Roads, running and red rocks

Just got back from a very nice weekend in southern Utah. Lindsay and I went down to St. George for the Snow Canyon Half Marathon, in which Lindsay was running and I absolutely was not. We stayed outside town on Friday with our friends Eddie and Eli. In the morning we went to St. George and got the girls on the bus to the start. Eddie and I passed the time drinking coffee at Jazzy Java, which is a coffee shop which apparently doubles as a concert venue some nights. Lindsay and Eli both finished the race in about two and one-quarter hours, which I was surely impressed by. After the race, Eddie and Eli headed back to Salt Lake and we met up with Melinda, another of our friends from the Tribune, and after lunch at a local Mexican place we headed for Zion Canyon and checked into the Zion Lodge. We took a short hike while we still had light and then went for a very nice dinner. The next morning we hiked up Angels Landing, a 1,400-foot climb that offers a nice view of the canyon.

View from Angels Landing.

Lindsay navigates one of the scary parts on the way up.

Grafton, a ghost town near Zion where the bicycle scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was shot.

Once down from the top, we took another short hike up to Weeping Rock, which, as you might imagine, is a rock with water pouring out of it, and Melinda started her journey back to SLC. Lindsay and I were going to camp for another night at Zion, but decided why not see another rugged Utah landmark and make the run over to Bryce Canyon. So we hit the road, spent the night outside the park, woke up before the sun to get to the rim and spend the morning looking at sights like this before making our trip home:

That tree in the foreground is almost 100 years old. As the canyon erodes away, the roots become more exposed.

David Sedaris thinks I'm a jerk.

Last night I went with Lindsay and my sister Kitty, visiting from Colorado, to see David Sedaris at the Capitol Theatre here in Salt Lake. The reading was great, laugh out loud funny and went by really fast. At the end Lindsay bought a book, Our Dumb World, published by the Onion, which Sedaris is touting on this tour because he thinks it's hysterical and "really naughty". She got in line to have it signed, but the line was very long and slow and I was hoping to be able to take Kitty to the end of season kickball party, which was happening at the same time, so she could meet some of my friends. We agreed that Kitty and I would take the car and when Lindsay was finished she would take the train to the bar and catch up with us. She waited patiently for a little over an hour and when she got to the signing table, Sedaris asked who she had come with. She explained that her boyfriend and his sister were there with her, but didn't want to wait through the line so they left. Mr. Sedaris thought this was quite rude of me, so he wrote me a note:

The moment we've all been waiting for

This past weekend, Lindsay and I traveled to Kansas City, MO, for an event we've been looking forward to for a long time: the wedding of our dear friends Lindsay Grover-Pierce and Steve Martin. Lindsay was my partner on the photography desk at the Daily Times and she and Steve were my neighbors on Main Street. They are KC natives and were very excited to show us their home, which is a really cool place. The weekend was a wild ride that included an art festival, dancing at bars, a beautiful wedding, late night jazz, lots of great food and drink and lots of great old friends and a few new ones.
Here are some picutures, some are from Lindsay's camera:

Sealed the deal

Linz and Tres

Ladybug and Sally

Get down get down

Have a drink

Why is Koskey in every picture?

I can dance if I want to.

we can dance, we can dance.

awww

Late-night jazz at the Foundation. A little taste of Kansas City's 18th and Vine district.

Luke has a little snack at Gates Barbecue, another taste of KC.

The weekend in a nutshell.

When a kiss isn't just a kiss.

Sparked by an incident on Thursday, in which a gay couple were arrested for trespassing on LDS Church property after one kissed the other on the cheek, a "kiss-in" was staged this morning at the Main Street Plaza, the site of the incident. For a better account, read Lindsay's story. I showed up to take some photos.

A few pecks on the cheek after being turned around by Church security.

Both heterosexual and homosexual couples participated in the protest.

A male-female duo returns to public property after being stopped by guards while trying to cross the plaza holding hands.

In my view, no one is blameless in this incident. One of the men arrested was a vocal opponent of the sale of this strip of property to the Church by the city, so they knew they were on church land. The church contends the men were not singled out because they were gay and any couple would be asked to stop such a public display of affection, but a quick Google image search would seem to indicate that is not quite the case. Once asked to leave the men did resist and become verbally abusive. The entire affair has stirred the embers of old controversies- most recently the LDS church's involvement in the California Proposition 8 fiasco, and, more dormant, the contested sale of public land to the church in the 1990s. All for a kiss on the cheek.

Fourth on high

Lindsay, Chris and I spent the Fourth of July up at my friends Craig and Erin's house, which has a fantastic view of the whole valley and offers vantages on several fireworks shows. Combine it with food, drink and good company and it made for a very nice holiday evening.

Big Dam Head

I just downloaded the newest Google Earth software and have been doing a little virtual tourism. As I was strolling down the main drag in Amsterdam I noticed something strange:

I only hope I'm immortalized on some 3-D rendering somewhere in that big digital world. Keep an eye out.

Welcome to the Department of Caffeinated Beverage Control.

Only in Zion:Taxing Caffeine. Any other place and I would think this was a statement by a legislator in the pocket of a tobacco lobbyist; not aimed at actually taxing caffeinated beverages, but to reduce cigarette taxes. But, no, this is Utah. Although the legislative session did legalize homebrewing (that's right, I'm a bootlegger) and will probably do away with the wacky private club law, it's still quirky enough someone would actually stand up and seriously suggest this in front of a group of lawmakers. I chuckle thinking of all the local soda junkies making the run up to Wyoming for cases of tax-free Dr. Pepper.

Ketchup.

Wow. What a lazy, neglectful blogger I've been. I have been hibernating most of the winter, but I did crawl out of my cave a time or two to have some fun. I spent Christmas in my hometown in New Mexico with my whole family plus my brother-in-law and four crazy dogs. It was good to be home and have everyone there, too.
In January we managed to take in a few films at the Sundance Film Festival. We didn't manage to get any shows in Park City, or go up there to do the celeb-gawking thing, but we saw two films in Salt Lake and another in Ogden. The first was a documentary on New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof called Reporter. The cameras followed him to the Congo, along with a pair of young people who had won an essay contest to travel with him. It was a good picture, with many moving scenes, but I wasn't sure if it was about Kristof or the Congo, and I don't think the producers did either. The second film we saw was Cold Souls. I put the link because explaining it would take far too long. It was darkly funny and overall a pretty enjoyable film. Sophie Barthes, the French director, took the stage afterward to answer questions, and she seemed pretty cool. The third film was screened at the Egyptian Theatre in Ogden, which is a great old theater in very good repair. The grandeur includes high walls decorated with faux-Egyptian art and an elaborate organ that rises in front of the stage. It was manned by a white-haired gentleman who entertained us as we waited for the film to roll. The film was Lulu and Jimmi, a German film about a German girl who falls in love with a black man from the States. What follows is a deluge of nonsense. I wanted the organist back.
On to more recent events, last weekend Lindsay and I traveled to Indiana for the wedding of her friend Lynelle, a former coworker of Lindsay's from her days in Anderson, Indiana. We stayed with another friend and former coworker of hers, Avon, who works the land in a hundred-year-old farmhouse he shares with his wife Doris and chocolate lab, Hershey. We ate Avon's wonderful cooking, I learned to play euchre and Doris taught us the Colombian tradition of putting a little cheese in your hot chocolate in the morning.
The wedding was at a charming rural church and the bride and groom were sent off in a horse drawn coach after the ceremony, which is the only one I've ever been to which included a roast of the couple before the vows were exchanged.
I also learned about the peculiar names of Indiana towns. There is a Mexico, a Peru, a Santa Fe (pronounced 'fee'), an Alexandria, or Alex for short, which is of course pronounced 'elec'. Incidentally, Alex is the home of the worlds largest ball of dried paint. Book your tickets now.
On Sunday we traveled down to Indianapolis and met Lindsay's sister Katie, who drove in from Illinois, for lunch in hip little boho district of Broad Ripple. We spent the afternoon checking out the little shops. After Katie left we toured around Indy for a bit before returning to Broad Ripple for dinner with Lindsay's friend Melanie at a Belgian brewery where we shared a bucket of mussels and a cone of pommes frites, which fit snugly into a hole in the table for that purpose. After dinner we checked out an English style pub. We spent the night at Mel's and flew home the next day.
On Thursday we went and saw Todd Snider at the Murray Theatre. If you've never listened to him, he's a real treat. Great storyteller and hilarious lyricist.
That about catches it up. Right now I'm doing laundry.
Here's a photo of us with Avon and some funny hats:

Swept off to Colorado for Thanksgiving

The Ladybug is moved by an installation at the Denver Art Museum.

Lindsay and I were lucky enough to wrangle a bit of time off for the Thanksgiving holiday and drove over to Fort Collins, Colorado to spend it with my sister Kitty and her husband Chris, who live there. We left after Lindsay got off work on Sunday and so got in late that night, while Kitty and Chris were still off at a wedding in Phoenix. They returned the next day in time to go to lunch, and we toured around Old Town Fort Collins with Chris while Kitty was at a meeting. We also got a look at Chris' gym, where he trains people to be quite kickass using Russian kettlebells and CrossFit workouts.
On Tuesday Lindsay and I went down to Denver, her first time in the Mile High City, where we spent most of the afternoon at the Denver Art Museum, a fairly new and impressive building with many nice exhibits. We especially enjoyed the works of Daniel Richter, a German painter who, unlike Joel Schumacher, can make neon colors dark and moody.
We spent a little while walking the 16th Street Mall and browsing shops, and before we knew it we were out of time.
Back in Fort Collins on Wednesday, we did some more wandering around Old Town with Kitty before touring New Belgium Brewing, which has grown significantly since I last did the tour in 2002.

Me and mah sista at NBB

As we were touring NBB and sampling the beers, Chris was working his CrossFit-toned butt off preparing a wonderful Thanksgiving feast for that evening, which we enjoyed excessively.
On the day itself we basked in a lazy morning while Chris was off running the 5K Turkey Trot with his gym clients. Lindsay and I worked in a quick visit with my friend Nick and his wife Sarah, who live around the corner from Kitty and Chris in Ft. Collins. In the evening we went over to Chris and Kitty's friends Aparna and Lam to enjoy another Thanksgiving dinner, an outdoor fire and some word games.
It went by fast, but it was a very nice vacation.

FC is a big bike town, but this dude took it an extra step in is 'lectric yellow dart.

******BEER GEEK STUFF*******

Across from the art museum is Pint's Pub, an English-style brewpub that, in addition to 250 different single-malt Scotch whiskys, boats cask-conditioned ale made with this "Frankenstein" system. A 5Bbl brewhouse hand-built by the brewers and pub owners. The kettle is an industrial kitchen steam kettle topped with a custom-built copper dome. The mash tun is a modified dairy tank, as are all the fermenters. I had a Dark Star ale off the beer engine. It was pretty good, but I suspect the firkin was a little old because it tasted a bit oxidized.

Brewhouse 2 at New Belgium Brewing. Note the mosaic tiles around each vessel.

The Merlin kettle in Brewhouse 2. This German-built beauty sheets the wort over a steam-jacketed cone, flash boiling for short boiling times and crazy-high energy efficiency. New Belgium have an impressive environmental record. The 85 percent of brewery energy need that is not supplied by methane captured at their in-house water treatment facility (yeah, really) is pumped down from a Wyoming wind farm.

Old-school wort chiller turned decorative fountain at NBB. I would not have recognized this had not my boss Chris Haas recently showed me a photo of a working one he saw at a brewery in Germany. Cold water is flowed through the copper pipes while the hot wort flows down the outsides from the upper to lower resovoir, simultaneously being chilled and aerated.

Wynell Charles Watson 1920-2008

Grandpa passed away last Thursday. I flew down to Texas to be with the family over the weekend and attend the memorial service on Monday. While it is sad and we miss him, we celebrated a long and full life and shared many good memories of the man from whom I got my middle name. In the photo, Grandpa, I, and my brother Chris have a good time one year ago at my cousin's wedding.

That's not an antelope!

We spent the day on Antelope Island, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, and while we did run across a few pronghorn, the highlight was a pair of these guys just a few yards off the road.

The Lady of the Lake emerging from a wade, stepping through the foam and brine flies.

Ensign Peak

Here's the Ladybug standing atop Ensign Peak last evening. Over her shoulder you can see the Utah state capitol building and, farther right, the Salt Lake Temple. The peak is a very accessible, quick hike and affords very nice views of the entire area.

In Utah, the Fourth of July comes twice a year

I've learned something great. Every 24h of July, the state of Utah celebrates the arrival of the first Mormon settlers to the Great Salt Lake Valley. There are parades, rodeos and it's a state holiday, so many Utahns get the day off. The result is very much like a second Independence Day, with barbecues, games and fireworks. We went to a get-together put on by some people from the Tribune. My friend Clay was in town again on his way home from some field work and he joined us for the world's largest pasta salad, some bouche ball, both public and private fireworks and a little lime Jell-O. Lindsay and I didn't do much on the Fourth, outside of watch the fireworks in the park, so it was pretty nice to have a second go and a real good time.

Bad Batman

Like many of our peers, Lindsay and I have been rather excited for the release of the newest installment of the Batman franchise. She was away for the weekend with her family in New York State while the throngs waited in line for the opening day showings, but we got out last night to catch it in a theater in south SLC. We went for an after dinner showing at 9:40 and decided to get some ice cream from the rather well-equipped snack bar. We were sharing, so we upgraded to a 'double' for 75¢ more, and were rather flabbergasted as we watched the young man load an impossible amount of chocolate fudge brownie into the paper cup. The lad at the register was a little slow ringing up the purchase so we were a few minutes late for start time. We ducked into the theater marked "The Dark Knight", me trying to balance the tower of ice cream while searching for a pair of seats. The house was quite full, but we saw two seats together in the first row behind the rail. The film was already rolling, so I felt pretty bad about pushing my way down the aisle, whispering 'excuse me' over and over, and the people I was slipping past seemed more annoyed than typical. I was a little surprised the previews had already passed because we were only five minutes late, but most of my attention was spent vainly trying to contain the drips flowing from Mount Dreyers in my left hand. I thought the beginning of the movie was rather strange, seemed rather serious and low-key for the first scene of an action blockbuster. It finally crystalized when Lindsay leaned over and said "I think we're in the wrong theater." I changed my 'excuse me' to an 'I'm so sorry' as we threaded our way back through an even more annoyed row of moviegoers. We crossed the hall to the theater in time to catch the previews in the theater we were supposed to be in all along. The movie was great and we had a good time. This was just a story of me feeling like an ass.

Peacock at the Tracy Aviary