Great and mighty crickey.

I shall now relieve you of your wits for about the next while so that I might stupify you with my journey in the "outback" of Utah.

But first, a short interlude by a dude:

I had an interview with Unysis today. They're like Convergys, but a BILLION times better. And all I did was have a 10 minute interview. So hopefully they will hire my, that would be great. The only sorta problem I have is that I don't exactly have a way to get there. But that might not be a problem, but it currently is a problem. Oh, BTW, because you're all as big of nerds as I am. My typing speed is 47 WPM (*pausing for you to catch on if you didn't* *gives up hope for those who don't get it*). Yep. I'm a geek.

So, the trip. The trip was good until yesterday. That I shall elaborate on at the end when I write it on the fly. The next stuff is going to be from days ago when I wrote it in a binder (so primitive, my wrist didn't like it...)

So the following BOLD texts will be the subtitles of what I named the things that I wrote. I wrote them mostly as entries already for convenience. Because you care. You know you do, don't fight it. "Smile! Or else!"

True Wilderness

Monday, August 1st, 2005

So today I invaded another country.

...

Just letting that sink in because I'm serious. I know how I often joke about that.

Tresspasser. Unwanted Visitor. Invader. $10,000 fine if caught, all that jazz.

Naturally I didn't know at first, but I continued on once I found out.

I got a taste of mother nature in her purest, truest, form. Complete with the assortment of wildlife. Ground so pure that it's like sand under my feet. Trails cut by elk and deer, not by the feet or machines of man.

You have no idea that bliss for me.

No powerlines.

No houses.

No cars.

The only dampner was to know that just back over the hill, it was still there, waiting.

But so was Bigfoot. She's - just jumped up and interrupted me writing about her (we like to call that irony) - but she's also adorable. All 24 toes. (Yep - 7, 6, 6, 5. 24 toes = Bigfoot).

Civilization

8-4-05

Ok, so I decided to put an intermittent log before I fill you in on the sob story.

So I ran into a problem classifying civilization today. Those of you that have heard me gab on about it before remember that, to be civilized, a location MUST have a Wal-Mart (in the modern sense, anyways).

Traveling this far out from "mainstream" Utah (if you can ever use those words concurrently in a sentence) has produced a dilemna. Many of these "cities" don't have a Wal-Mart, McDonald's or anything else found in even the smallist municipalities (even the Russians have McDonald's!). It is fair to note, however, that they do have recognizable (or chain) gas stations.

Moving on. The real kicker for me was when we came accross a car lot (however small) and this "city" still lacked a stabilizing Wal-Mart. (And I was later further confounded by a SECOND car lot in the same area!)

Needless to say, I have increased the complexity of my scale on civilization, after some deliberation (naturally) and have come up with the following:

Type 0 (Village) - less than 50% of the population has a connection to the outside world. In the basest sense that requires a TV and/or! a telephone.
Type 1 (Hamlet) - 50% or more of the pop. with connection to outside world.
Type 2 (Town) - Majority of the pop. has connection to outside world AND important, non-national (non-chain like Wal-Mart, McDonald's, etc.) business, such as car lots.
Type 3 (City) - Internet is the key factor here. It's rather common (50% or more of population has AT LEAST dialup - if you can call that civilization, heh). You can find a Wal-Mart as well as other nationally recognizable businesses. Majority of buildings are lower than 3 stories tall (0-5 buildings). Layton is a prime example of this.
Type 4 (Metropolis) - Population is generally counted by millions of people. 5-10 Buildings is an average number of those with MORE THAN 3 stories. Salt Lake City is an example of this.
Type 5 (Name undetermined as of yet) - Numerous sky scrapers and other large and recognizable buildings. Extremely large population (2 million or more). L.A., New York, London, etc. are all examples of this.

All your tears are belong to us

Today, the 5th of August, 2005 (in case you didn't know)

So the only real damper on the weekend was that we got thrown out of where we were staying. Without elaborating a huge ammount, we were at a trailer park (of sorts, this is more like where you park your RV, etc. and not a trailer home) where my grandparents have been living at for a while.

Early in the morning the "manager" (for lack of a better term) basically went ballistic on my grandfather for a very small thing and after a bit of retalitory hostility and yelling, the guy threw us out, which is a huge shock to all of us because it's an idiotic thing (the wiring on a golf cart) and completely out of the blue and unwarranted.

So that's what we did yesterday on our "rest" day. We moved them to another camp, their old one.

The headline stems from the fact that you couldn't much tell the difference of what was happening here from a funeral. I've never seen that many older people cry and be solemn except at a funeral... So we left and that was it. And the huge sock in the gut had been that we had been an extremely tight knitt community all week until then.

So in my cynism I discovered one of the great lies of humanity: maturity. You don't ever really grow up, you just think that you do. But what really happens is that your toys get more expensive and the tantrums get more violent (though maybe maturity is the fact that they are less frequent). And I say that because I honestly couldn't tell the difference between their fighting and a couple of four year olds. After learning what it was about, I side with my grandfather (and this stems into something more than family, the guy's reaction is completely unwarranted) and exclude him with that. But I've never before witnessed someone so aged (50+) throw such a big fit and tantrum as that guy...

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Anyways, that's about it. Just wanted to let you know.

And if the next time you see me you have to blink and ask who I am. It's 'cause I have chopped my hair off. To natural lengths, of course. So now I am sick of writing and you are sick of reading.