Chickens In Your House

Posted on by
Reply

 Last night the Crystal River Caucus met at the Marble community church. The group was essentially divided into two camps: those who think it’s OK to restrict what people do on their own property, and those who believe in “live and let live”. The bulk of the evening was spent discussing the much-debated Special Geographic Area plan. In the past, it was presented to the Gunnison County Planning Commission. They rejected it.

The plan had a few minor revisions in it since the County Planning Commission rejected it, however, it is essentially the same document.

For example: Under the original document, if you didn’t finish building your house and get a certificate of occupancy within 17 years, the approximate cost of fines would be around $1,000,000.00. That’s correct. One million dollars. I’m not making this up! Based on my comment in the public meeting with the planning commission during the first proposal of the Special Geographic Area, the fine has a “reduced” price.

In last night’s meeting, I congratulated the caucus board for being so magnanimous. I said that it reminded me of Russia. When the Russians were oppressed after the Bolshevik Revolution, the government made farmers put animals into their houses. Horses, cows, pigs, chickens. Whatever people owned got to live with them in their homes. It showed the government’s power. After a year, the government told the people, “You can take the cow out of the house.” The relieved farmers were grateful. After another period of time, the government told them that they could take the pigs out. The farmers were quite grateful to the government. Finally, they were down to the chickens, by which time things seemed to be quite normal.

I told the caucus board, “In the same vein as the Russians, I thank you. By reducing the fine in your proposal, we are now down to simply having the chickens in our house.” They didn’t appreciate that comment.

There were comments thrown out to the board like, “How does limiting the size of houses ‘protect and promote the economy’ as shown in your reasons for the regulations”? Or the concerned citizen who rhetorically asked “Isn’t this document a vehicle for telling us what color to paint our houses, or anything else that you want to control?”

The caucus board then resorted to fear of the future. Oil rigs in our quaint little town were one of the first bogey men thrown at us. Then there was loss of tourist income. We don’t have many tourist businesses here. As a matter of fact, we don’t have many businesses at all. We don’t even have a gas station. Our natural beauty was in jeopardy. It was interesting to note that both low brow houses (the epitome of a small town) and recently built, large, well thought out houses, were all used as reasons to accept the Special Geographic Area proposal.

The Special Geographic Area document is full of legal faux pas, ridiculous assumptions (the county isn’t doing enough to protect natural beauty), socialism, government intrusion, innuendo, scare tactics, personal opinion, and illegal proposals. (The county doesn’t have jurisdiction on federal land which encompasses over 90 percent of the proposed area).

The Special Geographic Area proposal is not what this small town community needs. Trash it. Get on with current issues, not scare tactics about the future. Now let’s get government doing the things that it is supposed to be doing.

Blackbeard’s Ghost

Posted on by
Reply
It’s difficult to say when the idea of putting cannon fuse in my beard first hit me.  I know that as a dad you need to show your young children there are things a father can do that they can’t. Seeing the name “Blackbeard the Pirate” in a children’s encyclopedia certainly sealed my fate. In any case,  it seemed like a good idea at the time. Putting cannon fuse in your beard and lighting it is something altogether different.
The “cannon fuse incident” happened when my three oldest children were fairly young-sometime between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Post -Barney the Purple Dinosaur era. Those of you who don’t know what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are all about, need to start watching the History Channel. I grew to hate those turtles. As a rookie ski instructor teaching kids, I had more children walk up and kick me in the shins with their ski boots on while pretending to be a Mutant Ninja Turtle.
So when trying to impress your children with lit cannon fuse in your beard, there are a few rules that you must follow: First, never let your wife stand there with a fire extinguisher pointed at your face.  My wife doesn’t have a lot of experience extinguishing burning beards, so I didn’t even suggest the fire extinguisher idea. Second, don’t do it in the garage. There are lawnmowers, chainsaws, gunpowder, and  more cannon fuse stored there. “Kablooey”  isn’t something you want printed in your obituary. Third, and most important, make sure you say to your children, “Now kids, don’t try this at home!” I don’t know why your are supposed to say it, but it always seems to be the thing to the little ones just before you try a stupid, dangerous stunt. 
When I lit the cannon fuse, the first thought that came to my mind was “Why didn’t I wait until my beard was longer, like maybe down to the floor?” The second thought that went through my mind was, “Wow! Look at the eyes on those children! They must be as big as saucers!” Now I was really getting through to them.  I  scowled, looked mean, raised my hand with a pretend pistol, and let out a few “Aaargh”s and “Aye, maties!” Then I ran for the bathroom.
Once inside the bathroom, with my kids in hot pursuit, I inspected the damage. ” Not too bad,” I thought. Slight singeing, and a nasty smell were all that I got. And my beard was a little bit more black! The kids were either stunned, impressed, or  had to use the toilet badly. I’m not sure to this day which it was.
Fortunately for me I knew two things about cannon fuse which helped in my little experiment: My cannon fuse burns at a rate of one foot per 30 seconds, and it keeps on burning under water.  If Blackbeard had a similar fuse and a battle between boat crews lasted for, oh say, twenty minutes, then I could have needed fuses 40 feet long. My guess is that he wanted it to go out once he started fighting.  And  I’ll bet that after it burned a while he didn’t run to the bathroom to check out how it went. At least not after the first few battles.
So in summary, I’d have to say that you shouldn’t try this at home. That is, until you clean out the garage first. Now men, get out there and clean out the garage.



Spiderman at 8500 ft.

Posted on by
Reply
t.JPG
The adventure isn’t over, yet. Last week I turned 52, and yesterday I was hanging by a climbing rope with a Holehawg drill and air impact wrench installing braces on the south end of my house. The braces are triangular, and weigh in the neighborhood of 100 lbs. each.
To be quite honest, installing the braces is something that I’ve dreaded doing for over two years. My wife and son, Caleb, and I have discussed how to do it for all of that time. Not having a deck to set up scaffolding on has been the major obstacle.  I knew all along that I’d have to hang from a rope to put them up.  
Climbing ropes aren’t new to me. I have several. I’ve been a climber for many years, and a mountain guide for a few. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. But using climbing ropes on the side of my house with drills, impact wrenches, and SAWS was a little bit weird. (Yes, I cut plywood with a circular saw just a few inches from my rope during the installation.)
Needless to say, the braces went up, and that part of living life large is over.  My son, Caleb, and my daughter, Heidi were up on a scaffolding, around the corner of the house, handing me tools, and beams. 
I was Spiderman, doing my thing on the rope. “Thank you, Jesus” kept coming out of my lips whenever a big beam got attached by the 12 inch lag bolts. I didn’t want to fall 25 feet backwards onto rocks with a log on top of me.
Living life large comes real natural when your home is up in the mountains.  If you chuck the “comforts” of city life, flatland life, and on-the-grid life, you can’t help but live an interesting life. 
The other night, I was awake at midnight, thinking how much work needs to be done on our house before the snow flies. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, made a fire, fixed a snack, and sat down in front of the wood stove to make a schedule. Building contractors make building schedules all of the time. To get the outside of the house ready before winter will require massive work, 6 days a week, for 6 weeks.  
So far, I’m only slightly behind schedule. But for the next 5 weeks, it will be an accelerated schedule for me and my family.  
Don’t ask me how the house is coming. The answer is way too complicated. People who know nothing about the design or building of our house look at it and say, “Oh, all you gotta do is shingle it.” If I listed the things I need to do before it’s shingled, it would take up the entire blog. 
But don’t feel sorry for me. Last night as the sun was going down, I was hand peeling logs for the porch posts. I was warm, the sun was on my face, and the only sound I could hear was the wind clanging the chimes in the tree and whistling softly in the branches.

Get Back In Your Car

Posted on by
Reply

 

The push to get people onto bicycles is bad for us. We are watching a 17 mile long bike trail being built along Highway 133. Who will use the bike trail? Certainly not locals who are commuting to work. The only person I’ve ever seen use that road for non-recreational use was a boy peddling home with some groceries. He was on the wrong side of the road, if that tells you anything.

No, the push to get people out of their cars is bad for the economy. Compare what a person spends on automobile costs versus a bicycle. Cars take gas-lots of gas. $3.71 per gallon gas where I live. What does it take to power a bicycle? A granola bar. Car mechanics? $75-$100 per hour. Bike mechanics? Jacques will fix your bike for free if you invite him to dinner. Purchase price? A 9 passenger van at the Ford dealer will cost me about $25,000 plus $8,000 for a Quigley conversion to four wheel drive. On the other hand, I can pick up 9 bikes for free at the dump, and have Jacques fix them.

When it comes to cars, bigger is better for me. If I want to drive a go-kart, I’ll go to the local go-kart track. No, wait a minute. That was torn down and replaced with expensive storage units which nobody is renting. (Maybe replacing go-kart tracks with storage units was the beginning of the economic downturn. It would support my car-economy theory.) Anyway, a Suburban with a third seat, front bench seat, and large roof rack is almost big enough for me. Almost.

When our family had to leave ranch work, and crashed on the shores of Marble, Colorado a few years ago, gas was almost $4 per gallon. The move about clobbered us financially. But think how good it was for the economy for us to rack up hundreds of miles with trailers loaded to the sky with dressers, beds, and several “mystery” boxes. (You know how it is when you move. By the time you get to the last load, you are so fed up with the process, that you pack a can of brake fluid, 3 lost forks, your wedding photo, grandma’s china bowls, and a flywheel from your first Volkswagen, into one box.)

Don’t think that I don’t like bikes. I do. We have several around here. Most of them should probably go to the dump, though.

In the Aspen area, we have a lot of look at me environmentalists. They put their bikes on the back of their cars and drive around, looking like they must bike a lot. They don’t all bike a lot. The real die-hard bikers peddle out of town and go miles and miles on local trails, or clog up the busiest highways by riding two abreast.

If you want to really see the economy turn around, encourage people to get back in their cars, drive to the mall, buy an auto air freshener, go to the grocery store, pick up picnic supplies, and head for the park where they can watch joggers, parents with baby strollers, and bicyclists.

As the Park Ranger in Smokey Mountain National Park said to me once, “Get back in you car!”

The Tweety Bird Effect

Posted on by
Reply

 

“We’re lookin’ for a home life, and clean smellin’ sheets,

and all the soft places to fall.”

Willie and Waylon

(Poncho and Lefty album, circa 1985)

Flint and I used to sing that song at the top of our lungs while driving his little Toyota pickup truck through Utah. We were going to go teach rock climbing. How appropriate.

I also sang that song with the other Wilderness Rangers in Wyoming a year earlier. We rode horses into the Absorka Wilderness, and dodged grizzlies, moose, lightning, hypothermia, broken legs, drownings, bad cooking, and poachers.

Now here I am in Marble, Colorado, building my own house with the help of my wife and kids. As I cut the 2×12 lumber for roof blocking, it drops onto the floor. Some of the pieces crack, and some of them actually break into two pieces. So looking around for a solution (“Dad, they’re hitting the ground too hard”), I set out the Tweety Bird chair.

The Tweety Bird chair was bought by a friend in San Antonio and given to one of my children a few years ago. It’s a nylon fold up chair with a Tweety Bird sporting a 12 inch head and 3 inch body. I put the chair under the overhanging wood, and when I cut the board off with the saw, the wood would fall and be caught by the Tweety Bird. Every time the board landed without breaking, I would yell, “Tweety Bird!”. That kept the nailers warned that product was on their way in good condition.

Enter: “The Tweety Bird Effect”. The Tweety Bird Effect is when you try to keep things from breaking by giving them a soft landing when they fall.

Barack Obama must think that he’s the big Tweety Bird in Washington. He’s trying to catch the falling auto industry. He’s trying to catch the falling bank industry. He’s trying to catch the falling healthcare industry, falling education system, falling military, falling bike path industry, and falling travel trailer industry. And don’t forget the falling environment of the entire world.

As the big Tweety Bird in Washington, our President will pretty much keep you safe in EVERYTHING. The only thing you have to do is give him your money, time, and life. It’s that easy to be kept safe.

 

The only thing is, what if Barack Obamais a bad cook, or an unconstitutional poacher?