Jasper still has the speed

Julie and I took Jasper to City Park for some exercise.  At almost 11 years old, the dog can still fly!

Teaching a photography class

Every once in a while, I teach a photography class over at the Kimball Arts Center.  This time, it was two afternoons with six teenagers.  The first day we were walking around Park City.  The second, we hopped in the Pilot and went to some more remote locations around town.

I mostly kept my camera in my bag and focused on their efforts, but every once in a while I would snap a quick shot.  This is just some quick examples of the things you can shoot.

Two blocks from the center, there is a stream that normally runs pretty dry in the summer.  This year, because of some pipe construction, there is more water running.  It's a great place to learn about long shutter speeds versus quick ones.

Down the creek is Park City's famous shoe tree.  Lots of opportunities to find different angles and play with depth of field.

One of the reasons I like working with kids is they are always finding creative things to shoot.  This student turned out to be the daughter of two people I got to know through CrossFit. That's life in a small town.

The skateboard park is normally a good place to learn how to predict where action will happen, but you never know whether anyone will be doing bigger tricks.  This was a fairly hot summer day to be out in the sun and the boarders were pretty lethargic, even when lured by six photographers.

There are a number of places around town with funky art to shoot.

Then we hit the city park playground. We were trying to find creative angles to get shots.  The star burst next to her head is from a reflection off a car windshield a long ways off.  It's pretty distracting, but I liked it anyway.

Another student, Zach, in the playground.  I shot him from the side a number of times, but that was looking pretty boring.  Then I managed to get this one where it almost looks like he is standing on the fence, looking over the bar.

Park City's Old Town has so many interesting subjects, even just walking along the street.

Day 1 was very hot and everyone was melting by the end.  For Day 2, we traveled by car between stops and kept it a little shorter. We even made a quick Slurpee stop at the 7-11.

Up at Guardsman's Pass, the flowers were blooming big time!

Sadly, we lost two of the kids for the second day.  One had come up from Salt Lake City and they weren't sure they could get her back to Park City again the next day.  Never heard from the other girl, Emily.  Sad to have lost her, but these four were great!

Teenagers are  fun to work with because they are creative, motivated, and suck up information like a sponge.  I really enjoyed it.

Running a 5k

As many of you may know, I am not supposed to be running at all because I basically have bone-on-bone in my right knee.  Running can earn me a knee replacement surgery.  Just the same, I get the urge to run the occasional race.  To avoid all the wear and tear, I do absolutely no training.  I rely on some combination of a natural inclination to run and brute stupid will.

One race I do every year is the July 4th 5k.  This year there were a little over 1000 runners, and more women than men.  My goal was to grind out a sub 8:00 minute mile pace, and I made it with about 20 seconds to spare.  I was 7th out of 50 in my age/gender and I would have crushed it if I was allowed in the age 70-99 category.  Now the humbling part.

Living in this uber athletic town, I am used to being beaten by 15 year old high school track stars.  In this race, one beat me by about 6:30.  Nice run! Two things did bother me.  The first was getting beaten by a 6 year old boy.  I was standing next to him at the starting line and he came up to about my hip. At the 2.5 mile mark, he was ahead of me.  This pissed me off so I started cranking up the pace.  Right then, a 12 year old girl passed him.  That pissed him off and he accelerated dramatically.  Are you kidding?  There was no way I could catch him.  I slowed down and he beat me by 40 seconds.

In a different category was the 10 year old girl who smoked me by over 5 minutes.  Grace Ping ran a 19:15.  Essentially, she was out of my vision after the first 400 yards or so.  I read up on her.  She ran a race back at the end of April, doing a 5k on a track in 18:02!  For those of you struggling with the math, that's 5:48 miles.  Yes, she shattered the world record for 10 year old girls.

So, while I was OK with my ability to run a decent race without no training runs for nine months, I still feel somehow robbed of any joy or pride. Getting your ass kicked by a 10 year old girl and a 6 year old boy is pretty humbling.  Normally I would crank up my running and start dpoing some intervals for speed.  With a bum knee, I just go for a bike ride.

Why I turned off iMessage on my iPhone

Years ago, Apple enhanced its iPhone text messaging with something called iMessage.  Whenever you were texting between two iPhone's, you went through the data network and Apple servers instead of through the cellular network to the carriers' servers.  Back when you were paying per text or had a small number of free texts, this was a great thing.  Going through Apple was free and iMessage was smart enough to use normal texting to get to non-iPhones.

Over the past several years, most carrier plan either include unlimited texting or some very large number of free texts per month. This means the financial benefit no longer exists.

Now the bad stuff....  Apple has a bug in their iMessage system.  If you are using it with your iPhone (which is the default) and then change phones to to Android, Apple doesn't clear their server's knowledge of you.  So when iPhone people try to get in touch with you by text, Apple stills tries (and fails) to reach you by iMessage.  It should know that you are no longer using iMessage and tell the phone to reach you by normal texting.

Julie switched phones lately and this was a royal pain in the butt.  When you call Apple service, they try a few things and get you to try some things, none of which does much. It's a bug in their design and they have known about it for quite a while.

I am still an iPhone user and will be for at least another year.  However, I went into my settings and turned iMessage off.  I have no intention of ever turning it on again.  I suggest everyone with iPhones do the same.

Oakley Rodeo

A couple of nights ago, Julie Greg, Miriam and I went to the Oakley Rodeo.  Oakley is a small town about 15 miles from Park City. The rodeo is pretty big and draws competitors from all around the west.  As a photography choice, it's a tough one.  The event starts at 8:00pm, so the sun is almost down.  Add some pretty mediocre lighting and fast action and you have something that is quite the pisser to photograph well.

You can't start a rodeo without a lot of  American songs and flags.  If you look in the background, you can see a lot of people with their hands over their hearts.  This was a very patriotic group of spectators.  They put their hands over their hearts for the pledge, the Star Spangled Banner, and any country western song that mentioned loving America.  I'm not making this up.

Then we had all the rodeo queens and their attendants. Just like in the beauty pageants, you have to master that perfect little wave.  The challenge is doing it at a good clip on the back of a big horse.

On to the competitions.  First we have bareback riding.  At this point I didn't have a lot of perspective, but in hindsight, these guys had almost as tough a ride as the bull riders.  These were some angry horses and you had next to nothing to control yourself with.

This guy actually managed to stay on for the complete ride.  Lots of his fellow riders did not do as well.

The next event should be called something like "High Speed Cow Tackling".  The cow comes ripping out of the gate.  The horse takes off after the cow and quickly catches up.  Then the cowboy jumps off said horse and tries to wrestle the cow to the ground.  It is all for best time.

Did I mention that I pull for the animals to win all the contests?  Everyone else is pulling for the cowboys, so I think it's only fair.  As best I can tell, this cowboy jumped off his horse, grabbing the cow on the way down, at which point the cow promptly pinned him to the ground. Cow 1 - Cowboy 0.

The next event I refuse to show in its entirety.  A cowboy ropes a running calf and jumps down.  The horse, who is apparently the smartest in the bunch, immediately pulls backwards so the rope stays tight. The calf suddenly gets yanked to the ground by his neck. The cowboy jumps on the poor little calf  and ties his feet.  Not only does this suck for picking on a calf instead of a cow, or better yet a bull, but the little guy gets yanked so hard by the neck you can feel it in the stands. Might as well rope lambs. I would call this event "Not Tough Enough To Do Real Cowboy Events".

Back to the broncos, but this time with saddles.  I'm no cowboy, but this seemed a hell of a lot easier than the bareback version.  These guys stayed on most of the rides and seemed to have time to go for style.

Here was one of the best poses.

The horses were still doing their best to get that guy off their back.

And sometimes it worked.

And if it did work, you needed to get out of the way very quickly.  In the bareback riding, one guy got thrown off the back and before he could hit the ground, the horse kicked him in the head.  That does not make for a good evening.

The next event required quite a bit of coordination.  The cow bolts.  Two horsemen give chase.  One ropes the cow's head and pulls him around.  The second cowboy ropes the moving back feet of the cow.  I haven't quite figured out the physics of that one.

Done correctly, it looks like this.

Then the ladies took center court for barrel racing.  It is a sprint for time, navigating several barrels. I was not able to figure out how the horses kept traction making such tight turns at high speed. The ladies were amazing to stay up on a horse cranking dirt at a 45%  angle.

Some excellent horsemanship.

The final event is often referred to as "the longest eight seconds in sports".  Quite simple:  Get on bull. Stay on bull. Good luck.

I don't know the different riding techniques, but I am guessing this isn't one of the correct ones.

Yep.  Guessed right.

How would you like to hit the ground on your back, look up, and see all that angry bull completely  up in the air.  Notice the rodeo clown heading over to try and distract the bull.

Look how high that bulls rear end is.  Getting throw forward towards the horns and in the bull's sight is probably the worst alternative.

This guy was getting some of the same style that the bronco riders did.

And the bull did not find that amusing.

Rodeo can be a bit hard to watch because they are giving the animals a rough night.  Then again, the animals were beating the crap out of the cowboys as revenge.

Note to self: next time you go, sit down at the southeast end, near where the bulls come out.  Five or six rows up on an aisle would be perfect.  Better photos there.

Boys and their toys

After Hurricane Fran, I would have loved to have had use of one of these for a few weeks. 30 minutes to clear the 100+ trees down on our property and the following days to have made a fortune at other people's houses. It's even a stump grinder.

Where to live?

There are lots of articles about the best places to live, recreate or start a business. This article from the NY Times is interesting in that it prioritizes the hardest places to live in the U.S., county by county.

Click the image to go to the actual interactive map on the Times' site. The article goes into a lot of depth about what they mean by "hardest".

There are 3,135 counties in the U.S.. I am happy to have apparently had a blessed life.

• Grew up in Anne Arundel County, MD  - 180th 
• Spent a huge chunk of life in Wake County, NC - 163rd
• Now live in Summit County, UT - 5th!!

All are in the top 6% or so, and number 5 sure rocks!

Thanks to my cousin Sara for posting this out on Facebook.

Just another sunny summer day in Park City

Yes, June 17th brought about 5" of snow.

I think a few trees, especially the aspens, will have some damage.  Our ex-house lost about 15 feet out of the top of an otherwise healthy aspen.  Very heavy, wet snow on trees that are fully leaved out.

As you can guess, the only one happy with snow in June is Jasper.  It was snowball city this morning.

I feel the earth move, under my feet

When I was in Jackson a few weeks ago, I took some shots of a place that has been on the national news.  Then I forgot to post the photos.

We've all seen these signs as we drive along steep mountain roads.  They make it obvious that you can be hit by falling rock, but at 50 mph, it isn't clear exactly how you are supposed to react.  This is different though.  This is a few blocks outside of downtown Jackson, Wyoming.

People never seem content with the topographical lines that Mother Nature draws over the course of millennia.  We carve into hills and construct all sorts of buildings.  Here in Park City, if your building is going onto a slope of more than 30 percent, you have to get a Steep Slope Conditional Use Permit, which means it comes to me, your local Planning Commissioner.

In Jackson, they cut into the side of a hill for some houses.  They cut into the bottom of the hill to put in a Walgreens and a strip mall.   Then Mother Nature said "No, dammit!"  The hill has been sliding again and again, and with enough force to tear up the parking lot and rip a house in half.

They put up some heavy wire fencing and some retaining walls to stop the flow.  As you can see, Mother Nature said "I told you NO dammit!"

This is the view from the Walgreen's prescription drive through.  Needless to say, the Walgreens is closed.  The hill continues to slide, no matter what they try to do to slow it.  The excitement will happen if it slides enough to break a major water line that runs through the area.  They estimate that it will dump millions of gallons of water into downtown Jackson before it can be shut off.  At that point, the city will have lost 30% of its water source.

I wish I had taken a good closeup of the soil.  It looks like sandy crud mixed with loose gravel.  Not sure what certified engineer thought that would stay up on such a steep slope.  Not one for your engineering resume.

Here is a recent article giving an update and it has a nice photo of the home cheered in half.

Death of the Sotheby's Brand

I remember years ago when I would find a Sotheby's home catalog somewhere.  Everything about the document oozed quality, printed on thick gloss paper with gorgeous photos. I would always enjoy looking through them at the places the privileged few lived. It seemed that to have them sell your house meant you went through some approval process that was very discriminating. All the houses seemed to be on a secluded beach or a mountain top and half of them looked like palaces.

I was really surprised about five years ago when Sotheby's started buying up small realty firms, including at least one here in Park City.  The firm they bought was selling a lot of homes that didn't match up well with the Sotheby's brand.  Today, that brand has been completely destroyed in my mind.

You make your own decision.

I probably won't ever bother picking up a Sotheby's home catalog again.  It would probably be printed on old newsprint. Very sad.....