least we will be able to canoe Glen Canyon again and see the surviving Native ruins.  So, what shall we call it then?   Lake Foul?  Lake Mead-2 – the color of Scottish ale.  Gone Canyon.  Wah Weep, there is nothing we can do about it. 

 

Lastly, as temperatures increase, Park City will become the last local cool respite to chill out.  Even with our 5–10-degree temperature increase in the last 50 years and there is no skiing anymore, if it is 120 in AZ and 110 in SLC and only 90 in PC people will come.  It will be worth migrating up the hill in the summertime so this should remain a popular place and continue to grow.  The new billion-dollar developments don’t mention skiing so much anymore, but stress the other recreational opportunities at cooler, higher elevations where you don’t need AC or a swimming pool.  Park City will become more popular and oversaturated with no more namesake mountain meadows or parks, or traffic with no place to park.  It will become No Park City.  Call things by their real name.

We're on the Road to Nowhere

 I hate it when people find a new road, trail, adventure, or camping spot and write a guide book about it and then everyone goes there and ruins it. Then nobody goes there anymore because it is so crowded.

Well I found one today that I have to share. Sorry.

On the back SW side of Strawberry Reservoir is 25 miles of perfectly new paved road that connects over Renegade Ridge to highway 6 before Soldier Summit. The speed limit is 35-45 mph but we were on motos and going 75 because it is empty. The mega flora was going off and the curves were sharp and consistent, - no spirals.

It is a long way up and out there but it was great riding.

This road would make a good fun connector to 6 towards Price or it would be a great road bike 50 mile out and back from the visitor center on 40 near the the spawning salmon.

That's all I am going to say about that right now.

Eat, Play, Love. Do it, Buy it, Go There.

  

We don’t travel as much anymore since it has gotten so crowded and costly, contrived and complicated.  Maybe it is because we find that the best day of our vacations are the days that we are coming home. Luckily, we live in a great place and love our home.  We traveled a great deal when we were younger, when it was new and easy, cheap and simple.  We would take sabbaticals from good jobs every year, during the slow season, with empty promises to come back if they facetiously swore to rehire us.  The consultants thought they were unloading some dead weight during the winter or the State thought they could save on our salaries during the slow season.  

By sprinkling in some sick and vacation time we were able to stay on our insurance and in their system, while accruing longevity for raises and retirement.  We were gaming the system.  We quickly learned that if you were good at what you do, you got to creatively call your own shots in an ostensibly inflexible system.  We were sticking it to The Man, before we became The Man.

With lots of time, but not much money or planning, we would take the first cheap Freddy Laker charter flight to who-knows-where and wing it from there.  We went to Russia when they said we couldn’t, Türkiye when they said we shouldn’t and Warsaw when they said we wouldn’t.  

I met a guy in Rhodes who needed help sailing his 93-foot Ketch back to France.  No problem, I can sail.  I chased a new friend around Ireland on an old bike because I got tired of riding alone.  I spent the winter skiing with a Swiss Miss who asked me to stay and a month in France with a Brit Babe who couldn’t wait for me to leave. Backcountry and front country, lifts and lodges, lunch spots and après bars, let's face it - we skied it all.  

Off piste, we would travel by bikes and barges, freighters and freight trains, sleep in cheap hotels and hostiles, tents and parking lots, train stations and boat decks.  I fell asleep on the poupe-pdeck of a boat leaving peaceful Dutch Canals one night only to be woken the next morning on the ragging North Sea by I guy with a fire hose, swabbing the decks.  

I have made new friends in split-second choices between bunks or bathrooms and lost partners who mutinied for a warmer tent, a cleaner car or a pretty face.   I rode a bike to a friend’s wedding and then decided to investigate the rest of the continent and the British Isles.  Life was simple then, the world was our canvas, our courage was the paint, and our naiveté was the brush. 

 

Food and drink were secondary back then, a nuisance necessity that got in the way or paved the road to good times.  A nickel baguette with some Brie and a dollar bottle of wine would suffice for a normal day. he next day we were drinking gallons of beer at the Oktoberfest or plucking Mediterranean Mussels of the rocks on south Crete with the Swedish half-bikini team.  

Museums were also places to appreciate fine paintings and the fine-ass art aficionados.  Discos were meant for pounding, repetitive, German-industrial-monster rock, or Boz Skaggs and Boy George.  Other travelers would shed their home town reputations and cut loose, especially Aussies and Kiwis who take a mandatory year baccalaureate abroad to roam, ramble, root and rumble.  

Now we have lots of moments and money, vigor and verve, passion and patience, wonder and wander lust.  There are luxury cruises and First Class Flights, Presidential hotel suites and five-star restaurants, Mercedes limos and turbo rental cars, bus coaches and cruise yachts, with our sleeping gray heads resting against the windows and our mouths open in exclamation or exhaustion.  

We have gone from $30 a day to $3000, and found our sweet spot at $300, but no matter the cost, it takes curiosity, companionship, and patience.  We go to explore, experience, eat, earn, and to give us things to do.  We go to hang out with old friends that we don’t usually get to hang out with because of distance or discrepancies. We travel with our spouse to celebrate or remember, fraternize or forget.  We travel alone for some space, freedom and solitude. 

 

We Uber around like our legs are broken and sit in airport lounges like our asses are anchors.  People call us Sir and Ma’am, while we look over our shoulders for our parents, and fill our coffee and wine with anticipation, from he right, without asking.   We eat six-course, Prix-Fix meals without knowing the price or the fix.  We glamp in the wild next to a guard holding a double-shot 410 and in the third world with a man with a machine guy posted in the driveway.  We total rental cars in British roundabouts when we do not ‘stay left’ or ‘have a look’. No worries. 

Who cares, American Express will take care of it, electronically intangibly, imperceptibly. It’s not even money, it is electronic digits that we never see.  We never change money anymore or know the rate, value or name. The sky is the limit and there is no downside.  Risk-free, no hassle adventure is an oxymoron, but it is a thing.  Being unprepared does not make it an adventure, it makes you a fool, but being totally dialed in does not make it an expedition, it makes it a walk-in-the-park.   

So, I encourage everyone to travel while you can, before jobs and taxes, houses and spouses, kids and dogs.  Go before you can afford it or have the time, or it becomes expensive, exhausting or ennuyé.  We all have less time than we think. so do not put it off to an uncertain future.  You only regret the things you don’t do.  Life is more about what you do than what you have.   You remember the charging Rino longer than the purring Porsche. You are what you do and the sum-total of your experiences, so make something of yourself, sooner than later, today, tomorrow and yesterday.

Deep Six Your Hot Tub

 

Ever since I installed 15 solar panels on my roof last year, I have been geeking out about energy usage and power bills.  I am making much more energy than they predicted from my south facing roof, since the sun is high over the trees in the summer and there are no leaves on them in the winter.  It is really sunny at altitude, and the winter snow albedo makes it even better.  Their models don’t show that stuff.  We make much more power than we use and have no energy bills even though Rocky Mountain Power (RMP) sells me power for 10 cents a kWh and buys it back from me for 5 cents per kWh.  These kinds of replacement power rates were set up at the last minute in the 70’s when Jimmy Carter tried to convince power companies to allow every small power producer to hook up to the grid.  They still must allow that kind of distribution is a more decentralized many producers to many users instead of the one power plant to many customers model.  This should be the goal with every roof, parking lot, road and canal covered with solar panels.  With a windmill at every canon mouth and mountain pass. We need to enable these ‘natural energy’ sources to supplement the dying ‘alternatives’ of coal, oil and gas.

RMP still charges me 18 dollars a month to be on their grid which comes in handy when I get up before the sun and the lights, heat, dishwasher, dryer, espresso, microwave and toaster all work at once.  I do give them tons of noon power for their summer peak demand, when it is worth 20 cents a kWh. The grid is great since I don’t have a big, bad battery, I must use the grid for my battery.  I will eventually get a Chinese electric car I can use as my battery.  Federal Tax Credits were available for solar and wind installations and will be again after the anti-natural energy administration is gone.  Either way the investment is  worth it, the right thing to do, and really cool. 

The amazing thing I found is that my hot tub was using a lot more power than I thought, so I got rid of it after 35 years of loyal service, monthly repairs and weekly use.  We don’t have or need AC yet, so we don’t use much power, but the hot tub surprisingly accounted for at least half of my total power use.  Solar panels or not, that amounts to at least a dollar a day or 400 dollars per year for my little tub.  A big tub or pool can cost up to 1000 dollars a year or (10,000 kWh) or over $100,000 future value dollars over the life of the tub for power.   That is a large carbon and monetary footprint and more power than two efficient houses use. 

Heat transfer from a hot tub is proportional to the difference (delta) in temperatures inside and outside of the tub, so when it is set at 105 degrees and it is 15 degrees below outside that loss is proportionally 120 Joules.  That is 4 times as much energy loss as a similar hot tub in California, where it is always 75 degrees and the loss is only 30 Joules from a tub at 105 degrees.  They can have outdoor hot tubs.  We shouldn’t.  Since most of our power still comes from coal, this is the easiest thing we can do, locally, to make a big dent in our carbon footprint for better air quality and battle climate change. Install rooftop solar, be par of the solution.  Deep Six Your Hot Tub.  Save the planet. 

Plastic Economy

 

    In the beginning scenes of Mike Nichol’s classic 1967 film “The Graduate,” Dustin Hoffman's character Benjamin is floating around his graduation party as his fathers” friends all tell him the secret to the future.  “Plastics”, they say.  It makes me wonder what the secret to the future would have been for different ages.  “Freedom” and “Survival” for the Mayflower generation.  “Democracy” for the Revolution when the wealth of nations was once defined by Adam Smith as the sweat of our brow.  “Exploration” and “Fur” for the mountain men.  “Gold” and “Grubstakes” at Suters Mill and the Yukon.  “Equality” for the Civil War.  “Guns” and “Genocide” for the wild west.  “Railroads” would follow.  Then “Natural Resources” for the taconite, coke and limestone boom.  “Coal” and “Steel” for the next wars. "Food” and “Farming” for the bread basket of the world.  “Cars” and “Appliances” would be next in the manufacturing age with “Energy” leading to the dam, oil and “Atomic age”.  “Real Estate” and “Risk” for the post war.  Then came the “plastics” of “The Graduate” and the “PC”, “Internet” and “Phones” as we entered global information age of the New World Order, with us being the consultants to all countries.  Finally, the magic word became “Data” and then “Ai” sweeping up all of our data and selling it back to us.  Now nothing will save us from investing more than we spent on World War II on The Cloud and Ai Data Centers. 

So we live in an age when the international supply chain is not so safe or robust anymore, like the late 70”s when the Mideast stopped sending us oil, and we are now retreating to a national manufacturing age when things are made at home, in the USA, despite our high wages and worker entitlements.  This leads to expense and inflation and a GDP hat is now made up primarily of Ai capital expenditures that probably won’t pay for themselves for a long time.  

With an economy still reeling from Bank and Covid bailouts, the only bright spot is that the retired Baby Boomers have $100 trillion dollars’ worth of homes and assets to spend or give away.  This keeps consumption up, and while we remain constantly at war, the only missing piece of a healthy economy is unlimited cheap labor.  Without immigrants there will be more inflation for wages even though our minimum wage is stuck at $7 and hour and $2 an hour for waitresses in Utah and the US. 

This means more inflation than our 3-5 % average rate, even if you include the crazy early 80’s of double digit inflation and unemployment.  Jobs are starting to rebound, if you can trust the jobs reports from the lying Feds that are constantly being adjusted and corrected.  Productivity doubles and re-doubles again but wages at the low end don’t keep up in this K shaped economy that is ostensibly about affordability.  So, Wall Street and billionaires are rocking it, and the middle class is disappearing.  Nothing is trickling down.  The rich get richer and the poor get children.  We will continue to socialize the risk and expense while privatizing the profits and the gains.  Forget about the environment, climate and water, they are inconvenient and they don’t make us money. 

There are no more personalized customer service or help phone lines anymore, only infinite Ai do-loops of frustration.  There are not even people at McDonalds to take your order and tell you to “have a nice day”.  Driverless Uber drones will replace the unemployed taxi drivers currently doing to steering.  Luckily Ai will figure out all our passwords, and we will get to switch to iris recognition and forget our black book of pass codes while we watch Ai take over the world.

But in the end, we will have nothing to do except fix the servers and print more money.  This will, hopefully, drive us back to each other, to share our wisdom and pain, humanity and spirit.  We will reconnect with each other on a quantum level, including Ai, and recognize our shared consciousness.  We will simplify our constant efforts to entertain and stimulate ourselves, that give us things to do and places to go, and we will live deliberately as Henry David once told us.  That should leave us with a new economy that could be based on words not like “fear and greed, me and mine” but rather on ”empathy, wisdom and a little bit of human touch”.

Tom Smart - Public Servant

 

Tom Smart was an award-winning, national photojournalist before the yearlong tragedy to triumph kidnaping of his niece Elizabeth Smart.  He became the media - message spokesman for the family and co-wrote the definitive book about the challenge to the family dynamic and the debacle of law enforcement investigation and final resolution.  He was the glue to that heartbreak and the straw that stirred the family cocktail.   He is a stand-up brother and uncle, father and friend.  

I know Tom as a skiing buddy and adventure partner.  He loves the outdoors and horses, skiing and pickleball, not necessarily in that order.  He is a honest guy and a hard worker.

              His next challenge was to become an Oakley City Councilman and push for parks, recreation, trails and open space.  This was an uphill battle with many natives resisting the invasion of the quiet little farming hamlet by those long-haired, bike pedaling yuppies from Park City.  A new resident and carpetbagger himself, Tom had to establish himself as genuine and well intentioned, through community efforts and rodeo results, to become ‘almost a local’. 

Tom stood firm amongst the criticism and personal attacks and turned out to be a master grant writer, garnering funding sources from the city, county and state that would make these projects cost effective and win-win for taxpaying residence. He upgraded the city park and installed several high-quality pickleball courts.  Despite the naysayers, these courts are crowded most mornings with aficionado’s and most afternoons and evenings with amateurs and enthusiasts, hackers and duffers, families and teens.  They even run Challenge matches on Thursday and tournaments for the big holidays and rodeo weekends. 

Tom’s most ambitious project, however, is to connect Oakley Town to the mouth of the Weber Canyon with river trails for hikers, horses and mountain bikes.  These trails wind thru city, public and private plots and Land Conservancy parcels.  Tom enlisted consultants and experts at little cost, because of the power of his personality, and their commitment to a good project.  He gained the permits and permission to repair the river and restore abandoned meanders, while respecting private water rights and crossing the river in several places with light, cheap and strong bridges that won’t impede flood flows.  He patiently listened to and recruited local opinions and their contributions of material and hard work. It is still a work in progress with the goal of contiguous trails from the town to the timber of the river mouth, but Tom stands indefatigable to the challenge.

Tom serves as an example of a citizen committed to a collective vision for his small town, despite the trend that no good deed goes unpunished.  Our elected representatives patiently welcome and withstand our myriad of ideas and opinions, everyday at the Co-op and grocery store, ski resorts and Pball courts. If you think they do it for money, then you should go to one council meeting or try it for a day when it would take you 2.5 hours to go to the corner store or out for a jog.

Tom is a model public servant who deserves our respect and appreciation and not ridicule and derision.  It’s easy to throw stones at people who live in glass houses and wear their hearts on their sleeves, when we live in stone houses and hide in our anonymity.    We can be better, we can be civil, we can be like Tom Smart.