A few random anecdotes from my six-day jaunt in Utah’s capital city (and my hometown).
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We flew north out of SEA, banked into a right turn at the north end of Lake Washington, and continued southeast from there. As we were passing Mount Rainier, which looked to be about 150 feet off the tip of the left wing, the pilot made an announcement:
Those of you on the right side of the aircraft will have a beautiful view of Mt. Saint Helens in a few minutes. The mountain is smoking today, really a spectacular view.
A couple minutes later, the pilot came back over the PA: Time to crane necks to the right, there’s the beautiful Mt. Saint Helens and its column of smoke and steam.
The plane immediately entered a left turn, banking the mountain out of view just as we all turned our heads to look out the windows.
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We drove up Mill Creek Canyon to see what remained of the autumn colors. As it turned out, nothing remained of the colors, save the evidence of their existence sometime in the last weeks as indicated by the bare trees.
We were at or below the speed limit the entire time both up and down the canyon, but we got yelled at a couple times by bicyclists who exhorted us to “SLOW DOWN!”
This usually happened as the cyclists rushed past us at about 50 mph, 20 over the posted limit in most parts of the canyon.
Memo to cyclists: You’re no good at estimating your own speeds, so shut the fuck up!
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Squatters, probably my all-time favorite brewpub, opened a new restaurant in the Park City area recently. They call it Squatters Roadhouse Grill, which for me is a name that conjurs images of home-style cookin’ amidst a rustic décor that happens to have beer taps in several spots.
In reality the menu is a duplicate of the menu at their main Salt Lake City location, and the décor is fairly spare. And there are booths, which is the single most pronounced difference from my previous Squatters experiences (only tables at the main pub). And the higher elevation makes the servers slightly... well, “loopy” would charitably describe the server we had. I think he was trying to be friendly and outgoing but he came off as a bit detached and elegantly wacko. He addressed me as “the gentleman” the entire time, an affectation I haven’t even encountered in the couple of truly high-end restaurants I’ve visited in recent years.
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I had a couple of relatively pleasant airport/airplane experiences on this trip.
On the way down last Thursday, I cleared security in about 15 minutes. It wouldn’t have taken that long had the four people ahead of me not stuck bottles of water or juice or wine in their carry-on bags despite the one TSA agent’s repeated droning reminder about restrictions on liquids in carry-on bags, and the man directly in front of me who first forgot to take off his shoes—I think it was an honest mistake, he seemed genuinely flustered when the TSA agents shouted him down as he started to walk through the metal detector—and the man in front of him had a small knife on his person which necessitated repeated trips through the detectors before he was taken away by a three-person TSA squad. By that time my backpack, shoes, and laptop were through the X-ray machine and sitting unattended on the other side of the security checkpoint and there was no way I was taking my eyes off my belongings even to spot a straight path through the detectors and the knot of security folks on the other side.
Thank God I didn’t set anything off. I’d have bounced off walls, people, TensaBarriers, whatever else to keep my backpack in sight—it had everything in it so I could avoid problems.
So I was through security, walking toward Concourse A (my flight was departing from gate A13, which is 30 miles away from the security checkpoint in south Tacoma), when I remembered I was going to call Mom when I got through security so she’d know the flight was still on track. Quick call, the “Hi how are ya see you in a couple hours” type, and then I flung my phone across the corridor and snapped its hinge.
It now makes this plaintive clicking squeak every time I open or close the flip, and when it’s open it doesn’t have the perky stiffness it used to display. It just sorta... flops there, like a distracted drawbridge.
Anyway.
The flight was aboard an MD-90 that wasn’t quite full. I was on the two-seat side of the aisle, no seatmate so the entire row was mine. Apart from the minor bobble of the sightseeing-but-wait-we’re-turning-instead moment, it was entirely routine, and when I got to the bag-claim area in SLC the bags were already circling on the carousel.
I scored a first-class upgrade on the return flight. The airplane, an MD-88, had 5-abreast seating in coach but the 3-and-2 sections were reversed, and my original seat assignment put me about halfway back on the aisle of the left-hand side. When I got through security in about 5 minutes flat, I hot-footed it to the departure gate so I could be among the first in line to acquire about available first-class upgrades, and I snagged the only one that was available.
The captain turned off the seat-belt signal promptly when the hard braking indicated we’d arrived at the gate, and we all rose like pop-up sprinklers to retrieve bags from the overhead bins and get the hell off the plane. But the ground crew had a hell of a time lining up the jetway and the airplane door, so we on the left side of the aircraft enjoyed the spectacle of the jetway’s lunging forward and retreating and shifting left and right and upward and downward like the operator was playing Pac-Man on crack.
Apropos of nothing, I think airplanes also need light-and-chime signals for Don’t Kick the Goddamned Bulkhead and Headphones Are the Universal Signal for Shut the Fuck Up.
The SEA bag-claim experience wasn’t quite as pleasant as the SLC had been. The bags didn’t appear for about 20 minutes after I arrived at the carousel, for one thing, and my bag was I think the 10th to last up the ramp, but it made Katharine’s timing of her arrival at the pick-up area much better—no looping the airport endlessly as she had done when I flew back from Denver in February and the Alaska Air ground crew dicked around for more than hour getting the bags off the plane.
I got home about an hour ago, unpacked, surveyed the manse to be sure everything was in its proper place. Cats are good but want to be in my face all the time, I imagine that will last through the night, and tomorrow it’s back to the job I absolutely adore at the lab I love beyond expression.
How was your weekend?