An Open Letter To Wives
To the wives of mountain bikers; from the delusional, dirty, oft-distracted men you married. First thing first. Thanks. We ask a lot from you. You have been our crew at races, our nutritional experts, our sponsors, and our sounding boards. We know that such things were not always high on your list of Things-I-Want-To-Do-When-I-Get-Married, but nevertheless, […]
Life is Better Outside
Henry David Thoreau went into the woods to “front only the essential facts of life.” What then are the essential facts of life? I imagine they are a little different for each of us. But in the mountains, those differences melt into the lucid, uncomplicated reality of survival. Food, shelter, safety. Even in short bursts of outdoor […]
Saint George: Nothing to See Here!
In 1861 the Mormon church sent 309 families to southern Utah to establish what was called then the “cotton mission”. Many of the families sent south had had experience growing cotton in the South, and with the outbreak of the Civil War, Brigham Young felt it necessary to grow cotton. The Southerners in the newly settled Saint […]
Lance Armstrong: Too Big To Fail
In the fall of 2008 the United States government purchased assets from several financial institutions that were on the brink of collapse. The Troubled Assest Relief Program—TARP—and related bailouts, have cost as much as $7 trillion. TARP was the beginning of what has become an era of bailout economics. Private firms have been deemed “too big to fail”, […]
Libertarian Environmentalism
I was recently and disparagingly called a “libertarian environmentalist” because of my support for a free society, and my opposition to the SkiLink project. The term was used by a Utah Republican lobbyist who sees no problem with legislators of his persuasion bypassing existing law (at the behest of fellow lobbyists) to grant Talisker ownership of important, and public, […]
A Little Optimism
It’s easy to be cynical. National news is grim. It’s an election year. And here in in Utah, the winter has been perfunctory. But cynicism is tiresome. And anyway, spring is near at hand. And with it, all the brightness and optimism that follow in its wake. Baseball. Singletrack. The White Rim. And of course, summer. Cyclists are […]
Blurry Eyed
Camp Lynda is this weekend. Instead of chasing people around the St. George desert on mountain bikes, I will be home. Healing from cornea transplant surgery. I’m disappointed to miss camp. But I’m happy that I will no longer see the world like this: I know some of you are thinking that no matter how […]
