How to Make Friends and Influence Weasels

In the South Village,

on a domestic beef,

staring into the the eyes

of the aggressor

as she speaks,

I feel a series

of short, sharp pricks

racing up my right leg,

starting at my calf

and ending at my knee.

I glance down

to spot her pet ferret

trying to make

friends with me.

Stolen from Raindogblue, title and all.

Snow White and the Huntsman

The story was a little thin, but the visuals were stunning. The original is, what? Eleven pages in Grimm's fairy tales, there is no huntsman, but there is a sister and a dwarf. So it's been embellished, and it holds together pretty well. The dark forest with the poisonous and hallucinogenic fumes is properly wicked, as is Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna. The scene of her in the milk bath is entrancing, but I wonder if real milk would adhere that way? Or did they use some other liquid, like paint? I didn't care for the magic mirror, I think it could have been done better with a little voice inside her head.

The best part was a troop of mounted knights in armor. I don't know how many they actually had for the filming, but it looked like a hundred, and they were impressive. The castle was also very cool, but unlike the knights, it was computer generated. I would really like to see the plans for it, if anybody made any. It looks like it could be a very wonderful and complex structure.

Eastbound, Part II

You might think long drives across the American West would be boring, but there is always something to see. For instance:

• The Umatilla nerve gas arsenal. Miles of bunkers full of artillery shells loaded with nerve gas. Each bunker looks like a mound of dirt. The whole place looks like a gopher village made by giant, militarily precise gophers. The great and powerful Reagan decided we needed to arm all these artillery shells. They never went anywhere. They just sat there threatening to leak really nasty stuff for 10 years. The Army finally started decommissioning them a few years ago. They finished up last year. One of the best ideas ever.

• John Day Dam. Those wires go clear across the river. Yes, those are windmills on top of the hills across the way.

• Weyerhaeuser Poplar plantations. 

• The aircraft radio beacon building. It's just the weirdest thing, this little white square building with the funny round tower on top, parked way out in the middle of a field. It's like a landmark. I saw another one somewhere else along the road.

• Woodpecker Truck. The place has always been there. In years past it looked like it looked like a ne'r do well garage. Now it looks like a thriving enterprise stocked with hundreds of late model semi tractors.

• The factory that looks like an alien installation out of a science fiction adventure, plopped down in the middle of nowhere. Actually a cement plant.
• Snow fences. Miles upon miles of huge (8 to 10 feet tall) snow fences.
• Road closed gates. Much like railroad crossing gates, but they go down right across the interstate, usually near an exit along with a warning sign to the effect that the Interstate is closed when the lights are flashing. Must have been one every 50 miles all the way across Wyoming and down into Colorado. 
• Signs warning about high winds and light trailers. Might be why I didn't see many RV's. 
• Speed limit signs in Wyoming have the number displayed in lights so they can change it as needed. They were all set to 75 when I went by.

  These roads must be a real adventure in the winter time.

Eastbound

I was thinking that an audio book would help pass the time on the road to Denver. I used to get audio books from the library and listen to them on my way to work. I did that until I had pretty much exhausted the Beaverton library's selection. But it's been a while, and besides I live in Hillsboro now, so they are liable to have some I haven't heard. When I find the audio books section in the new library I realize it's been more than a while, it's been an age. All their audio books are on CD's. They do not have a single one on cassette tape. Well, that's it for that plan.

Once I get out of Portland I set the cruise control for 75 MPH, which is ten over the limit, which is my standard cruising speed. I have gotten a few speeding tickets in my life, but they have all been for flagrant speeding. The last time I was going 75 in a 55 zone. I have never gotten stopped for going ten over the limit on the highway. I read somewhere once upon a time that cops won't bother you for ten over, it's within the realm of mechanical error, or it's arguable or something. City streets are another matter.

Blue Mountains in sight, Thursday May 24, 5 PM

All the way across Oregon and Idaho it's smooth sailing. Traffic is light. There isn't even any congestion going up the switchbacks into the Blue Mountains just past Pendleton, where things usually manage to get clogged up. I stop for the night in Twin Falls at a Days Inn.

Friday takes me South into Utah past Ogden and then East on Interstate 80 to Wyoming. That was two exits that I made just by the skin of my teeth (the other one was where I-84 turns into I-86 and if you want to stay on I-84, you need to take the exit). There may been warning signs miles ahead of time, but I missed them all. It wasn't until the exit was in my sights that I realized, oh! I better get over there. Fortunately I was aware enough that I was able to make it look smooth and well planned. It wasn't one of  those veer-across-six-lanes-of-traffic-and-clip-the-sign-post-on-your-way kind of deals.

Traffic was kind of heavy around Ogden, as you might expect. It lightened up a little as I approached Wyoming, but it never got as light as it was across Oregon and Utah. There weren't a lot of cars, and hardly any RV's, but there sure were a heck of a lot of trucks. I swear there were as many trucks as there were cars. And some of those truck drivers are a just a little inconsiderate. Back in the day I used to do a lot of cross country driving, and truckers seemed a little more on top of it. When one truck passed another, as soon as he was far enough ahead to pull in front of the passed truck, the passed truck would flash his lights to let him know there was room to pull back in. And it wasn't a lot of room, maybe 20 feet. Now they stay in the left lane, completely oblivious to the fact that they are holding up a whole line of cars. Okay, maybe just me. Still, it's rude. But that's nothing in comparison to these yahoos who take ten miles to pass another truck. They pull out and start to gain on the guy in front, but it's at the rate of a couple of feet per minute. Look dude, take my number and give me a call when you complete this maneuver. I'm just going to pull over and take a nap while you screw around for the next 20 minutes. Jughead.

And then there were the speed demons. About half of the cars were traveling upwards of 85 MPH. As the speed limit was 75, 85 should have been my normal speed. I must be getting old, or calm, because 75 suited me just fine. So now not only do I have to contend with ordinary trucks and rude trucks but I also need to watch out for speed demons. Don't want to pull out in front of one of those guys. One, it would be rude, and two, at these speeds it could be dangerous. I often found myself coming up on a truck, getting ready to pass, and then I look in the mirror and see a black dot rapidly getting larger, so I let off the gas and slow down till speedy flies by, and then we can go. So no more set-it-and-forget-it cruising.

Friday May 25, 3 PM	Friday May 25, 5 PM

Wyoming was kind of depressing. The route the Interstate takes is the same route used by the Oregon trail pioneers, the Pony Express, the first transcontinental railroad, and the first cross-country highway. It's all at high elevation, over a mile high. The land is covered with sagebrush. There were the occasional oil and windmill installations, small towns and trains. I don't think I even saw any cows. I saw a couple of what looked like new housing developments. One was a small block of nearly cubical houses, what some people might call crackerboxes, another was just mobile homes. I suppose it's for the oil boom. I hope those people are making some money. It's certainly a grim looking location, but good pay could make it tolerable.

Two trains meet. 4 PM

Trains. Lots of trains, and not coal trains either. I probably passed a train going one way or the other every hour or so. Wyoming is so wide open there were places where you could see an entire mile long train at once.

I spent the second night at a Quality Inn in Laramie. It was a little spendy, but it was late and I was tired, and I didn't want to spend a bunch of time screwing around looking for a place that might only be 20 bucks cheaper. A little better planning might have saved me some money on lodging, but that planning ahead business, that's too much like work.

Friday, May 26, 10 AM

Once I got into Colorado traffic was thick and unpleasant. Downtown Denver appeared in a brown haze. Ross lived on Capital Hill, where there is no parking, much like any congested urban area: all the free on-street parking is taken, everything else is pay through the nose. Fortunately is was Saturday so I was able to find a place that was only a couple of blocks away.

TEOTWAWKI

LHC Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment Webcams

Michael Moschen performs THE TRIANGLE

Roberta posted something that made no sense to me, so I tried to figure it out, which led me to this.

Windmills on the Way

I saw a bunch of windmills on my trip. I only took a couple of pictures because after you've seen a couple of thousand they all begin to look alike. I took these on the way to Denver. They are kind of grainy because they were taken at long distances without the benefit of zoom. What you see has been cropped from a much larger image. This first one is a bunch of windmills in the Columbia Gorge on the Washington side of the river.

This is a bigger bunch, much farther away in Wyoming. Yes, each of those little white sticks is a hundred foot tall windmill pylon. They were much more visible to my eyes. A camera is a poor substitute.

Installation is an ongoing process. Here is one blade being hauled down the road.