Down and Back Again

I'm disappointed in people.  This isn't new.  Last week, after hearing about additional Federal indictments while watching Olympic highlights, it's clearly obvious that humanity is headed for a cultural disaster.  Some questions: why did they help the Russians?  Why did they take off their silver medal during the celebratory ceremony?  Why is there constant finger pointing and blame with regard to opinions...some with roots in truth, and some clearly without?  Why would you "vacation" by taking a bus to a national park, disembarking for an hour, and then reboarding having only seen 0.05 percent, but chalking it up as an unforgettable experience?  People are frustrating.

It's the last question that made me most aggravated.  My cousin and I met up in Phoenix so that we could visit the Grand Canyon National Park for three days.  We were in no rush or hurry, and our plans, beyond where we're going to stay, were extremely flexible.  Sure there were sites we had researched, but everything was weather dependent, and the weather in the Grand Canyon could change every 10 minutes or so, according to the internet.  On our trip north, we discovered the Verde Brewing Company.  Nestled in an industrial park, home to both FedEx and UPS truck yards, was a no-frills, tin-roofed building with it's garage doors open.  Temperatures were in the upper 60s, and music was streaming into the graveled parking lot.  We found a table for two, and I ordered their Scotch Ale, while my cousin got a flight and we sampled everything from the hoppy IPAs to the Bourbon Stout, which had a heavy-hitting abv of 9%.  Glad I was driving.  Lunch was also served and while the nachos, chili and brat sandwich were good, the standout to me was the homemade pineapple slaw that the mom of the brewer crafted herself.

After this, we b-lined it to Tusayan and the hotel, which was sold out.  What?  I guess that it was President's weekend and people decided to all take a day or two to wander the Grand Canyon as it was merely a 15 minute drive away from bustling downtown Tusayan.  We dropped our bags in the room and made it into the Canyon for sunset.  Unfortunately for us, so did multiple tour busses and three full parking lots of people.  It was wall to wall people by the Park's visitor's center, but we managed to peel away for a bit and score some well lit sunset shots at Mather Point's overlook.  Due to the steep grade below us and the declining light, we weren't able to see the Colorado River, but there were other days for that.  Right then, the challenge was to out-wait the traffic as the last of the daylight was spent.  It easily took us around 45 minutes to leave the park, but rather than wait in the car queue, we sat on a park bench, and watched the stars appear out of nothingness.  The moon was just a sliver and our extreme distance to a city and the resulting light pollution made it for semi-perfect star-gazing as the invisible cirrus clouds only blocked our view in portions of the night sky.  We called it a night, found a general store, purchased more beer, and toasted the night before we both collapsed from a weary day of traveling.

The next morning, we were up early.  I should qualify that, I was up early, 5 am specifically.  Being still on East Coast time, my body decided that was all the sleep I needed.  My cousin rose soon after, though.  We grabbed a quick bite in the hotel, packed the car for the day, and headed back into the park.  As luck would have it, the cirrus clouds from the night before were replaced by fast-moving cumulous, those puffy, cotton-ball looking monsters, and, with a fierce wind, they were moving their way northeast over the canyon.  This was the best.  We traveled up Hermit's Road towards the westernmost point of the driveable park: Hermit's Rest, stopping along the way every time the sun was able to peek through or streak out and highlight features in the canyon below.  Shedding some gear, but adding water, we decided to hike down into the canyon about 1,200 vertical feet.  The sign at the top was best: "Optional, how far down you go; Required, coming back up."  This rang true as the climb out was more difficult; think stairmaster for 2 straight hours, but with thinner air as we rose from 5,800 feet back to 7,000 feet and the rim of the canyon.  We quickly found more coffee, and then drove to the village market where we were able to lunch and purchase hand-made jewelry from Native American artisans stationed in the park general store.    We left the park in the late afternoon, and ate early at the Mexican restaurant around the corner from our hotel: La Plaza Bonita, then back to the room, cue more Olympics, and sleep.

Our last full day in the park started like the previous.  Heading out to Desert View Road we decided to traverse the trail to Ooh Aah Point.  This one started down into the canyon as switchbacks.  Overall, it wasn't as technical as the day before, which is fine because both of us were still recovering.  Actually, the most challenging part was dodging the "evidence of donkey" which was liberally sprinkled over the trail.  This was also access to the South Kaibab Trail which, if you went far enough, crossed the Colorado River on one of the suspension bridges and then up to the North Rim, which is typically closed during winter months.  We weren't going that far, and opted to do the 400 vertical feet and back again.  Most amazingly, as we hiked from the car to the trailhead, we were feet from a small herd of elk, which, we learned later, are descendents of 303 transplants from Yellowstone back in the early 1900s.  It's not the rut, so they weren't aggressive, and we stayed a decent distance away as they ate Utah Juniper and Ponderosa Pine. We hiked down, said "Ooh, Aah" and hiked back past annoying teenagers wearing light early spring clothing and draped in a blanket to ward off the chilly high-30's temperature.  They only kicked some rocks down on me as they formed a human chain to recover someone's dropped cell phone that was the victim of an unfortunate selfie accident.  They were loud and obnoxious, and I needn't tell you that I was not-so-secretly happy when it started to freezing rain as we came out of the canyon and back to the trail head.  Initially the precip  was gentle as my cousin and I struggled to identify an orange-morph of the house finch, but then it picked up, and in a hurry.  Soon, white sheets of frozen rain and sleet were pouring down on us, blocking any and all views of the canyon.  Photography done for a bit, we got back into the car, and high-tailed it to one of the lodges for an early lunch and a self-guided tour of the few museum exhibits and shops near the Bright Angel lodge.  We headed back to the hotel, prepped ourselves for dinner, and ate at El Tovar hotel, that promised sweeping views of the canyon...if the weather cooperated, which it didn't, and we were, instead, treated to a view of a blizzard that coated everything in about 2-inches of snow, and forced the closings of all peripheral roads in the park.  I didn't care.  I had duck. 

Our hopes of visiting Cameron, AZ were dashed as the road to get there was still closed the following morning due to the snow.  Instead, we decided that we would visit Sedona on our way back to Phoenix.  There were plusses and minuses to this, last part of our trek: plus, the drive through the Coconino National Forest was gorgeous with vistas at every turn showing the juxtaposition of the forest against the bare rock that was similar to the Grand Canyon, but with TREES!  Minus, there was no place to pull off without risking life and limb.  Plus, we found additional Native American artisans on the drive who had far better prices than what they promised we would see in Sedona.  Minus: they were right, Sedona is a soulless place, where the number of overpriced tours is only dwarfed mystical crystal shops yearning to associate themselves with the "Spiritual Vortexes," supposed natural intersections of electromagnetic fields that exists that close to the surface due to the unique geology of the town.  Minus minus: after visiting a "Vortex" the only enlightenment was in my wallet after I was conned into paying $3 to park in a gravel lot that promised access to a muddy trail down to the vortex...a vortex that had parking next to it where we eventually moved our car.  Minus minus minus: one of those tour busses showed up and the area was crawling with out-of-towners.  Minus minus minus minus: "Vortexes?" the correct plural of vortex is vortices...yet published everywhere is the bastardized Americanism.  They couldn't even get that right.  Plus: we drove to Red Rocks State Park (where you have to pay $10 for entry; minus) and were able to see at least 3 or 4 species of warblers as well as gain access to some good photographic points that weren't marred by power lines or residential developments like the rest of the existing Sedona viewsheds.  I kid you knot, in one shot I took to show the majesty of the towering water and wind beaten cliffs, you can clearly see both the CVS and Whole Foods when zooming in.  Minus.

The rest of the trip from there was casual.  We made it back to my hotel in Phoenix, dropped my things off, and then headed into Tempe for dinner before my cousin's plane left that night.  I would say that the only disappointment of the trip was the City of Sedona vs. our plan to visit the Navajo Nation, which would have yielded highly different results (and a tip on a Navajo taco shop).  A reason to go back, I guess.  After all, I still haven't seen the Petrified Forest which is adjacent to the reservation, or the bustling downtown of Albuquerque.  My fingers are crossed that the tour busses leave those places well enough alone, and that the character of the park, the Nation and the city isn't ruined by poorly planned hyper-development, and annoying people trying to exploit profit from it.

Coffee (cup) Tawk

The news is this: Dunkin Donuts is eliminating their styrofoam cups by 2020.  Greenpeace and other environmentally-minded organizations are hailing this change as the first step in the right direction...and I agree...it's just the first step, because just like K-Cups, hot beverage cups are filling our landfills.  This article in the BBC states that 2.5 billion (with a B) cups are thrown away annually regardless of them being paper or plastic.  Here in the US, I'm sure we throw away a magnitude more (this 2016 article says 60 Billion paper cups...and most can't be recycled).

So, I get it, don't throw away your coffee cups...in fact, don't use disposable cups at all. But, the real solution is to not offer any cups but reusable ones, because, as we know from science, even paper biodegradable cups won't biodegrade in landfills...where most of these surely wind up. It's that whole anaerobic thing.  But it says it's compostable.  Wonderful!  That's great!  That means there's no plastic lining waterproofing your cup.  Do you compost?  No?  Do you think cup gnomes roam the streets at ungodly hours in the morning pulling your compostable cups from the trash so that they can use them to make fertile their fields of four-leaf clover and candy canes?

To that, you (and Greenpeace) are right, this is just the first step...but is it a good one? If all disposable cups are a problem, and they are, then we should be focused on using the most energy efficient disposable cup out there. Right?

The Institute for Lifecycle Energy Analysis in Seattle, Washington did a study, and they found that the energy cost of reusable cups (ceramic, plastic, glass) gets lower the more times you use it. That makes sense, if you only use a cup 5 times, you've wasted a ton of energy on each of those times vs. a cup you use 100 times. For a reusable cup to equal the energy cost of a styrofoam cup you would need to use it 200 times.  Can you do that?  Right. So, definitely the first part of the equation, but until we convince our trash-can society to use a cup more than 200 consecutive times, the environmental cost of the styrofoam cup is far less, i.e. more energy efficient; more environmentally sound. 

But me? I use a stainless coffee cup every day...and I'm headed towards those 200 uses...aggressively. For water, I have my BPA Free Nalgene bottle I've used daily for over 3 years...it's getting scummy, but gosh darn it, how irresponsible would you have to be to know you like water at your job and still insist on taking a paper cup every day?  I choose plastic...except...there's issues with that too. For an encore, wanna talk about BPA?...no?

https://www.cnn.com/.../bpa-free-alternatives.../index.html

Don't Panic

Without giving anything away, I already read about this part in our history.  In Neal Stephenson's book, Seveneves, Stephenson writes about minor-character Sean Probst launching a successful commercial space transport business.  Without going into details and ruining the Sci-Fi novel for you, he's incredibly successful, rich, and attempts to save the day after becoming impatient with federal agencies ability to "do something" about their ability to address the Earth's immediate space needs.  Similarities to some of our space-age billionaires (Sean Parker, Bezos, Elon Musk) are extraordinary, and likely, intended.

Back to real life, and Elon Musk's SpaceX was able to launch a rocket able to carry payloads of up to 140,700 lbs...which made his launching a Tesla Coupe (roughly 2,900 lbs) a piece of cake.  In one of the most amazing feats, SpaceX was able to retrieve two out of three of the booster rockets that pushed the Falcon Heavy rocket into low orbit and beyond on February 6 around 3:45pm EST.  Yeah, the third one, which was scheduled to land on an autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) 300 miles off the coast of Florida had a landing booboo.  Where the first two stage-1 rockets not only flew back and successfully landed upright on landing pads at Cape Canaveral, the center core booster failed to initiate slowing burns and is probably at the ocean floor after hitting the surface of the water at 300 miles per hour.  Whoops. 

Still, an amazing feet.  As if the successful deployment and retrieval of 66% of the rockets wasn't enough, the Tesla Coupe payload is meant to eventually orbit Mars and then continue to circle the sun for, potentially, billions of years.  However, in addition to the core's apparent demise, team SpaceX overshot their orbit due to an unplanned elongated burn which pushed the Tesla and the Starman (the propped mannequin in a spacesuit "driving" the car) past its intentional orbit.  It seems that, based on new calculations, it'll pass "nearby" Earth in 2021 at about 28 million miles away, but mostly linger alone in the void of space for near-eternity. 

But, forget all that.  What I'm geeking out about is that, when the Tesla was first exposed to space, the launch center turned on its audio.  Apparently, the car is blasting David Bowie's "Life on Mars" track, which was played back on Earth during the launch.  The naming of the mannequin, StarMan is also a Bowie reference.  I love me some Bowie.  In the center console, there's a sign which is dear to my heart: "Don't Panic," which is a direct reference to Douglas Adam's most popular book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  And, if that's not enough, SpaceX included at least one more easter egg.

A company named Arch Mission (pronounced Ark) is dedicated to archiving human knowledge for thousands and thousands of years.  To do so, they've adopted a technology where quartz silica disks, permanently etched by a special type of laser, allow the disk to carry up to 360 terabytes of information.  On the disks included in this launch, Arch Mission included the text of Issac Asimov's Foundation series.  Why?  Because they're awesome!  The Foundation series original trilogy spans thousands of years in three distinctive yet interrelated novels.  Then, there are a number of prequels and sequels.  But, the premise is that this Tesla, destined to orbit our sun for the rest of our lives and generations to come is carrying texts that may foretell our futures through the eyes of 1950's science fiction where the story's timeline spans eons.  That's super nerdy and super cool. 

Who knows if sentient beings will be able to retrieve the Tesla within it's projected  lifetime: millions of years.  But, if they do, let's hope they'll be able to decode the Arch disk books to see what we were going for.  But, I do know that thanks to Elon Musk, and the money he and other billionaires feed into our national space program, some of our legacy as the human race will be preserved for eternity...which is good, because, if Seveneves is accurate, we've got a moon to worry about and a space station to build (for additional reference, see Ron Howard in 2019 for the movie adaptation; the future is just a minute away...or a year or so).

Inconsistent

I didn't watch the President in his State of the Union address.  And, in hindsight, I'm glad I didn't.  Honestly, based on a year's worth of empty rhetoric, it was obvious to me that, no matter what he said, in a week's time, he'll say that he never said those words.  His ability to about-face without consequence has been one of the most upsetting components of his "Presidential" style.  So, why would I waste 2 hours of my time listening to a man who, when it becomes fashionable, will back-track regardless of the proof otherwise.

Amazingly, I've ready a number of reviews where even the New York Times reported that what he said was mostly true.  The economy is roaring.  Joblessness rates have fallen.  Companies keep chirping about what a great thing the corporate tax break has been, and how they're reinvesting (some) back into their employees.  Those are all good things, and, frankly, are largely due to this business-first President.

And then Captain Asshat starts his continued needling of the FBI, this time through Republican agents in Congress with a highly edited memo.  Certainly, with the recent resignation of the Deputy Director, and his continued anger that there's even an investigation going on, it makes sense that any opportunity he and his minions get, they'll try to trash the integrity of those, supposedly, standing in his way with a "burn it down" attitude. 

Still, I'm troubled with his paranoid assumptions that all existing agencies are skewed against him and his agenda.  While it's clear to me that leadership of those agencies under an Obama White House should be replaced by any successor, it's his constant attacks and vitriol against the lower employees, some who have worked efficiently under both Republican and Democratic administrations, that bothers me most.  As one who has had to hold his government job under a fiercely Republican governor, my side-jokes aside, I performed just as I did when I worked under a Democratic administration because the law that established my office is just that, the law.  The policy changes that occurred during the new administration's were largely financial: we did less because they cut our budget to plug other leaks in the dike.  Yes, I didn't agree with the politics of what was happening in my state, but that didn't preclude me from doing my job.  If anything, I doubled down to make sure that the mission of the law was being carried forth, to the best of my ability. 

I will make the assumption that large numbers of employees of the Federal government who are cogs and not figureheads are doing the same.  I get that in this day of social media even those cogs get a say about the policies they may be forced to support, but then it's the directors of those employees to weed out the people who are actually standing in the way of progress...who are proven to be obstructionist and not just because their wife made a donation to the party who lost the election.  That's ridiculous. 

Without polling anyone, and without knowing actual numbers, I would believe that the majority of employees who work in State and Federal government do so because they want to improve social services for their constituency.  That statement alone may be enough for a conservative politician to expect that the world is against him or her.  There's no use whining about it.  Instead, get your ass in gear to name your appointments that they can then move policy to be in line with the administrative agenda.  Don't drag your feet because the more quickly you can install like-minded directors, the more quickly you can have consistency at the governmental level and right the perceived wrongs of your predecessors.  Anything less and you're just part of the partisan problem this nation doesn't need at this point in history.

And stop bragging about your Neilson ratings.  It's pathetic as much as it's inconsistent with the truth.