Stunslinger.com Blog

Yesterday evening Mrs. Stunslinger wanted to pick up a new shirt, so we headed downtown to American Eagle.  Immediately I realized this was a bad idea.  “People like us” don’t exactly belong in AE.  We (late-twenty something professionals) are supposed to shop at places like Ikea* or Express.

Anyway, as we walked in I saw two 16-year-olds standing in the doorway.  Apparently this is their job, to stand in the doorway, because that’s what they did the entire time we were shopping.  Because I’m a good husband, I stood nearby as my wife looked through the racks.  It seemed like everywhere I looked, I saw “super-excited-oh-my-god” high school girls shopping.  They were shouting and laughing and running around, as if they were 5-years-old  on the playground again.  Ugh it was tiring.  So that made me feel old.

But then I kept seeing parents with little kids everywhere.  Knowing Utah, they probably were my age or younger, but it didn’t feel that way.  Every time I see people with three little kids, it makes me feel young.

So there we were, feeling both old and young at the same time.  This is the curse of living in Utah.

* I should say, we’re actually going to Ikea today.  Perhaps I’ll feel more age-appropriate there. 

The last few days here in Salt Lake have been more humid than normal.  We’ve had a bit of rain and several thunder storms.  Normally the air here is super dry, so any amount of humidity seems amazing.

The odd thing is this: just a bit more humidity in the air and all of our doors (office, home) are sticking a bit.  One of my co-workers actually has to kick his door open after unlocking it in the morning.  It’s awesome.

I never thought of Oregon as particularly humid, but compared with here, it’s like living underwater.  Unfortunately, the humidity these last few days reminded me how much hotter it feels back home.  When we went back for my “graduation” in April, as soon as we got off the plane I was moist.  Not sweating, but just moist.  It wasn’t awesome.  So even though it’s been super hot here for quite a while, it’s more bearable because of the extreme dryness.

When we moved here, we actually felt dehydrated most of the time.  I took to drinking more water than normal, and bought skin lotion for both work and home.  The wife of one of my coworkers, when she moved here, freaked out because she had scaly, flaky, white skin all over.  She thought it was a disease of some sort.  The doctor told her it was just dry skin and she needed a serious cream.  The sad thing is, this is not an uncommon story here.

What a random thing for me to blog about!

Ok, maybe my title exaggerated the facts a bit, but still…

Our friends just moved to Salt Lake, and they found out all kinds of things to do here so we’re getting out more.  They found out that there’s some good river tubing not too far away, so we decided to go.

Now, I am not the most adventurous person in the world.  In fact, I have a hard time with new things.  Whenever my wife suggests something new and different, I get nervous.  This is not a good thing.  I don’t want to be the guy who is content to sit in front of my computer and TV for the rest of my life…but that’s who I could easily become.  Of course, often after I try something once, I love it (snowboarding being the prime example of this).

So, we decided to go tubing, and I was pretty nervous.  We had a hard time finding flotation devices, but we managed.  Next thing I knew, we were perched on the edge of the Weber River, ready to take the plunge.

I was in a “two person” inflatable raft, as was my friend, my wife had a little “one person” (not to exceed 120 pounds) inflatable raft, and my friends wife had an inner tube.  Anyway, we took off down the river and things were going well.  It is the safest part of the river (from Henefer to Taggarts), so we had a relatively safe ride.  There were a few little rapid areas, but it was pretty tame for the first 2/3 of the ride.

Then we saw an access road stretching across the river.  We had just gone underneath a train trestle (thankfully we timed it right so there was a train going overhead) and there was a rock quarry on one side of the river and the freeway was on the other.  So they needed a road across the river, which they built very low to the water.  In fact, there was about one foot clearance between the concrete and the water.  Thankfully the river curved a bit and we were able to find a gap of about three feet to slip under.

After that we started to encounter the problems.  First problem: branches sticking out of the river.  Try as I might, I couldn’t paddle out of the way, so I got snagged on a few branches.  Then, the river bed decided to get close to the surface of the water.  At one point I actually ran aground in the middle of the river.  Awesome.

After this, we pulled over to the side for a snack.  At this point, as I dragged my raft onto the shore, I realized it seemed to bend a bit more in the middle than it should.  Sure enough, I was deflating.  My friend offered to trade me rafts, and we took off again.  He found the hole and plugged it with his finger.  Every time we had a slow part I pulled up to him, and blew up his raft.  It was sort of like a mid-flight refueling.

But then we got underneath the freeway.  I saw a pole sticking out of the water, so I avoided it and shouted back to my friends to warn them.  And then I realized I was on a collision course with the drunks.  We had caught up with a family in a large raft and one guy on a separate inner tube.  The father was drinking, and was apparently completely oblivious to anyone else on the river, much to the anger of his significant other, who was frequently yelling at him.

I ended up pinning the inner tube guy between my raft and the big, inebriated raft.  They ended up unscathed, but I dumped into the brine.  Immediately my goal was to grab my raft and not drown.  I had seen my friend hit a few rocks when he was raft-less, and didn’t want to suffer this fate.  So I grabbed my footing and thrust upward (at this point I realized I was not wearing anything on my feet and the rocks were not smooth) and rose up underneath my raft.  Phew.

I was able to take a minute to re-orient to where I was, get my vision straightened out and realize my friends were a bit downstream.  Apparently my wife was none-too-happy during this encounter.  She was worried I actually was in danger, which I guess I could have been.  But overall it was a fun trip.  When we got to the end, where we left one car, we were worn out.  It had taken over three hours, but it was worth it.  I had fun, and now I’m sore.

And this was a long post…

I decided today I should list the things I love about living in Salt Lake City, since my blog often allows me to vent about the things I dislike about living here.

1. The Mountains  I consider myself so lucky to live 30 minutes away from world class snowboarding and phenomenal hiking.  This was my first year snowboarding, and many of my friends were envious of me, as they’ve been boarding for years and always wanted to ride here.  Now that it’s summer time, I’ve discovered the amazing hiking trails everywhere.  If I don’t have much time, I can be on a trail in 15 minutes.  If I take a bit longer, I can hike to mountain lakes and through wildflower meadows.  Plus, they are high enough that the temperature is very reasonable in the mountains, even when it’s blazing hot down in the valley.

2. The Traffic  It still trips me out how easy it is to drive around this town.  They actually report 5 minute slow downs on the freeways here.  Back home a 30-45 minute commute wasn’t too big of a deal, although it wasn’t preferable.  Here, anything more than 15 minutes and people start asking why you would live so far away from work.

3. The Weather  It is consistently nice here.  Coming from Oregon to a place where we see the sun most of the time has been pretty cool.  Of course I like rain, and am looking forward to some gray days (I think only people born in Oregon/Washington understand this…maybe I’m wrong), but it’s great to assume that whenever you want to go outside, it’ll be nice.

4. The People  We live in a part of town that is conducive to meeting nice, friendly people.  It also probably helps that we’re not too “different.”  But overall the people have been really nice, especially at my work.

5. The Winter  This is the first place where we’ve had a white Christmas.  Really, any matter of snow.  And it was wonderful.  People who’ve lived here for a long time didn’t think it was too big of a deal, but I always got excited when it started to snow.  I kept looking out the window to see how deep it was getting.  I loved it.  And it was still sunny.  Sunny with snow is great!

6. The Grid  This could be seen as part of the traffic point, but I think it’s different.  I love how logically laid out (most of) the city is.  After one day here I no longer needed a map to find places.  It just makes sense.  Granted, one of my coworkers who moved here when I did still has trouble, but most of us take to it like a fish to water.

So my reverse workweek, Fourth of July extended vacation, whatever began on Wednesday and ended last night.  We slept in a bit on Wednesday, and then decided to brave the heat and head on down to the Sugarhouse Arts Festival a few blocks from our house.

They shut down a block of one of the main streets through Sugarhouse and had booths down the sides of the street and had a couple of stages for bands to perform.  When we arrived, I heard a mediocre cover of Back in Black playing, it was going to be a good day.  Turns out there’s a School of Rock Music in Salt Lake, and it was a bunch of kids from the school performing.  They rotated through, playing all sorts of covers, from AC/DC to Zappa to Allman Brothers to Guns and Roses.  It was fun to see the kids performing, although I’d like to see them in a few years when they feel free enough to really rock out.

The booths were your usual arts festival crap… tie-dye and all.  But I did get a really good philly cheese steak sandwich made by a local sandwich place.  It was a good couple of hours, but it also felt nice to get out of the heat when we came back home.

Then it was all Die Hard, all the time.  We watched all three Die Hard movies in the afternoon, even skipping watching any fireworks.  Out of the first three, I still like the third one the best.  Remember, watching these movies was my wife’s idea!

Then on Thursday, my wife woke me up with a blueberry pancake breakfast.  We went to see Live Free or Die Hard, which was awesome.  We talked about how weird it is that the series can avoid the traditional problem: sequels are worse than the original movie.  As far as I’m concerned, numbers three and four (Die Hard with a Vengeance, and Live Free or Die Hard) are the best in the series.

Then we went out to dinner, and back to the theater to see Knocked Up, which my wife went to see with friends a month ago.  I liked the movie, and absolutely cannot wait to see Superbad (from the same writers).  Then it was back to the house to eat Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Cake.  Badass.

Now my wife is at work, and I’m hanging out by myself.  My big event of the day was getting my haircut.  How things change…

Here are the pictures I referred to earlier from my hike to Lake Mary. (Needless to say my Wordpress hack was successful!)

This week a friend of mine came up from Provo and we went hiking. We initially were going to go up to Alta and hike to Sunset Peak. This plan was derailed because the access road is closed for construction, and I\’m too much of a beginning hiker to add a mile or more of road hiking to the hike. I have a hard enough time with basic hikes right now.

So instead we decided to go hiking at Brighton. We decided to do this on a weeknight, so after work I headed up into the canyon, and we started at 5:30pm. This is one of the things I love about living in Salt Lake City: the canyons are so close, it\’s no problem to get up, get in a good hike, and be back in time to get a good night\’s sleep before work the next day.

We chose to hike to Lake Mary, as it seemed reasonable for someone of my hiking ability. It was around 1.5 miles and 700+ feet in elevation (from a starting point of ~8,200 feet above sea level). The weather was great and the hike was wonderful. It really helped me realize why people do this sort of thing. Even though I\’m so involved in the technical/urban world, it\’s really great to get away from it all for a few hours and just enjoy nature. I\’ve been getting stressed at work quite a bit recently, and this was exactly what I needed. I felt like it sort of reset my stress levels. The next day at work, I was much happier and engaged than I had been for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to more hikes in my immediate future. It’s a big part of the culture here, so I figure I can find others to hike with, in addition to my friend from Provo (he can’t always make it all the way up here on a whim). I was going to put some pictures in here, but they’re too huge for Wordpress to create thumbnails, and I don’t have the time right now to edit them down (nor hack Wordpress). Perhaps in the near future.  Check out the pictures here.

A friend of mine is moving to Utah in a month and we’re trying to help him get a good rental house.  My friend has a few needs, primary among these is a secure place to park his motorcycle.  Unfortunately, garages are not the most common part of houses around here.  Back in Oregon, it’s extremely common, but not here in Salt Lake.  Perhaps it’s because the weather is so rainy back home, and so consistently nice here, or maybe not.

For whatever reason, it is less common to find a place with enclosed parking here than in Oregon.  So we’ve been looking on craigslist and asking the people we know for recommendations.  My friend found a place that advertised 100 square feet of extra storage, which seemed perfect for motorcycle parking.

He contacted the guy renting it, and asked if he could look at the place when he visits SLC tomorrow.  Now, he’s flying out here to look for housing from another state.  But the guy emailed him back, saying they’re in a mighty hurry to get the place rented and couldn’t he come look at it sooner?  Sure, he’ll just pay a few hundred extra dollars to change his plane tickets because you want to get the place rented sooner.  The guy prattled on about having so many applications and really needing to have it rented ASAP.

So we agreed to go look at it for my friend.  I emailed the landlord Monday evening to set up a viewing time.  I said I had to work 13 hours on Tuesday, so would have to come see it Wednesday after work.  The guy emailed back talking about “sooner the better” and all the applications they have.  I said I needed to spend a minute or two with my wife before falling into bed, so it’d have to wait.  He said “well, if it’s important, I can still meet you Tuesday.”  Of course it’s important, enough with the guilt trip!  At this point, if it were up to me I would’ve just blown the guy off.  I just don’t respond well to this high pressure sales tactic.  If you have so many applications, you don’t need to rush me in, because you have all of these other options!

Needless to say we ended up viewing the place on Wednesday evening.  Again he kept reiterating the “stack” of applications, and they were going to make the decision Wednesday night, so if my friend wanted the place he should contact them immediately.  Now, I should mention this is no gem of an apartment.  It’s very much a basement apartment, in the bad sense.  I had to stoop to get through doorways, there were random holes in the wall where outlets were and the whole thing was dark and poorly laid out.  I’m sure he would’ve preferred to have my friend sign a contract without seeing the place.

So my friend decided to pass on it, after hearing from me and seeing the pictures.  Good choice.  Then today the guy emailed us saying, “Just wanted to know if you’re still interested.  There’s still a chance.”  Right, because everyone in that stack of applications didn’t live up to the information you don’t have about us?  I’m beginning to think this “stack” of applications meant a stack of blank applications.  Technically not lying, he didn’t actually say they were completed applications!

Freaking salespeople… I seem to live in a state full of them!

This evening I took a little stroll to the store to pick up some milk.  It was a nice warm evening, the kind where I’m glad to be living in Salt Lake.  As I was walking, a couple of people walked toward me on the sidewalk.  I moved over to let them pass, and then it happened.  Just as we were even with each other, the guy said, “Howdy!”  At the same time, another guy who was running by hailed another person standing in his yard watering his flowers with, “Well, if that’s not a sure sign summer’s around the corner I don’t know what is…” and they struck up a conversation.

Is it just me, or is this level of friendliness a bit weird?  Now, I’m not from New York City or anything.  I actually like people, and when I’m at work I say “hi” to people in the halls all the time.  But out on the street?  I don’t know, it surprised me.

The more I think about it, what was up with saying “howdy” when we were even with each other?  If you want me to be able to say “hi” back, you need to give me a bit of advance warning.  Let’s say, if you’re passing on the street, you need to at least give me a 3-foot greeting.  Once you’ve passed the 3-foot mark, and neither of us have said anything, we both agree to walk on by.  3 feet is now officially declared as the point of no return.  It’s like a contract, seriously, abide by it.

It’s really weird how you can get away from something and forget how much you like it.  I grew up in Oregon, as some people say I have webs between my toes.  I grow moss behind my ears, or something like that.

When we moved to Salt Lake I fell in love with the consistently nice weather.  Living here, we got used to the blue sky and sun.  Even through the winter, when it was snowing, we still saw the sun all the time.  It really made getting outside super easy, you are pretty much drawn outside here by some sort of magnetic tractor beam.

But then it rained.  It’s not just that it rained, it was gray and cloudy and only sort of misting.  As I walked out the door it hit me: This feels like Portland!  For the last few days, for some odd reason, I really enjoyed the overcast weather.  I’m actually sort of looking forward to moving back to the rainy state.  I’m really screwed up, aren’t I?!