Hawking my wares

Well some may find this tacky, but one, when did I care what people thought, and two, it's my blog so if you don't like don't visit.

I am selling my Yakima rack. I thought that most the people I know are outdoorsy people and most their friends are too, so why not hook up a friend or friend of a friend.

The Yakima rack has 48" cross bars, one King cobra upright bike mount, one Viper fork bike mount, one wheel fork, six SKS locks with the key, four q towers with q clips. This was on our Maxima so all you would probably need to change would be the q clips and it would fit on almost any car.

If you or someone you know may be interested you can email me at m4helm@comcast.net. I am selling it for half of what it originally cost me. However I don't generally buy affordable (nice word for cheap) gear so although they are a great deal they aren't something you can get at Walmart.

Let me know.

When will we learn??

I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers, but I don't care. Most people need to hear this.

So, this post comes on the heels of recently overhearing a couple of people in a public place talking about "the drought" being over. My inner rage-aholic wanted to crash the heads of these two people together so hard that the sound could be heard over a traffic accident. The drought is over he says. Yeah with all this snow we should be sitting pretty this summer says the other moron. When will we all learn that just because we are having a great snow year doesn't mean we are out the woods. It doesn't mean you should start watering your lawn three hours a day in March just so your lawn looks better than you neighbors. If you are that worried about looking better than some one else your lawn is the least of your worries. The snow could stop. It can stop. What if we didn't get any more good storms this year. What if it warmed up really early in the beginning of March. There are so many factors to our water situation here in Utah. We lose huge amounts of snow pack to early season high temps and evaporation. Yet I never seem to see a shortage of idiots wasting our water, my water. I love it when I pull into a convenience store and the lazy clerk is out there with a hose wasting hundreds of gallons of water spraying the dirt and garbage out of the parking lot. We wouldn't want him to burn any calories and get some much needed exercise using a broom now would we. I saw someone doing this at a well known health food store in Orem and made sure to bring it to the managers attention that how could a store that caters to, well, hippies, do such a non-environmentally friendly thing.

In the past few years I have started to become very water conscious. My wife has told me how a number of her friends have told her that they take two to three showers a day, take 45 minute showers, refill the bath numerous times while taking their much needed bath. What a huge waste of water and so many other resources. You have to reheat the water in your home when you use that much hot water and that is gross waste of natural gas just so you can take the shower you feel you deserve. The water most people waste is staggering. I will spare you the statistics, but think about not only all the people in our world that don't even have clean drinking water let alone hot water to bath in. Now think about the people in our own country, thats right, The United States of America that don't even have hot water or maybe even good drinking water. And you stand in your shower for 45 minutes because it feels good and you have rationalized that you "deserve" it. Now back to these people that over water their lawns, wash their car every week (can't have a dirty car, what would the neighbors that I am in direct competition with think), leave the water running in the sink when they get ready for the day. There are so many ways that we all waste water every day. So I decided to start being more open minded to listening to ways that I can help. Lets face it we live in a high mountain desert, the Great Basin Desert to be exact.

I guess I am posting this because I am so tired of the "oh, everything will be fine and work itself out" theory that seems to exist in the area we live in. Having lived between Utah and Salt Lake counties my whole life I have seen how much it has grown here. How many new people move here every year. Seen our foothills give way to the uppity upper class that just have to live on the hill on the east side to feel better about themselves. Now you can't even drive up there anymore and the wild life has no where to go.

If you are reading this and thinking that you are guilty of some of these things. PLEASE STOP. It will help us all. It will help your family. Every bit counts. If reading this pissed you off. Maybe your should think about why it made you mad.

Thanks for reading.

Our Guardian?

Rosy to some people can be intimidating.

To me, nothing says intimidating like snuggling up on your bean bag with your stuffed hippo.

I LOVE PROJECTS

So here is my latest project. I am a little excited about how well it turned out so I am blogging about it. This is a picture I painted for Rayce's room. It measures a whooping 48 X 72! I saw this cute cow picture in a book called "Cows going past". We checked out at the library once and I fell in love with it. The colors totally went in Rayce's room and I couldn't get enough of the polka dots so I thought that I would re-create. Mike thinks that I am a retard because I love working on projects so much. He would prefer just to pay someone to do it. Any way it turned out so much better than I expected and therefore I will continue to drum up random projects just for the fun of it.

Keepin' it real.

Twin tip skis suck.

They don't belong in the pipe.

They don't belong in the park on rails.

Grabbing your twin tip skis with poles going in every direction while in mid-air looks ridiculous.

If you are committing any of the aforementioned offenses knock it off you look like an ass.

Get real and either get a board or get back to some wicked fast K2 215cm MSL's and stick to the steeps and bumps.

Thats my rant and I don't want to hear any pro twin tip ski crap here.

More work than I signed up for.

Five years and thousands of dollars ago my friend Chris Dalley (my left in the picture on the phone) and I decided to start hunting elk. Between the two of us we have had 11 tags. We have only come close one other time to miss an amazing bull that eluded us into the trees and we were out of light.

On December 28, 2007 we finally had some luck. We got out of the truck at about 6:50 a.m. on a dark and balmy 10 degree morning to spook some elk that were a stones throw from us. We immediately started hiking hoping they hadn't gone far. Dalley and I had been watching elk in this area for about two weeks and they were always in the same spot. After about an hour of sneaking we finally got within shooting distance which was 400 yards and I took a shot. You hit her my friend Sean says. Hit her again. I did. Then the chase started for about half a mile where I finally put her down. I don't say this like I am some manly man that did what few men can or have done. I put her down to end her own physical suffering as well as mine mentally. If you have never shot anything that big you wouldn't understand, but it's very sad. It's gut wrenching. A part of you wants to take the shot back and let her go on her way living, but you can't. So you do the humane thing and put the beautiful animal out of her misery and promise her that not only do you appreciate her sacrifice, but you will appreciate every ounce of meat as you consume it for the next year. By doing so I felt that what I did was justified. Some might disagree. I am no trophy hunter. I don't care about the huge head on my wall. I don't care about bragging to the hicks at the gas station on my home from a successful hunt as they gaze in awe at the monster elk in the back of my pickup. Thats not me. I like to hunt. I like to eat what I harvest. I like to sit in the trees and watch even if I don't get the chance to shoot.

So after five years and literally thousands of dollars spent on food, gear, tags, fuel, trailers, guns, ammo, etc and at least 55-75 days off of work we got lucky. So as I cooked some of that meat after Dalley and I butchered it I thought to myself, self.........this is what a $200 steak tastes like. I LOVED IT. Now, if you are thinking to yourself, self..........maybe he will let me try some........bring your wallet.