View of the Office

This week we are working in downtown New Orleans.  The Marriott (pictured) is the site our meeting.  It is on Canal Street, adjacent to the French Quarter.  The weather is nice, but I could do without the rest of it.  The traffic is horrible, the city is loud, the restraunts are crowded.  Even worse, the Super Bowl is on the way.  We'd better get out before the party starts.

Additions to the Fleet

Since the demise of the Sable, Rural Ways has been a one vehicle operation:  The Chev has done double duty as a family mini-van and a 4x4 work truck.  It has been kind of nice, and has certainly saved some money, but has also become somewhat impractical for managing both job and household.  As a result, we have recently added the 2006 Vue (pictured above) to the fleet.  The car certainly comes with a lot of features and modern conveniences, but it also has 120,000 miles on it.  Of course, the critical question for Rural Ways over the next decade is whether it will be both durable and dependable.  (This is, in fact, the critical question for everything at Rural Ways, including people.)  In any case, the only known problem with the Vue at this time is that, according to my brother-in-law, it is too new and luxurious to fit the Rural Ways lifestyle—it seems out of place in our rugged, back-woods narrative.  This is, I suppose, a valid question, but it ignores the arrival of the Super Duty (pictured below).  Along with our purchase of the Vue, my boss has recently issued me a 3/4 ton 4x4 to use on the job.  Fortunately, the Super Duty is large enough to run over those silly yuppie sport utes if I find them in the woods.

Coldest January on Record

This is Rural Way's tenth January in southern Utah.  It has been cold.  In fact, since we've been keeping track, January 2013 is the coldest on record.  Granted, it has only been ten years, but I think the month will also count as one of the five coldest since statehood.  The graph (above) says it all.  On just one day (the 10th) has the temperature reached its normal average.  For the other 17, the temperature has been below normal.  In some cases, far below normal.  On Monday, the 14th, it was minus 22F in the Parowan Valley.  That is the kind of cold I might expect if I lived in the "M" states (Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana), but it is shocking to a Utahn.

As we have noted frequently in other posts, The Homestead is not particularly well insulated.  When it is 22 below zero outside, it can be in the twenties (above) in the house.  That is just brutal.  Even for me.  Plus, our pipes freeze.  It gets so that the fridge is a place we put stuff that we need to keep warm.  In order to combat the cold, I've been throwing an unprecedented amount of gas, electricity, and wood at the problem.  We've burned virtually all of our January wood already, and I can guarantee that we will have our all time highest energy bill (lifetime) by the end of the month.  I've had to leave multiple heaters going all through the night to ensure running water in the house.  As my reader knows, Rural Ways generally likes winter, but I'm not sure that I can afford it this time.

One of the Eagles Has Landed, Briefly

I was slowly backing the Chev out of the driveway trying not to skid on the ice when two bald eagles flew directly over my head.  I stopped in the middle of the street and watched them spin up through my neighbor's green ash tree.  At first I thought it was a pair, but I soon realized that it was two aggressive males, and that they were fighting over something.  After a split second of air-to-air combat and dive-bombing through the tree branches over my head, something fat, gray, and furry landed on the street beside me.  I put the truck in gear, thinking that I'd move it off the street and get out, but before I could open the door one of the eagles landed on the gray mass and settled himself.  He paused, cocked a warning eye at me, picked up his prize, and flew low under the elm tree and up over the roof of The Homestead.  He had the gray fur in his talons.  What was it?  Not really a muskrat, too big for a prairie dog, maybe a house cat?  Even better, maybe it was one of those little rat dogs that have become part of the American uniform.  In any case, he flew low over a couple of houses and out of sight to the east.  A couple of seconds later, the second eagle dropped into formation directly behind him, and they were both gone.  Just then, I remembered the camera in my pocket.

Nordic Games

I couldn't drive across the ford last week because of the ice, so I parked at the creek.  I put my track in the lower meadow this year as a result.  It is a .37 mile oval on relatively flat ground.  The program requires a little trek up to the meadow, followed by four circuits, and then a return to the truck.  Altogether it is about two miles of skiing.  The first circuit is always a warm-up, and the last is a cool-down, but the other two are timed.  Last week's conditions were conducive to speed.  On the second day, I turned in a lap of 4:06, with a top speed of 15.8 mph.  This week, we've had a bunch of new snow, so the conditions have been mixed.  My best time today was 4:50.  VSO also came out to offer some competition.  She put up a very respectable 6:06 on her second circuit in relatively unconsolidated snow, but faded off the back of the bunch on the third lap.  Naturally, when she fell down in the woods on the way to the truck, I started giving her a hard time about learning to ski in Norway only to be shown up by a Swede in southern Utah.  She replied that the other thing she learned in Norway was that Swedes are both stupid and immoral.  That shut me up.

Eight Rivers

Early in the 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson was president, he commuted from his home to his office—a distance of about 125 miles—on a horse.  (It was his own horse, by the way, not one provided by the taxpayer.)  Mr. Jefferson had this to say about his commute:  "Of eight rivers between here and Washington, five have neither bridges nor boats."  Amazing.  When the President of the United States went to work in 1802, he swam five rivers.

That was two hundred years ago.  And, I guess that is a long time.  On the other hand, it is not that long in the whole scheme of human civilization.  But, how things have changed.  I would bet that our current president could not name eight rivers between Monticello and Washington, and that not so much as one toe of his has ever been wetted in any of them.  (And that is no knock on our current president.  I would say the same thing of every one of them back to about the days of Abe Lincoln.)

Rural Ways has wetted a toe in the Potomac.  So that is one of the eight.  But, what are the other seven?  Has my reader ever travelled from Charlottesville to DC?  Let's see, the Rivanna, for sure.  Then there is maybe the Pamunkey.  After that, would be the Rapidan and Rappahannock.  I can only guess beyond those two.  The Pohick?  The Accotink?  Holmes Run?  That would be seven.  Plus, the Potomac makes eight.

When Jefferson was president, he could say that he really knew his country.  I mean, knew it personally, like you know the path back and forth across your driveway to the car and the trash can.  Not anymore.  One of the things we lost when we gained modern transportation was this knowledge of our geography—the kind knowledge that can only be gathered by putting one's horse into, say, five out of every eight rivers.

Hack Canyon

When we turned into Hack Canyon, there were no tracks in the snow.  I put the Chev in 4WD and proceeded with caution.  I needn't have worried.  The road was in pretty good shape for about seven miles.  It got bad down in the bottom, but, by then, we were happy to stop.  The girls set up their mobile art studio in the truck bed and I walked down another three miles to the wilderness boundary.  There was a trail register at the gate.  It had six entries in it for 2012.  Hey.  Not bad.  I don't know why the yuppies don't like this place, (maybe because the cowboys are still using it?) but, we'll take it.  By 3p, the sun was setting.  We were 40 miles from Fredonia, and I figured it might take us two hours to get there.  We packed the paintings and retraced our single set of tracks back to the main road.