Ladies 2-Man Bobsled

First, I think it is wrong to call the ladies' event the "2-Man" bobsled. Seems to be ignoring an obvious sex difference, but that is what it was called on the program.

Second, I have no idea how the professionals get excellent pictures of this event. Park City's track is in a little canyon. Even at 3:00 on a sunny afternoon, it was already in the shadows. Worse, these sleds move fast!! Low light and fast objects make for tough photography. I mostly failed. Anyway....

They start with a brisk sprint to get moving.



Driver hops in first. Look closely. She really did "hop in" at a full sprint.



Driver is in. Now the stoker/pusher/back chick gets in. I have no idea what the correct term is.



The pusher settles in and the driver pulls back on the pushing stick. Again, you can sense my fine understanding of the sport's terminology.



Hunker down and fly!



It isn't far to the first big turn, but they don't have that much speed yet. Notice the Olympic rings in the top right. This was the track for the 2000 Olympic bobsled, luge and skeleton.



Clearly the prestige job is the driver's. The person in the back seems to be completely hunkered down, looking at their knees and smelling the driver's butt. I think I would opt for the driver job.



I can't tell you how much fake film (digital) I wasted trying to get pictures with the bobsled nice and sharp and the background all blurred. This was as close as I got and the damn railing is in the way. For some reason they want to keep the spectators out of the track and stray bobsleds out of the spectators.

These bobsleds are moving so fast that just about the time you start panning smoothly with them, they are in the next turn (which you can't see). I was trying to pan so fast I thought I would tear something in my back. I'll just have to practice and find better techniques.



If you are in Park City and want a thrill, you can ride down in a 4-man bobsled with an Olympic driver. It is an incredible rush and the fee goes to support the US team.

Joy! Joy! Joy!

The snow has returned to Park City and I would guess that it is hard to find a happier dog on the planet. For Jasper, cold is good, snow is awesome, and you just can't beat a red ball on a rope. Happy dog!

What does Google know about you

Google has recently added a new feature called the Google Dashboard. It gives you insight into everything that Google "knows" about you. I went through it and although I didn't find any surprises, I did make some changes.

The biggest change was deleting my web history (all the things I have searched for) and shutting off that tracking.

Worth looking at yours: https://www.google.com/dashboard/

Handling the swine flu

Double click on the picture to see it better.

Annual Park City ski swap

About three years ago, Julie and I naively got up early on the morning of Black Friday to shop at a Best Buy down in Salt Lake. We didn't realize that thousands of people were camping out in the cold weather and that showing up at 4:30 a.m. meant you were twelve hours late.

Yesterday I discovered the local Park City version of this. Early in November, the US Ski Team holds its annual ski swap. It really isn't a swap. It's a sale. The week before, people bring things they want to sell to two local stores. You set your own price, but the ski team gets to keep 30%. Retail stores and distributors also bring things, both new and used.

I've wanted to attend this but we have always been in NC when it happened.

The lesson: Jillions of people drop off stuff to sell. Jillions of people attend. It's HUGE!



This is about 1/20th of the ski boots.



There were several thousand pairs of skis. They ranged from brand new to beaten to crap.



Jackets, gloves, sweaters, hats, goggles, ... If it sounds like winter, it was there.



It opens at 8:00 p.m. on Friday and stays open until 1:00. Then Saturday and Sunday have more reasonable hours. I got there around 9:00, and there was still a 100 person line outside the building. When I left around 10:00, the checkout line was 100+ people.



The event was extremely well organized. Julie brought some clothing to sell and the drop-off was easy. I would guess there were 100-200 workers at the event, checking coats, helping people find the right equipment and probably 15 checkout registers. I think if you want the best stuff, you have to get in line for the 8:00 opening and plan on finding a bunch of stuff. You don't want to wait in a 100 person checkout line to save $5 on a pair of gloves.

Certainly not unique to this sale, I love looking at the designs on snowboards. Here are two of the hundreds.






Finally, as much as I like my iPhone, I wish the thing took better pictures with indoor lighting.

Fighting oil and gas fires

Last night I got a chance to go down to Salt Lake City and photograph the Tesoro refinery fire fighters do their monthly training. Most of the training is done in the day time, but every once in a while they practice at night.



The practice facility has different stations. Each is designed to look and behave like different parts of the refinery. They process both gas and oil which have different burn characteristics. I like the oil. It burns brighter and prettier in the night.







Think you want to be a firefighter? Want to work in an oil refinery? Then which job is the worst?

You could be the guy at the front of the hose line. Seems a bit close to the heat.



He aims the hose at that valve control.



Or you could be the guy who walks up into the hose spray and the fire and tries to turn the control to close the valve and shut off the flow of fuel. I'm guessing that job goes to the new guy.



These guys are very impressive and it was awesome getting to watch them from so close.

For photography, it would be great to have one of the new high-end dSLRs. They can take pictures at ISOs above 50,000 without a lot of color noise. That would be extremely helpful with these pictures so you could avoid such long shutter times. Perhaps some day...

And to close:

"I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place." - Steven Wright

Election results

Everyone I voted for won! Not that big an accomplishment. We only had a mayor and two city council positions. Just the same, I am happy with the results.

Local real estate

Good news and bad news on the condo ownership. First, our tenants from last year had to move out because of a job change. They were great and we miss them. We thought about putting it back on the market to sell, but after talking to two realtors, we learned that the market was still too soft. So, after a month or two of trying to rent it, we have some new long term renters.

The Lutzker's are coming from Florida, but they used to live in Park City. Husband, wife, and a daughter (age 4 I think). They show up in early December and will be renting for a year or two. Nice to have that resolved.



Meanwhile, on the hill behind our house, the city is doing something. I can't figure it out yet. They have put in a telephone pole and are running power up the back side of the mountain to get to it. Running a power line a quarter of a mile, digging several feet down through rock is pretty serious. Wonder what it will be? The yellow thing is a big piece of digging equipment.



Down the street from us is a house that has been on the market for a while. I feel the owner's pain. He started long before the market downturn but ran into cash problems and had to delay building. By the time he finished, the housing market had collapsed. If you have a few million, it's quite a deal. I think it is around 8,000 square feet.



His next door neighbor I don't get. This brilliant strategist started building a house right as the market turned down. There were lots of phases he could have stopped without spending that much money. Nope. Just kept right on building. Not just building, but building Fugly. For those who don't recognize "fugly", it is short for f@#&ing ugly. Here in the mountains, you don't build a boxy, stucco, multi-split-level piece of tan construction. Not sure where it would fit in.

I might understand if someone was building this for themselves and just had terrible taste, but as soon as it was finished, they put it on the market. Imagine what the market is for second homes requiring jumbo mortgages. If you couldn't imagine it, you got it 100% correct.

I have included several pictures, just so you don't think I took a shot from the ugly side. They all are.







I also feel sorry for one of our friends and condo neighbors. They happen to own the vacant lot on the other side of fugly house. Yuck.

Remember to vote!

Even if your opinion is wrong (different than mine), it is important. Get out on Tuesday and cast your vote.



Me, I vote early. Call it lazy, but it is nice to walk in, vote and walk out in 2 minutes.

Halloweeen Dog Parade

We've always been back in NC for Halloween, so we've missed the annual Park City Halloween Dog Parade. This year I took Jasper down to be a part. Julie wasn't feeling well and stayed home, but I hooked up with Bill, Loris, and Hollie (the dinosaur dog) Benson.



It was a parade in a Park City sense. That means it was basically a mob the used gravity to eventually drift down Main Street. It had no start or finish. About 25% of the people were always heading the wrong direction. The dogs didn't seem to mind.

Jasper was dressed as a spider. I wasn't able to get many good pictures because I had the camera set up wrong, but with dog in one hand and camera in the other, I couldn't tell until fairly late.



I would guess there was a couple of thousand people and a few hundred dogs, most of which were dressed up. Jasper got to sniff a LOT of dog butt.



You just can't resist the little hot dogs. There was also a ketchup dog, but I couldn't catch them together.



ballerinas...



and pumpkins...



and some potential embarrassment. You know when two women show up to a party wearing the exact same dress? I'm sure Hollie was a little ticked.



But the clear winner for pets was the guy dressed as Shrek, with his friend Donkey. It was a real donkey. Jasper was very well behaved around the dogs, but damn he sure wanted to sniff that donkey's butt.



Lots of humans were dressed up (I wasn't). My favorite was a friend of ours, Carol Lee. She gave us a look at what happens to Hooter's girls when they become Hooter's old women.



The dogs were so well behaved! With hundreds of them there, they just all seemed to get along. I only heard two barks the entire time. This will definitely be an annual event for us. Next year perhaps we will get dressed up and not just decorate the poor dog.