For the first time in my life, I am ashamed of US

From 2002-2006 we lived in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, although I frequently worked down in Santa Cruz. The power company in Santa Cruz, CRE, is the world's largest electric cooperative and was founded with the help of my former employer back in 1962.

This current political problem in Bolivia has been very complicated from the beginning; Bolivia has been mired in poverty in spite of their abundant natural resources largely due to government mismanagement. One of their worst setbacks happened in the 50's when their communist government broke up all of the large successful farms in the country and gave out little parcels to the poor workers - "land reform" it was called. It turned out that all of the little mismanaged farms couldn't produce the food that the few well managed big farms could, so Bolivia lost their food independence almost overnight. So then the farmers who had formerly owned big farms, which had all been confiscated by the government, bought up big tracts of land down in the Amazon basin and made new farms in what is now the state of Santa Cruz. Their new big farms are what currently feed the whole country and are what the new communist government wants to confiscate and break up into little farms and redistribute to all of the poor Indians who can't make a living on the little farms that their fathers got back in the 50's. Obviously these big prosperous farmers don't want their property confiscated again.

To make matters worse and even more volatile, EVERYONE in the country knows that the current president, Evo Morales, was put in place by Hugo Chavez in his bid to unite all of South America under one communist government ruled by himself, the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar. Evo, just like his daddy Hugo, and his granddaddy Fidel is doing everything he can to make himself dictator for life over Bolivia. The "rebels" down in Santa Cruz are doing everything they can to protect themselves from him. While we were living in Bolivia, Santa Cruz even appealed to Brazil to annex them away from Bolivia. I don't blame them. If I lived in Santa Cruz I would be taking up arms in defense of my property too.

By the way, I see the events in Bolivia as the road map for the path on which the US is currently traveling. When Barack Hussein Obama is our president, I look for our government to implement all of the same "progressive" reforms that Evo, Hugo, and Fidel have implemented. And then we'll see what has to happen to preserve our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

The communist experiment in the Soviet Union was a spectacular and well-documented failure, as were all of those in China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, practically all of Africa, etc. etc. And YET... we currently have "democratically elected" socialist (= communist) governments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Venezuela, Russia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Spain, and nearly all of Western Europe. Did no one in any of those countries ever read anything about history?!

And even worse - all three of the candidates to be president of the United States are avowed socialists! They are all promising us (due to popular demand) socialized medicine, socialized retirements, socialized housing, socialized utilities, socialized transportation, etc. etc. How is that even possible? How ignorant are we? I am more ashamed of us as a people, for our ignorance, than Michele Obama ever thought of being. We are NOT the America that the world thought we were; this is not the America that our grandparents endowed us with.

Arches National Park

We’ve just returned home from a weekend (May 2-4, 2008) with the Hansens at Arches National Park over in Moab, Utah. We’ve been meaning to go over there for years, and we finally made it. We left after school and work on Friday afternoon – the drive is about 333 miles each way – so we didn’t arrive in Moab until about 10:30 at night. We stayed at the Super-8 motel, so it was nothing fancy, but it was a fine place to sleep, especially since the town was booked up with various events.

We got up dark and early on Saturday morning, had the continental breakfast at the motel (juice, donuts, and granola) and headed over to the park. Even though the sky was clear and sunny, the day was relatively cool; with our wet cool spring this year there were wildflowers in bloom all over the place. In the park we made a whirlwind pass through all of the premier sites, starting with the overlook of Park Avenue, a little trail named after the towering skyscrapers in Manhattan. At the other end of the Park Avenue trail we stopped and took a photo of some rock climbers scaling one of those giant red cliffs. Then we drove up the road a bit – of course, I made Robert stop every mile or so to take photos of this amazing place, with its myriad arches, starter arches, fallen arches, impossible rock towers, and “Petrified Dunes” – to the Balanced Rock, which looked a bit like a giant natural Moai (from Easter Island;) we took the walking path all the way around the rock – it’s only 0.3 miles.

Just beyond the Balanced Rock we turned off, drove past the Garden of Eden, and parked at the Windows Section. We took the 1-mile trail over to see the Turret Arch and the North and South Windows; I don’t know the difference between an arch or a window, but they were all very cool to see. From there we took the short drive over to the next stop, and took the 1-mile hike up into the Double Arch, with two giant arches joined at one end (like a “Y”.) There are a couple of caves next to the Double Arch that we hiked up to also – they were cool looking, but not much to see inside. From our perch up in the Double Arch, looking north, we could see what was called the Cove of Arches, with several other smaller arches – there were arches everywhere we looked. In fact, there are 2000 documented arches in the park, and I don’t suppose we saw more than about 1% of them.

From there we drove over to the Delicate Arch viewpoints (Delicate Arch is the one on our license plates) – the lower viewpoint just 100 yards from the parking lot, and the upper viewpoint about ¼-mile hike up the hill from the parking lot, where you can see the arch beautifully silhouetted across the canyon. We saved the hike over to the Delicate Arch itself for the next day. On our way back out to the main road we passed the Pot Hole Arch – an arch that’s oriented like a basketball hoop.

Then we drove up to the end of the road, to the Devil’s Garden, a 7.5 mile walk that starts off by threading between these huge red sandstone towers. The first stops, not far up the trail, are the Pine Tree Arch (so named because it has a Juniper Pine tree growing in it) and the Tunnel Arch (kind of a double arch, which is thick like a tunnel.) A little further down the trail you see these huge red sandstone elephant heads, like elephants on parade in a petrified circus. Then comes the huge and much photographed Landscape Arch – impossibly thin as it spans over 300 feet from base to base. You can’t get too close to the Landscape Arch since a huge chunk fell out of it a few years ago, so now they have it fenced off, in case the rest of it decides to come raining down. Here we found a nice patch of shade, backed up against a large cliff-face and had our lunch. Then, right on the path a little further along, we came to Wall Arch – it’s like an arch in a large stone wall. Further along the path there are two spur trails; we took the left one first, to Partition Arch, a double arch, from which you can see down on the main trail. The second spur (back to the fork in the road and then to the right) led us to Navajo Arch; this arch is halfway buried in the sand. Then we hiked on top of a little 5-foot-wide backbone of sandstone (with some tourists behind us crawling on their hands and knees) until we came to the Black Arch, so named because it’s silhouetted against a black wall of sandstone behind it. Around the corner (and over hill and dale) from there we found the Double-O Arch, which could just as easily be called the Figure-8 Arch since the two arches were stacked vertically rather than horizontal from each other. There were some crazy guys walking along the top of the top arch – very much against the rules. From there you can either return the way you came, which is the most common choice, or take the scenic route called the “primitive loop” which takes you down below all of the rocks over which you’ve scrambled to get this far. On a little spur trail off of the Primitive Loop, there is the Private Arch, which is the only arch on the return via the primitive loop.

All told we hiked around 10 miles that day, which was plenty for my poor knees – about my limit for one day. I’m glad we went early in the day – not only was it cool, but the crowds all seemed to be behind us. There were lots of people still pulling in to the park as we were leaving. When we’d done all of the hiking and site-seeing that we could for the day, we headed back to Moab and the hotel where we spent about an hour in the hot tub soaking the kinks out of our sore muscles. That evening we went to a casual steak house for Annie’s birthday dinner (although her birthday was really on the 4th.)

On the morning of the 4th, we got up dark and early again, and headed back to the park for a couple more quick sites. First I dropped Robert, Kody, and Leslie off at the Park Avenue Trailhead and picked them up at the bottom of the hill (about one mile later.) Leslie said that the hike was through these huge tall rocks that looked like the skyscrapers of Manhattan (hence the name “Park Avenue.”) While they were hiking I took some photos of Fallen Arch, which is now some big rocks where they surmise had been an arch or two but have since fallen down. Then we hiked over to Delicate Arch and passed two other less-famous arches along the way. It was a three mile round trip hike of mostly up on the way there and then mostly down on the way back – I huffed and puffed all of the way up (it’s a good thing I work out every morning) and then winced at my arthritic knees (still sore from the day before) all of the way down. Since it was early we practically had the place to ourselves – it was great. We took pictures of the arch, in front of the arch, under the arch (see photo above), and even risked the steep slickrock on the backside to take pictures behind the arch. On our way back to the car we took a little detour to see some petroglyphs of Indians on horses, with dogs, chasing Bighorn Sheep – they were cool.

All told I took nearly 200 photos. We passed a whole bunch of tour buses arriving in the park as we were on our way out – perfect timing for us. After checking out of the hotel, the Hansens decided to head straight home, but we decided to have Annie’s birthday brunch at Denny’s right next to the motel before driving home. From there we drove straight home and thankfully, although I got really sleepy, the drive was uneventful. Here at home we found everything in order, so we can count this as another successful vacation trip.

Cancun Spring Break 2008

We spent our Spring Break week of 2008 in Cancun, Mexico, and here’s a blow-by-blow of our adventure:

Vacation prep started well in advance of the actual trip, back in January. It started by picking a destination – we chose Cancun this year because our buddies, the Hansens, have been several times and really wanted to go together this year; it sounded like fun, so we started shopping trips. Our shopping consisted of surfing different options on the internet, starting at Travel Zoo (at: http://www.travelzoo.com/,) which led us to Book It (at: http://www.bookit.com/,) which led to a pretty great deal on an eight day/seven night stay at the Marriot Casa Magna with airfare from Frontier Airlines.

So, on Saturday, March 8th, we got up at 2:00AM, after a brief night’s nap, got showered, loaded up the car (having packed the night before,) and headed out to the airport in Las Vegas. We flew Frontier airlines – I think it was my first time with them – the flights were just fine, but the check in at the ticket counter was painfully slow. We were traveling with the Hansens but it turned out that they were actually on the 7:00AM flight instead of the 6:00AM flight with us, which we only figured out after we both had our boarding passes. Oops. There was a bit of a snafu with the gate assignments, but at the third gate to which we were sent we actually found our flight all ready to board. We had a brief and thankfully uneventful layover in Denver, Frontier’s major hub. In Cancun we cleared immigration after a loooong line, reminiscent of Miami (hint: go to the line all the way to the right, in both places), found our bags, and passed through customs with a green light. Whew! Outside of customs we were accosted by helpful “tourist information” agents who were really touts for timeshare hotels – we only wasted a minute on them before excusing ourselves. The transfer to the hotel via Best Day tours, which we’d paid for through the Book It website, was at the far end of the hotel bus area, but we found them without any problems and they took us to our hotel in short order. We found that Cancun was pretty busy that week, but not as bad as it would have been next week when the rest of the world takes their Spring Break. As I mentioned before, we stayed at the Marriott Casa Magna, which is a five star hotel/resort out on the “hotel zone,” a narrow strip of beach between the sea and a lagoon, just east off of downtown Cancun. Two hours after we checked in to our hotel and got settled in to our room, the Hansens caught up to us there at the hotel in Cancun. By then it was so late that we barely managed dinner at the “La Shrimp Bucket” across the street from the hotel (fairly nice place, but with small portions and very expensive) and a walk up and down the beach outside our hotel’s back door before dropping dead in bed after a 22-hour long day.

On the 9th we slept in as late as we could, which turned out not to be very late after all. We got ready for the day, grabbed a McDonald’s breakfast across the street (the hotel wanted $20 each for the breakfast buffet), and headed into the center of town to “Mercado 28” where they have the arts and crafts market. While the rest of us shopped souvenirs, Katie and Kinsey got their hair braided. We ate lunch at a little almuerzo booth at the market there – it was yummy. We didn’t end up buying very many souvenirs because the prices there in Mexico, at the heart of the American tourist zone, were so high (at least compared to prices in Bolivia, Bangladesh, and India.) Then we walked around the downtown for a bit, while Robert and Palma reminisced about their adventures as refugees during Hurricane Wilma two years ago – we even visited the hotel where they hunkered down for a week while the storm raged all around them. From there we walked over to Wal-Mart where we bought groceries for our breakfasts for the coming week. That night we actually ate dinner at the hotel restaurant and used up the $100 food voucher that came with our airline/hotel package deal - $100 doesn’t buy much at the Marriott and if we were to do it over again I’d have just gotten the all-you-can-eat salad bar which seemed to be the best value for the buck.

On the 10th we got up and headed straight for the beach, where we spent the whole live-long day. It was a little cloudy, pretty windy, and the sea was very rough, so the hotel was flying their “red flag” which means “no swimming.” So we amused ourselves by finding and collecting interesting sea shells as they washed up on the shore. You had to spot and grab them quickly, before they washed back out with the same wave that had brought them in. We found a lovely selection of shells that are now displayed in our living room (come over and check them out.) That night we caught the local bus and went back downtown for dinner – we ate at the “La Parilla”, a Mexican Grill, and had a very yummy dinner. We all ordered something different and then traded tastes – everything was good.

On the 11th we got up early and took a tour bus to Xcaret, the eco-Disneyland of Mexico. Xcaret is really a Mayan archeological site with a lot of extra attractions built around them. We bought our Xcaret ticket and transportation package deal for $107 each at the little ticket booth at Mercado 28 – Best Day tours wanted $150 each for the same package deal. We opted to start the day with a swim through the underground river – included in our package deal – the whole Yucatan peninsula is a honeycomb of underground rivers. Then we caught a boat out to the barrier reef (second only to the “great” barrier reef off Australia) where the four of us did “snuba”, which is like SCUBA diving except that the air tanks aren’t strapped to your back, they float on a raft on the surface and you have a 20-foot long air hose which both limits your depth and gives you a tether to the surface. So, instead of needing a week to get certified you can go diving with about five minutes of training. While we were under the water we saw an octopus, a 5-foot barracuda, and a couple of sea turtles, as well as lots of little colorful fish and coral. It was well worth the extra $50 each for the significantly enhanced experience. Then we went back to the beach and did a little snorkeling, but it just wasn’t that thrilling after the snuba adventure. Then we wandered around the park, checking out the butterfly garden, the jaguars, manatees, dolphins, and the Mayan village (where they did this whole big ceremony production.) That evening we went to their two-hour cultural show, where they demonstrated the ancient Mayan ballgame, as well as songs and dances from all the states of Mexico – it was really well done.

On the 12th we had another lazy day at the beach, lounging in the sun and shade and collecting sea shells – it was luxurious. That night we went back into the center of town for another round at La Parilla and a few more groceries at Wal-Mart.

On the morning of the 13th we hooked up with Helaman Tours (our bishop recommended him after taking his tour of Tulum from his Caribbean cruise back in January) and headed out into the jungle to see the ruins at Chichén Itzá and Ek Balam. The attached photo is our little group of eight in front of the pyramid at Chichén Itzá. The ruins were great and Helaman gave us an LDS oriented tour, pointing out all of the things that you’d only understand if you considered the Mayans in the context of the Book of Mormon (bearded white god, crucifix, horses, elephants, paved roads, broken hearts, Solomon’s temple, LDS temple signs and symbols, etc.) – it was really great. Chichen Itza was every bit as spectacular as the photos show (although it’s disappointing that you can’t go inside the great pyramid anymore, nor can you climb them.) The real highlight for me, however, was the newly excavated ruins at Ek Balam. There we not only got to climb the big pyramid/temple, but they also had some terracotta figures and painted plaster walls that were amazing. Helaman gave us a really great deal – just $300/day for each family of four, which included transportation, food, water, and park admissions. (See: http://www.helamantours.com/.)

We had Helaman take us out again on the 14th to see the ruins at Cobá and Tulum, some more great ruins. Cobá is the ruin complex where they found the Mayan calendar that ends in the year 2012. Also on the 14th we got to go swimming in a cenote, one of those limestone sinkholes that are filled with water and connected to all of the underground rivers. The cavern came complete with stalactites on the ceiling and the water was so clear that you could see the bottom even though it was too deep to reach even when Leslie (our best swimmer) dived down to try and touch it. We also went swimming on the beach at Tulum since it was our last day in Cancun and the first day that we could swim in the ocean – it was very lovely. I was so impressed with the things we saw on our LDS version of the ruins tour that, while it’s still fresh in my mind, I’ve made a PowerPoint presentation of my photos along with the scriptural references in case I’m ever asked to give a lesson or fireside on the subject.

Then, alas and alak, Spring Break ground to a halt and on the 15th it was up at 3:00AM, after a brief night’s nap, and we flew back home. We arrived here at home all safe and sound and we found everything shipshape (no robbery, no broken pipes, etc.) so we can count this as another successful family vacation trip.

Why I'm Opposed to Universal Health Care

The following exchange is extracted from an e-mail discussion with a friend of mine who is in favor of Universal Health Care, as proposed by all of the current presidential candidates. I broadcast this because I'm shocked and appalled at how willingly we, as a country, are willing to abandon the free market system that has made this country prosperous and are embracing the socialist system that has been exposed as a flaming failure in every instance, including in the former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and all over Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

My friend wrote: "On universal health care you did not look at the successes of Canada, Sweden, France or Great Britain.....which has free health care, and some private you pay for doctors on the side. The people I know from Canada love their system and do not understand when American politicans attack their system. I have been told by Americans who have traveled in France that the health care is free even for tourist that the state takes care of everything. As for Cuba from what I have read their health care is one of the bests at least for the average Cuban. I do know the Soviet system was a total failure and you would know better about Boliva (however an American teacher here whose wife is from Boliva and they have a "large" home there and claims that all of his dentist work is extremely good but cheap. So I do not know what to say)."

To which I responded: "My uncle, from Canada, is the one who told me that Canada's health care system is "broken". He sent me the following link to a short video that details some of its shortcomings: http://www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php. In case you don't have time to watch it, what the video explains is that the healthcare system in Canada is overloaded to the point that people are dying while waiting in the queue for their turn to get required surgery from the overloaded but underfunded medical centers and so are coming to the US to buy their life-saving surgeries. I've read similar articles on CNN.com about the health care system in England as well.

And according to my many Bolivian friends who have been to, worked in, or were educated in Cuba, their healthcare system is horrific, the fictional movie "Sicko" notwithstanding. One Bolivian friend sent me the attached PowerPoint file with photos from Cuba's hospitals. They're truly nasty. (Sorry, it's not attached to this posting - let me know if you want me to send it to you - or you can check out some facts on the following website: www.therealcuba.com. In fact, the attached photo of one of Cuba's premier hospitals is from that website.)

As for Bolivia's healthcare system, it's two-tiered. There are the "free", public clinics that will remind you of those on the reservation (as I knew them in the 70's - maybe they've improved.) Anyway, in Bolivia they're really bad. BUT, for those of us who were relatively wealthy, we could afford to visit the very best private doctors in the country for a very reasonable fee and on very short notice. I remember taking my kids to the dermatologist - he was US trained, spoke English, was located right in my neighborhood, had all the latest equipment, and when I called for an appointment the receptionist told me that if it was an emergency we could get in that same day but otherwise we would have to wait a day or two (compared to here in the States where an emergency might get you in to the doctor that week, otherwise it'll be months away.) Anyway, for the $25 fee, we got the office visit, a couple of follow-up visits, and some medicine. It was great. But, you have to be "rich" in Bolivia to afford a $25 doctor bill. We had similar experiences with the dentist and pediatrician in our neighborhood too.

So, given what I've observed and read, I wouldn't trade our current free-market system with ANYONE in the whole world, certainly not anywhere in Latin America, Africa, or Asia, AND I wouldn't trade places with anyone in Europe. I haven't seen anything in my travels in Europe that I'd like to emulate in our country.

And I certainly don't think that the government should steal money out of my and my kids' pockets to pay for healthcare for all of the former juvenile delinquents who were too cool for school and chose not to study and work to enter a career that includes health insurance.

Further, given the (lack of) quality at the VA hospitals, I certainly don't want the government to provide me health care. If they can't take care of our veterans, they certainly won't take care of me or my kids.

So... feel free to enlighten me if you think I've gotten any of my facts incorrect.

New York Trip – New Years 2008

How was your Christmas this past year (2007)? Here at the Jack house our Christmas was really short – we got up early Christmas morning, got our Christmas phone call from CJ in Bulgaria, opened up our Christmas presents, ate a lovely Christmas breakfast, and then at around noon we headed off to the airport in Las Vegas for our week-long vacation to New York City. We had originally booked our flights (way back in September) for the 26th, using our frequent flier miles, but later on we got bumped up to the afternoon of the 25th. I was a bit worried about having to extend our hotel for a day earlier, but it turned out that it wasn’t a problem since we already had our room booked for the rest of the week. We drove the two hours to Las Vegas without incident but at the airport we found the regular parking lots all full, so we followed the signs to a huge overflow parking lot temporarily located in a huge vacant lot between terminals 1 and 2. That turned out to be a good thing for us – it saved us $100 in parking fees. Once in the airport we got our boarding passes just fine and then headed off to pass through security – the lines at security were surprisingly short, but excruciatingly slooooow – the nimrod TSA man in charge of cross-checking ID’s and boarding passes was making a big production of every single person that was flying that day – I think he was mad that he had to work on Christmas day. But, after much delay we passed through OK and he didn’t even notice that Kat’s name was misspelled on her boarding pass. Out at the gate our flight was delayed for some reason – I think it was held up at the airport from whence it came – I was starting to worry about making our short turnaround time in Chicago. In fact, I was already worried about making our connection in Chicago since there was a big snow and ice storm happening in the mid-west, and flights had been delayed and cancelled the previous day – Les and I had even warned the girls that we could end up staying overnight in the airport in Chicago. Finally, it was time to board the plane; just ahead of us in line there was a family that gummed up the works – it turned out that their adult daughter didn’t have a boarding pass (just her ticket) – how she got past the nimrod at security I don’t know. Finally she was taken somewhere to get a boarding pass and the rest of us were allowed to board. After pushing off from the gate, but before taxiing out to the runway, our captain told us that we had to go back to the gate to take some people off of the airplane. It turned out that the family of the young lady without a boarding pass didn’t want to fly without her. Back at the gate, they deplaned, but before the crew re-closed the doors, they got back on WITH their daughter in tow – we had stalled long enough for her to get her boarding pass. So off we went, quite a bit late. Fortunately, it was just snowy enough in Chicago that our connecting flight was delayed even more, so we were able to make our connection just right. We landed at the La Guardia airport in New York City without any further incident, albeit pretty late (or early in the morning, as it were.) At the airport we found the taxi stand and took the next taxi in line – the driver was wearing a Punjabi and spoke with a Bangladeshi accent, so I started chatting with him. Turns out that he’s from Comilla, where I had done a lot of my work while working in Bangladesh back in the 90’s (we built a power plant there and I worked on bringing their electrical substations up to code), so I knew the area fairly well. Our driver took us directly to our hotel in a brief 20 minutes – there was hardly any traffic on the road at 2AM. Our hotel had our room all ready and waiting and we were more than ready to hit the hay. Our hotel was the Cosmopolitan Hotel Tribeca (http://www.cosmohotel.com/) in the downtown Tribeca area; it’s where Annie stayed during her trip with the model UN a couple of years ago. We picked it because it’s not only affordable, but it’s also very convenient to public transportation (several subway lines and a bus route.)

On the 26th we slept in a bit, due to having arrived so late, and to help acclimatize ourselves to the two-hour time difference. We only had one shower for the four of us in our room, so after I got the first shower I ran down to the street, to the store under the hotel, and bought us a quick breakfast of New York bagels and a carton of OJ. Then our first order of business was to go up to midtown to see the Empire State Building. We caught the subway right outside our hotel room – our first stop was at the vending machine where we bought each of us a MetroCard (see: http://www.mta.info/metrocard/) – it’s like a credit card that gets you a ride on either a bus or a subway. Each ride costs $2, or a one-week unlimited ride Metro pass is $24, so we were going to break even with the unlimited MetroCard by taking just one round trip each day. Anyway, armed with the free maps of the subway and bus system from the hotel lobby, we found our subway stop easily, and then a quick check of the subway exits got us to within a block of the Empire State Building (http://www.esbnyc.com/.) There was a long line at the entrance, but we got in line anyway and decided to wait our turn. The whole time we were waiting there were hawkers trying to talk us into catching a movie while we waited, (for some additional fee,) but we decided to just wait for the elevator ride instead. There are three lines at the Empire State Building – one (a long one) for the security checkpoint, another (a short one) for the ticket booth, and then another one (a long one) for the elevator itself – all together we spent the standard two hours waiting in line (the week between Christmas and New Years is certainly peak season in New York.) Once at the ticket booth we opted to buy the CityPass, which comes with tickets for six different attractions, with a few extras thrown in, for about half the price of regular admissions (see: http://www.citypass.com/city/ny.html?id=Z7JhdmKo.) I had actually shopped various pass books on-line, but the other passes cost considerably more money and came with a lot of attractions that we didn’t want and weren’t going to see. Our first ticket that we used was for the Empire State Building itself, and the extra item that came with the CityPass was that we got the audio tour thrown in for “free.” The view from the top was about what you’d expect – pretty spectacular – we could see all of Manhattan and the surrounding area. The audio tour was very informational and a worthwhile addition to the view, I’m glad we got it. When we finished seeing the sites from above, we took a little walk up 5th Avenue to the New York Public Library. There we took a tour of the library – their last of the day. Their building is spectacular, their collection impressive, and their rotating exhibit of items from their special collections was amazing. Currently on display was a Guttenberg Bible and a copy of “A Christmas Carol” that belonged to Charles Dickens himself and includes his own handwritten notes in the margins from his personal readings on Christmas Eves. After the library tour we took a little stroll over to Grand Central Station; by then it was time for a very late lunch/early dinner, so we stopped in at the world famous Juniors deli where we enjoyed their famous matzo ball soup and pastrami sandwiches, along with their (famous) New York cheesecake for dessert. Refueled we headed further uptown to see the big Christmas tree and skating rink at Rockefeller Center, and then we moseyed on up 5th Avenue and looked at the Christmas window displays in the big fancy department stores; even those had long lines of tourists waiting to see them. We wrapped up our evening at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was beautiful by the way, and then caught a handy subway back to the hotel to get out of the sleet and snow. Day one in the city turned out to be a success – we figured out how to use public transportation, saw all of the major attractions on our list for that day, and didn’t get mugged. It’s funny – after so many years of bad press and being the “murder capital of the world”, I’d never considered going to New York City as a tourist. But in the spring of 2001, on my way home from Uganda, my flight to Las Vegas went through JFK and I sat with a bunch of New Yorkers – they told me about how much Mayor Giuliani had cleaned up the city and made it safe, and for the first time I considered going there as a tourist (AFTER having already tramped around Calcutta, Bangkok, Cairo, Katmandu, Dhaka, Hong Kong, etc.) In preparation for our trip, I’d done all of my research on-line, especially at the website: http://gonyc.about.com/, where I’d picked the attractions and restaurants with which to fill our itinerary.

On the 27th we got up a bit earlier than the day before, scarfed down our breakfast bagels from the deli downstairs, and then headed straight to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/) – the girls had been excited to go there ever since reading about it in “From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.” This was certainly #2 on our list of things to do in New York City (second only to the Empire State Building) and it was also included on our CityPass that we’d bought the day before. Plus, the CityPass got us past the long honking line of holiday tourists buying tickets. Knowing that we were going to spend the day in the climate controlled museum we checked our coats and bags – besides, the coat check is “free,” or at least included in the price of admission. The museum is huge, certainly requiring more than the single day that we had allotted to see it all, so we had to prioritize our time. We started out in the Egyptian section, Egypt being one of our favorite places. They had a lovely selection of artifacts, actual tombs, and even mummies from Egypt; but I’ve got to confess that it paled in comparison with the museums and tombs and mummies in Cairo, Giza, and Luxor, Egypt – I guess we should have done New York City before going to Egypt. But, at least I got to see and take my photo with the life-sized statue of the Pharaoh Horemheb – my own personal favorite pharaoh about whom I’ve drafted a whole book. After Egypt we decided to hit the sections with armor, medieval art, musical instruments, and then it was already lunch time, so Kat and I took a quick break and hit the hotdog vendors right outside by the museum steps. I’ve always heard about how great the hot dogs are in New York City, but I’ve got to say that they weren’t nearly as good or as filling (and certainly not as cheap) as those Hebrew National hotdogs that they sell at the food court in Costco. After scarfing down a quick dog in the light rain (with our coats still checked inside) Kat and I rejoined Les and Annie in the Japanese section – we did a quick walk through after they’d had a chance to really linger. Then we caught a couple more areas, notably the European, Assyrian, African, Roman, and Greek sections, by which time we were too tired to see more that day. I’d say we covered about half of the museum at best. So, after a full day in the museum, we headed over to Broadway and got in line to put our names in the drawing to try to win the opportunity to buy front row seats to “Wicked” – we didn’t win. We also decided that spending several hours in line for a show that we didn’t get to see wasn’t a particularly good use of our time, so we didn’t try that again. So we headed off Broadway, to the movie theater area, and got tickets to the new feel-good musical of the year, “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” starring Johnny Depp. Wow! Talk about your buckets of blood – I think it was too much for even me, and I have a pretty high tolerance for movie blood. After buying our tickets, but before the show started, we decided to get off the main drag and find a nice local place to eat. After walking down a couple of dark and dreary streets we found a little local pizza joint, named Don Giovanni’s, that still had a table open. The food was really good and it sure felt good to sit down and relax for a bit (and my teensie weensie hotdog lunch had well and truly worn off by then.)

On the 28th we got up even earlier (at 7AM NY time, 5AM UT time) and took a little walk around Chinatown, but the stores weren’t even open yet. But we did get to see the old folks out in the city park doing Tai Chi and the fan dance. So then we headed up to midtown to see the Museum of Modern Art (http://www.moma.org/); here again our CityPass got us past all of the big long ticket lines and we got in to the exhibits a good half hour before it was officially open. We made a bee-line for the upper floors (4-6) so we could have some personal time with the big, really famous masterpieces of modern art by Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollack, Gauguin, Serot, etc. I’ve got to say that they were awesome. Our entrance fees also got us one of those recorded self-guided tours, which were interesting to listen too (mostly – they did tend to get a little long-winded.) I’ve got to say, that as we descended floors into the ever more modern pieces I started losing interest really quickly. Some of the stuff in the “Contemporary” Galleries weren’t worth much of a look – the works displayed there certainly were original, but not all that “artful.” By early afternoon we found ourselves more hungry than interested in lingering over the modern art any more, and the galleries were getting progressively more and more crowded, so we decided to go find food. On our way out the door Leslie asked the guard for a recommendation of where to find good inexpensive food and he directed us to just across the street and down the block to a little deli where they sold food by the pound, the West 53rd Gourmet Deli. It turned out to be really good. After our late lunch we decided that it was too late to go very far, but still too early to call it day, but we noticed on our city map that we weren’t far from the United Nations, so we caught a cross-town bus and just managed to catch the last tour of the day. Annie had been there a couple of years ago on her Model UN conference, so she got to tell us a couple of things that they did and saw at that time. Since it was after the normal business day, we got to see not only the General Assembly Hall, but also the Security Council Chamber (that had been occupied earlier, to discuss the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.) Our intern tour-guide from Italy was very nice and did a fine job showing us around, but her overly naïve idealism was evident from some the answers given to equally naïve questions from our tour group. It’s amazing to me how uninformed people can be on the realities of this world – it’s almost like they HAVEN’T spent a decade living and working overseas – or maybe I’ve just become too cynical because I HAVE. When they shut down the United Nations building and kicked out into the cold and dark, we caught a bus across town to Times Square for dinner at the Café Edison – also known as the Polish Tearoom, in what was formerly the ballroom in the old Edison Hotel – it was really fun. It was also really good food and pretty affordable – I recommend it. After dinner we took a little stroll down Broadway before catching a subway ride back to the hotel and calling it a day.

On Saturday the 29th we headed out early to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I had purchased ferry tickets on-line prior to coming to New York so that we could guarantee tickets to the museum in the base of the Statue of Liberty (they have a very limited number of admissions each day), so we just had to buzz down to Battery Park to catch the ferry. It turns out that our hotel was only two subway stops from the end of the line, where the stop for Battery Park is located. After we hopped on the first train going south, we heard a garbled announcement informing us that only the first five cars could debark at the Battery Park station!? We didn’t know which car we were in, but we were pretty sure that we were further back than number five, so we resolved to move up during the one stop between where we got on and where we were getting off. We also decided to move between cars so as to eliminate the risk of getting left behind during our car switch. So, as soon as our train stopped at the next station, we opened the door between the cars and dashed forward, but only advanced one car before the train started moving again. $#*?! Then, after some deliberation, we decided to ignore the signs that said “no changing cars while the train is moving”, and started moving forward again. We moved forward several cars, passing only homeless people who obviously live in the subway along the way, until we finally made it to the sixth car and found the door locked! That’s when we arrived at the station and saw that the platform was indeed only five cars long and we were still back in the tunnel. Through the window we could see the other, better informed passengers getting off the train, and we were stuck. Leslie, never knowing when to give up, started knocking on the door, hoping that the conductor would take mercy on us and let us out anyway. Much to my surprise, he actually did – he opened the door between our compartments and let us on to the fifth car, from which we could descend to the platform and head out to Battery Park. What a nice guy – taking pity on poor ignorant tourist like that! When we got to the ticket booth at Clinton Castle, we found that having purchased our tickets on-line allowed us to bypass a really huge line to buy the tickets on site – the will call window had no waiting. After picking up our tickets for both the ferry and the museum (see: http://www.nps.gov/stli/), we got in an even longer and slower line for the airport-type security before getting on the ferry to Liberty Island. The Circle Line ferry ride itself was fun, as it was turning into a gorgeous sunny day. We arrived on the island an hour or so before our scheduled museum time, so we caught the Ranger tour and lecture before going into the museum – that was nice too. When it was time to go to the museum (it turned out that they didn’t really care what time our tickets said and we could have gone into the museum whenever we wanted) we had to go through an ever more careful security screening. Les and the girls had to leave their purses in lockers outside the museum. It was fun seeing the museum and climbing the ten stories of stairs up to the top of the base of the statue, up to the feet of the statue itself. From Liberty Island we caught the ferry over to Ellis Island, to see the newly opened museum there. It turned out that there’s really not a lot to see there, as my ancestors were all in America before Ellis Island was the main immigration port (starting in 1890.) From there we headed back to Manhattan, where we took a hike up Wall Street, past the huge bronze bull smothered in tourists getting their photos taken, to Ground Zero, formally home of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Anymore there’s just a huge hole in the ground, crawling with construction workers busily building the new World Trade Center. Across the street we stopped in at St. Paul’s Church (where President George Washington had attended Sunday meetings while the capital of the U.S. was in NY) and looked at all of their 9-11 exhibits. St. Paul’s was used as a rest area during the rescue operations on 9-11 and only recently returned to duty as a church. From the Financial District we caught a subway up to Chinatown, where we ate some yummy food at the small but very popular Great NY Noodle Town. After dinner we wandered around Chinatown, checking out the sites and shops – it was nice, but not as exotic as, say, Hong Kong. We bought our standard set of souvenirs: a Christmas ornament for Leslie, keychain for CJ, statuette for Annie, spoon for Kat, “I ♥ NY” t-shirts all around, and these great huge confetti crackers that we just had to buy after seeing a shopkeeper demo them, filling the sky with confetti for minutes on end.

On the 30th we got up early and went to the American Museum of Natural History – see: http://www.amnh.org/) – also included on our CityPass. The pass included admission to the museum and to the show at the planetarium, “Cosmic Collisions.” The planetarium show was very interesting, explaining how the Earth and moon were formed by collisions, where different space rocks came together at precisely the correct angles and velocities and formed our perfectly balanced world and satellite, so as to give and preserve human life. What a miracle. After the show got out I asked my daughters if the scientific explanation of the creation convinced them to be atheists and abandon the notion that God was involved in the process. They told me that it was quite the contrary and that after seeing the skill and precision involved in the creation process, that the hand of God was even more apparent. I had to agree with their assessment. From the planetarium we headed up to the fourth floor where we enjoyed some world class dinosaur fossils – they certainly had things that I’d never seen before. We also took in their exhibit on “Mythical Creatures”, which explored the scientific basis for such mythical creatures as dragons, unicorns, mermaids, etc. From the fourth floor we worked our way down stairs, stopping in at reptiles, primates, Africa, Asia, North America and under the sea. We also saw the running H2O exhibit, which was really pretty boring – and I have a huge tolerance for didactic museum exhibits. We got to see a lot of old stuffed animals from all over the world – it was classic. It turned out that we spent the WHOLE day there – from opening to closing – only going out briefly at noon to scarf down a quick street-vendor hotdog before returning to our rounds. When we left the museum it was dark and cold and all of the other sites in town were closed, so we went looking for dinner. We ended up down in Little Italy where we ate some pizza from the oldest pizzeria in the United States, in an ancient restaurant called Lombardi’s (featured on both the History and Discovery Channels – see: http://www.firstpizza.com/.) The pizza was really good, so I’d recommend it.

On the 31st, our last day in New York, we went up early to the Guggenheim museum of modern art. Their famous Frank Lloyd Wright designed building was under wraps, getting its 50-year facelift. The admission was covered in our CityPass booklet, so we got to jump to the head of the line, where we picked up an audio guide, took the elevator to the top, and walked down the spiral exhibit hall down to the ground level. Their current exhibit, Richard Prince’s “Spiritual America” was a real disappointment – not just because it was “modern” but because it seemed to be largely the work of other artists all cobbled together (in fact, the museum’s guidebook states that “his art is pilfered directly from the image bank of popular culture”) – we only spent an hour there – I’d say it wasn’t worth it if the price of admission hadn’t been essentially free with our CityPass. From the museum we took a little walk through the southeast quarter of Central Park and saw the statues of Alice in Wonderland, Hans Christian Anderson, and Balto, and then stopped in for a quick lunch of very yummy burgers and fries at the hidden burger joint in the lobby of the Le Parker Meridien hotel. Just like I’d read, we had to ask the uniformed bellman to direct us to the hidden entrance to the burger joint, concealed behind the heavy black velvet curtain. The food was good, quick, and affordable, and it was fun to look at all of the celebrity autographs on the walls while we ate. From there we headed to Broadway to catch a matinee of “Spamalot” the musical version of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” I had bought the tickets on-line before leaving home, to make sure that we had tickets to at least one Broadway show, in case we couldn’t find anything still available once we got to New York – it turned out that that was a good strategy, given the high volume of holiday traffic in town that week. The show was funny (I even stayed awake through most of it), but not necessarily better than the movie. They had added in some extraneous music here and there, but the best song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”, it’s a real toe-tapper, was the one they swiped from their other movie, “The Life of Brian”. After the play we stopped in at Times Square to see if we wanted to watch the big ball drop and count down to New Years, but there were a million people there already (really) and we decided that we could watch the festivities better from our hotel room. Before going “home” we took in another movie: Will Smith’s “I Am Legend” which was fun to see because it was set in Manhattan where we had just spent a week site seeing. After the movie we pushed our way through the huge crowds moving in to Times Square and walked down Broadway to the Flat Iron building. By then we decided that it was time to catch the subway. We got out at City Hall (nearest to our hotel on that line) and then stopped in at our bagel shop to ask for recommendations for our New Years Eve dinner. We were recommended this little Italian place just around the corner, Gigino’s, which managed to squeeze us in, as we had the good fortune to show up just as another small family finished their dinner. The food was good, the atmosphere was great, the price was reasonable, and it was nice to finish up our week in New York with a great meal. After dinner we went back to our hotel room and shot off our huge Chinese crackers that we’d bought in Chinatown a couple of nights before – we really startled the other pedestrians in our neighborhood when we blew off the crackers at some random hour well before midnight. At midnight our bags were all packed up and ready to go and we were safely tucked in to our warm beds and watching the countdown in Times Square on TV like sensible New Yorkers (who didn’t want anything to do with all of the drunken tourists actually on-site.) We blew our little party horns at midnight and then turned off the lights.

Then, too soon it was January 1st and time to fly home. We had arranged for a car to pick us up at the hotel to drive us to the airport. In New York City they don’t allow cabs to be dispatched directly to hotels, but it turned out that there were plenty of them cruising the streets, even early on New Years Day. Our flights back to Las Vegas were totally uneventful and we arrived home safe and sound, without any problems, so we can count this as another successful family holiday outing.

Adventures on Canaan Mountain

On Saturday (November 10th) I spent the whole day four-wheeling with Robert and his nephew Kirby. We went up on Canaan Mountain, over above Hilldale. This particular ride is pretty dangerous, so we didn’t take our wives or any other passengers – strictly drivers on the four-wheelers – the last two times Robert went on this drive one of the other riders tipped over and had to go to the hospital for broken bits. Also, there’s some controversy about whether or not it’s legal to drive motorized vehicles on Canaan Mountain. The environmentalists keep putting up signs telling people to keep off, but the four-wheelers keep taking them down. I understand that the whole issue is tied up in court, so in the meantime people are spending their weekends out there like crazy.

So anyway, dark and early we drove out to Caine Beds, on the Arizona strip between Colorado City and Fredonia, where we unloaded the four-wheelers. Given that this was a dangerous ride we even broke out the helmets and wore them religiously. The first bit wasn’t too tough – just sandy hilly roads through the junipers and sagebrush. We could see Zion Canyon off in the distance to the North. Gradually the terrain got to be rougher, rocky and hilly. At one point Robert stopped us, sent Kirby driving up the hill while we waited, and then Kirby came walking back down the hill with a nylon strap with a hook on the end and he held down the front of our four-wheelers while we fought our way up the vertical bumpy hill one at a time – we did that several times. A few places along the way Kirby took the direct route up the face of a hill and Robert led me around a more gentle, but longer route. I wasn’t sure if I should feel relieved or insulted that he thought so little of my four-wheeler skills – after all, I grew up driving a motorcycle since I was about 8 or 9. But then I found out that driving a four-wheeler is different than a motorcycle – with a motorcycle, if you start tipping one way or the other, you just put down your foot to steady yourself – but you can’t do that on a four-wheeler – the vehicle is too wide and you’re too high up off the ground. On one of Robert’s round about ways up the hill, I tried to jump up on a foot-tall lip, which was pretty common, but at this particular place I was also turning a sharp angle to the right, which put one wheel up and one wheel down and me flying through the air towards the ground. Things went into slow motion for a split second as soon as I knew I was going over: I jumped free of the four-wheeler, landed on my left shoulder and rolled across my back and then back up on my feet in time to catch the four-wheeler just as it completed its 360 degree roll and was back up on its wheels again. So, I got back on, restarted my machine, and when I aimed the front tires squarely at the lip I was able to jump up without any further mishaps.

The scenery was very pretty and I took a couple dozen photos, but we really needed a full-time photographer following us to properly document the excursion. There was a lot of red and white sand and red and white sandstone, there were hills and rock-cones and slickrock formations. Up on top of the mountain we went to several overlooks – the first two, to the South, were looking down towards Hilldale. At one of the overlooks there were the remnants of some wooden machinery that the pioneers had built to lower lumber off the red cliffs from the forests up where we were, down to the bottom where they could be hauled into St. George and used in constructing the temple and tabernacle. Then we went to a couple of overlooks on the far side of the hill, where we looked north, down on Zion Canyon, Springville, and Rockdale. At one of the overlooks there was a huge sharp sandstone arch in the cliffs. The weather was gorgeous all day long - probably in the mid 70's - with a calm clear sky. It couldn't have been prettier.

By then it was lunchtime, so I had my ½ turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread and can of V8. After lunch we drove over to the ruins of the old pioneer sawmill. That’s where we ran into a group of young men that looked like they were from Colorado City (they all look like cousins because they are) and they were. In fact, when Robert asked them where they were from (a rhetorical question) they responded with “We’re pligs from Short Creek.” (Short Creek is the old name for the twin cities of Hilldale and Colorado City, before they were in two separate states.) I wouldn't have used the word "plig" myself - short for polygamist - because I thought it had negative connotations, but apparently they didn't think so. We chatted for a few minutes, discussing the relative merits of motorcycles, four-wheelers, Jeeps, and the new class of off-road vehicles that are somewhere in between (we have one at work for surveying – it’s a John Deere “Gator.”) While we chatted, the plig boys broke out their Bud Lites and lit up their cigarettes – I guess the only thing that they still have from the old Mormon Church is polygamy – they’ve certainly abandoned the Word of Wisdom (which proscribes alcohol and tobacco, among other things.) Then we started working our way back down the mountain – at one point we passed about twenty jeeps in a row – they were on an expedition to clean up the trash off the mountain (probably all the beer cans tossed off by the plig boys) and thereby justify their being up on the mountain.

Going down the really steep bits we had Kirby hook on to the backs of our bikes and hold us down as we went over the cliffs face first. On one spot that was pretty vertical the sandstone ran down into the sand at nearly a 90 degree angle and I didn’t know enough to gun the motor just as I hit the bottom and so my machine came to an abrupt halt when it hit the sand and sent me sprawling over the handle bars on to my right shoulder. And since I had my right arm under me, my right elbow popped my broken ribs back apart. Before I could recover, the four-wheeler ran over my right leg, but rolled back off it in a jiffy. I lied and said I was OK and we took off again, but I was more careful after that because each bump knocked the wind out of me as my ribs twinged – I found that if I took the bumps standing up, my knees could absorb the shocks and save my ribs, but my knees were pretty sore by the end of the road. Shortly thereafter we were going down another steep hill and Robert was so spooked (having seen me fall twice and I’m sure flashing back to the guy getting life-flighted last trip) that he had me go a little too slow down the hill. I had been using the engine to slow my descent, but made the mistake of grabbing my brake, which raised up the rear of the bike and tossed me over the handlebars for a third time. This time the hill was so steep that I leapt off the bike, over the handlebars, and landed on my feet, but then fell to my hands and knees. Then I felt the bike roll up my left leg and up and onto my back – fortunately Robert dashed back up the hill and pulled it off me before it smashed me too badly. I hopped back up and on the machine, it never even died, and we took off again. But by then Robert was so badly spooked that he had Kirby help us off every bad hill we drove off, which was OK by me. However, I felt bad that Robert even had Kirby help us over the uphill bits that weren’t so bad – I zoomed up the hill past him a couple of times just to show that I wasn’t shaken. But to be perfectly honest, I’m thinking that my adventurous four-wheeler days may be behind me – I think Robert’s may be too (at least, that's what he said.) We’ll probably stick to four-wheeling on level ground in the future, where we can have our wives perched behind us. Back home I felt much better after a long hot shower and some strong aspirin and the application of my rib bandage (I’m still wearing it today.) And that’s the story of my big excursion up Canaan Mountain.