It's ALIVE

To update those regarding the last post, Free Wheeler Pizza now has been revived.  Yes by no small effort of Herb Doom himself he has brought life back.  A fact I was able to exploit yesterday and once again enjoyed a BBQ Pizza like no other.

Thank you Herb for your efforts, may we be able to keep this alive for many years to come.  Long live the Garlic Roll

The day the Pizza died

Today I lost a long time friend.  Not a person, but this has been a stable in my family's life for 33 years.  Today the doors of the last Free Wheeler Pizza in Salt Lake City closed, probably forever.  My brother, Max from It's the Journey started working for this pizza place in 1978 (sorry to age you Max).  Over the years all three of my siblings worked there, and myself for 13 years.  Even after I left Free Wheeler, Max continued to do some small work for them.  The fact is that with the exception of about 1 year in the 80s Free Wheeler has employed at least one of my siblings, and Mrs Gearhead, for 33 years.  So when I say I lost a friend, Free Wheeler pizza is a long time family friend to us.
What makes this Pizza place so special?  The friendships gained there.  Yes, I would say the pizza is great, it is a sourdough crust with a nice spicy sauce.  The ingredients they offered were many and good quality, topped generously, but that was what made the customers enjoy Free Wheeler Pizza. However some of the best times of my life can be found in the 13 years I worked there.  Some of my most famous lines that I quote come from somebody who worked there.  I still hold some dear friendships that were gained.  The saddest part for me though, is the loss for my good friend Herb Doom who has put everything he could find in his life into Free Wheeler Pizza for over 20 years (again sorry to age you Herb.)  He has fought tooth and nail for those years to keep a legacy alive and serve to employ people who have character and life in them yet find they don't want to fit into the mainstream of life.  Free Wheeler has employed many types of people, college students, lifetime students, budding musicians, and those who either got fed up with corporate crap, or wished to completely avoid corporate crap.  Thank you Herb Doom for your years of service to Free Wheeler Pizza and for trying your hardest to keep such a legacy alive.

You will be missed Free Wheeler Pizza.

Political facebook shakeup

On facebook today I saw two different political responses to the earthquake in DC.  The irony made me laugh

"That was no earthquake, Obama's approval rating just hit rock bottom."

"There was a 5.8 earthquake in Washington this morning. Obama wanted a 3.4, but the republicans wanted a 5.8, so he compromised."

Staying green in brown

Today on my way to work I saw something new, there was this lady who was patrolling the neighborhood garbage cans in Salt Lake City proper.  She was on a Segway like three wheeled type scooter checking the brown garbage cans that are used for green trash (i.e. leaves, branches, grass clipping, tree trimmings, etc.)
  I guess she was making sure there was only green trash in these cans, so if you have one of the brown "green" garbage cans keep in mind, the tree trimming cops are checking them.
As for the T3 Motion scooter, I have been seeing those recently pop up around Salt Lake, apparently not only are the Salt Lake garbage patrol using them, so are the "metermaids" and the U of U "parking nazis."  I read a little comment made by "Dvice" about them here that I thought was funny.  I guess Segways are intimidating, although I think it's more that they are intimidating to the operators than the criminals.  And here I thought it was a step up to go from TWO wheels to THREE.

Barbequed Bacon = life's lessons.

Many years ago I spent a night with friends in Capitol Reef campground.  The next morning found us hungry and ready for breakfast, unfortunately we had run out of fuel for the camp stove.  The firepit in our campground had a griddle with it, so we decided to cook breakfast over the fire.  Bacon was definitely the order of the day.  To this day I have never had bacon taste so good, cooked over a fire on a griddle, this was lesson number one of this adventure.  So I thought why not try this at home on my bbq. So I put some tin foil over the grill and fired it up.  I put several strips of bacon on, every was looking really good.  I didn't calculate one thing, though, grease fire.  Yes, the grease off the bacon caught fire in the bottom of the bbq.  Ok, no major worries, I'll just shut off the gas and it will slowly burn down, but still cook the bacon in the meantime.  Ahh, no..   Then the fire decided to migrate up to the top of the tin foil.  Yeah, that was it, I started pulling the bacon off the grill and even saved several pieces before the fire on top got too high for my comfort of sticking my hands in the bbq.   I closed the bbq to help keep the fire down and waited a bit.   Five minutes later, I opened up the bbq again, it seems the grease had burned off, but there was no bacon left to save.  Here is the result of said bbq'd bacon, next time I do it in a more open situation.  Lesson two of the adventure.

THOR

Went and saw the movie Thor last night, I'm not gonna give a movie review on this with the exception to say it was ok. But I must share the funniest line I heard, as Thor exited our lead female character's bedroom in just jeans we hear from behind us some women exclaim "Jesus Christ". I think she liked how built he was.

Happy Birthday Charlie Chaplin

Thanks to Google and their desire to celebrate holidays and birthdays I found out today is Charlie Chaplin's birthday.  Well know for slapstick humor amongst the silent film world, I have an appreciation for this actor thanks to Max's 8mm film movie camera and projector he received when he was 12 or 13 for his birthday.  I have seen many clips and films of Charlie Chaplin, and never heard his voice until today.  Part of the search on him brought up this youtube, which in my mind speaks volumes.  The statements he makes here still stand true today and remind me that if we choose to ignore his words we are headed down a road to destruction.  For a man known for being silent, the power in his words are amazing.

Of all the places in the world.

I'm living in Utah, a pretty great state.  Yes this was our motto for a while some years ago.  Living in Salt Lake City in the spring can be interesting.  I have told people if I wanted some days in the spring I could go skiing in the morning and golfing in the afternoon.  I have not actually done this ever, but I know people who have.  The other thing I have heard is if you don't like the weather then wait ten minutes.  That has been today.  Yesterday I spent a good part of the day working on my car putting the transmission in.  I looked up yesterdays weather information, the high was 74 degrees F, or 23 degrees C.  This morning I woke up to snow on the ground, and today's high is somewhere around 35 F or 2 C.  It will snow, then clear up and be sunny, then snow again.  What makes this interesting is when you are up on the mountain benches you can see the valley and you will see these snow squalls going through the valley.  The great thing about this, no matter how many inches it snows on the driveway I won't shovel because it will all melt.  Our forecast for the next few days.
MON - Mostly Sunny with a high of 54 F or 12 C
TUE - Partly  Sunny with a high of 68 F or 20 C
WED - 30 percent chance of rain with a high of 57 F or 14 C
THU - Cloudy with a chance of snow and a high of 50 F or 10 C.

Yeah, if you don't like the weather today, just wait till tomorrow.


Here are pictures of the snow today.

adding to the family

So a friend of ours texted Mrs. the other day, apparently he has a few extra geckos, so we have adopted one, his name is Jumper.  The boys named him that because the first thing he did when I took him out of the cage was jump from my hand to my underarm.  Ended up inside my shirt, it was kinda funny.  The boys think he's great since they can hold him and have him walk on them.  Here are a few pics

Snow

We had a small snow storm last night, just 12" in less than 12 hours.  This is that heavy wet snow (glad I choose not to shovel after March 1st).  Here are some pics.

Double your Thematic Photo - TP 136

I have been extremely scarce for Carmi's Thematic Photos lately, but when I saw doubles I knew of one photo that I needed to post.  I apologize for being so scarce, but life has it's way of getting busy.  Mrs and I have sorta started a business, or at least a serious hobby, on top of all of the other projects in our live.  The most important project in our lives is the raising of our two troubles, who are seen here playing a video game, most likely Lego Harry Potter or Lego Batman or something of that sort.  Although there are 3 1/2 years between our troubles, they play very well together.  This seemed like a moment that needed to be frozen in history.

Using the scrap pieces of PVC pipe from a project I was working on a came up with new movie that I was going to introduce to Tim Burton, but Mrs thought Richard Pipehands just wouldn't fly.

Happy Birthday Ida

Today is my grandmother's birthday.  My grandmother was the quintessential Jewish grandmother.  She was brought up and lived most of her life in New York City.  This sign I feel is a perfect commemoration for her, Happy Birthday Ida.

The other side of the valley

As a continuation to my last post, another nice thing about the wind is it keeps the valley clear.  Here are some great shots from this evening's sunset from up by the University of Utah.  I was shooting with the 70-300mm lens (long zoom).  The first two pictures are of the mountains on the east side of the valley just south of the U of U.  The third one is the south end of the Salt Lake Valley.  The last four are of the mountains on the west side of the valley (the Oquirrh [pronounced oak-er] mountains), the last one is at full zoom.

Sunrise behind the mountains

I got up this morning around 6:00, looked at the thermometer it read 17° F (-8°C).  Went outside to clear Mrs. car so she could head to work (she goes to work, I get the boys ready, she picks them up, I get home late.) and found the wind was blowing.  By the time I left the house around 8:30 the temperature read 12°F (-11°C).  For us this is cold weather, we are used to highs around freezing or above.  However with the wind blowing the snow and the sun behind the mountains it made for a nice sunrise.

Curves - TP 132

This weeks Thematic Photo is curves.  For curves I give you some of my favorite kind of curves.  Mrs and I belong to a local forum.  One day I posted that following weekend we would be doing a photo shoot.  When you take a group of car people and promise to take pictures of their personal favorite car, you get a lot of cars.  We chose to drive up to the top of one of my favorite canyon drives, East Canyon.  This first shot has three of my favorite kind of curves, the cars, the road, and the mountains.  Keep in mind, you are seeing only a portion of the cars that were there.

This is a Nissan 370Z, the latest generation of the famous Z.  Just looks great with the mountains in the background.

I liked this photo because you can see Salt Lake City in the background and the similarities and differences in these two 240SXs.

Blue - Thematic Photo 131

Last weekend I went up to our property (or close to it) with my brothers.  This road trip takes us by Strawberry Reservoir, a man made lake that freezes over during the winter.  Every time we pass during the winter I question the sanity of the people there ice fishing.  Standing on a huge sheet of ice in sub freezing temperatures dropping a line in a hole you just drilled in the ice does not sound like a good time to me.  Fishing to me means short sleeve shirts, wading in water or hanging out in a boat, and actively casting and luring.  Transversely I have always questioned water skiing.  I just don't get the have your arms pulled out of your sockets trying to get up on the water and being yanked around a lake only to end up falling and getting water up your nose, or worse yet a high pressure enema.  Downhill snow skiing however I enjoy.  Ski down the hill and have a chair bring you back up, just be sure to dress warm.
Last summer while boating with some friends I saw this sport for the first time that is a combination of paragliding and water skiing.  You take a huge wind sail on a long rope, add water skis or a wake board, and let the sail pull you around. 
On the trip back from the property I saw this same sport but on the frozen lake, I believe the call this kite skiing.  This I think I could do.   Here are pictures of the kite skiers.  The first is group of them, the second one is a skier that has a lot of lift, I think it is cool the way he lifts off the ground.  The rest of them are a sequential set, as the skier with the blue kite goes by the other skier gets some good air.  I did not notice this skier doing this until I saw the pictures on the computer.