Hot Potato

Fat and sober. A wise man once used those words to succinctly sum up the goal of draconian liquor laws, none matched by Utah's. Bones and I recently wrapped up an assignment in Salt Lake City and the nightlife there can be summed up in one number: 3.2. As in the percentage of alcohol allowed in beer served on tap. In a place with one of the highest concentrations of delicious microbrews, brew pubs can't even sell their own beer (they have to sell it through a liquor store if it's above 3.2 percent). This spawns all kinds of weird menu items like the "full strength" beer category (Apparently if it comes from out of the country and is in a bottle it's OK. Sometimes.) and what look like regular restaurants calling themselves private clubs (If you're a member of a "private club" that club can serve you liquor.)

Despite these travesties, we tapped our limitless resourcefulness and found booze and full strength beer near a stop on the city's light rail line to get me a birthday drink or six.

We had some down time in Salt Lake, so we headed for a tour of Temple Square, a collection of buildings that is the center of Mormonism. If you take this tour, prepare for a hard sell. Our tour guides, Sisters Acevedo and Martinez explained that we could see anything we want — oh, except for the main temple, which is what everyone comes to see.
"It's sacred, not a secret," Sister Acevedo said.

The sisters took us to the square's church, the auditorium where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs and then the convention center, a blocky granite building that looks like it was designed by a blue ribbon panel of Soviet architects and science fiction writers.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Sister Acevedo said.

Then came the Jesus planetarium. I'm pretty sure that's not what the LDS Church calls it (I think Sister Acevedo called it 'The Rotunda') but that's the first thing I thought when we wound up a staircase into a round room with a 360 degree star scape, complete with all the planets and a 15 foot statue of J. Christ himself. The sisters asked us to please be quiet and respectful while we were read scripture. A booming voice came over the mic, explaining that he was the son of God and that he had come to rid us of our sins. The real question is: who gets the plumb assignment of playing J.C.?

At the end of the tour - keep in mind the only people on the tour were me, Bones, and some poor sap who had a long layover - the sisters announced they would be singing us a song. There was no where to run. They sang about Jesus, I tried to smile politely, Kerry stared at the floor. It was excruciating.

After the tune, they handed us a paper all about Jesus. It was blank on the back and the sisters said that was where we were supposed to write our thoughts about Jesus and then give it back to them.
"You really need to do it because if you don't, it will weigh on your conscience," Sister Acevedo said. We told them we'd get back and made a quick exit.

The only worry I have is if Grand Targhee will let us come back. Earlier I brought together a group of degenerate skiers and snowboarders to tear apart Grand Targhee, a western Wyoming ski area known for powder and fog (we got plenty of both).

Four straight days of powder were complemented by four straight nights of mayhem. We liberated antique sleds from our hotel lobby, got into a minor foodfight at the local watering hole and pretty much got ourselves on the don't serve list at the steakhouse (I'm not sure what made our waitress mad, but it could have been an intoxicated Marty (see photo) bringing a pitcher into the restaurant from the bar across the street).

Of all the great riding that weekend, the move of the trip was, sadly, not photographed. After a few pitchers one of my friends strapped into his snowboard at the top of the steps in our lodge lobby, rode down the stairs and crashed hard on his ass.

Oh, and I found out how cold a well digger's ass really is (see last post). The windchill was 30 below zero on top of the mountain one day — enough to give a well digger's ass frostbite.

This blog's not dead. Really. I swear. To prove it, here's something I heard on the ski lift the other day at our beloved local mountain, Bogus Basin:

"It's colder than a well digger's ass."

For the record, I checked the thermometer at the base of the mountain. A well digger's ass is no colder than 14 degrees.

Editors note: It was a long trip, so I'm going to break it up into several parts.

It was the end of a long journey. Anna and I were tired and stressed but we had finally made it — 20 feet to the check-in counter. The people in front of us had been waiting in the line for two hours. United did not bother explaining why a line of 12 people took two hours but, despite being assured they were holding the plane and we would make it, when we got to the counter, the harpy ticket agent said, "Oh, I can't get you on that plane, it's full."

"Uh, excuse me, who's in seat 12D, you know the seat on my ticket."

"We'll, we overbook flights and this one is totally full."

"That's nice, but it doesn't change the fact that we need to make a connection to Lisbon in Newark and that I bought this ticket several months ago."

Needless to say, I lost this battle (although later I won the war).

To make a long story short, several connections later (including flying three hours past Lisbon to Frankfurt to pick up a connection back to Lisbon) we arrived in Lisbon tired, pissed and hungry — a bad start to what turned out to be an excellent two-week trip across the Iberian Peninsula.

As we made our way up to our room the staircase filled with the smell of roasted chicken — churrasqueira, as the Portuguese call it. We b-lined it for the restaurant and split a whole, rock-salt encrusted and piri-piri sauce-covered chicken that saved our lives.

Portugal, as Anna pointed out, is a Heath-sized land. I never knew the Portuguese were so wee and bearded but, with my own facial-hair experiment underway, I fit in nicely and was often approached with questions in Portugues, which I replied to in broken Spanish and everyone lost (Lisbonians probably assumed Anna, who had to duck through several doorways, was my German girlfriend).

Portugal is considered by some to be Western Europe's slice of the Third World and somewhat deservedly so. Infrastructure is crumbly, though beautiful and historic, that drip you felt on your nose is probably from some old lady's recently washed underwear drying outside her apartment window and stray dogs roam the streets looking for a scrap of churrasqueira.

For four days Anna and I roamed Libson's tiled streets, climbed into the turrets of the castles built onto the city's rolling hills and sped throught the streets on turn-of-the-century trolleys while street urchins held onto the outside for a free ride, courting death with every poorly parked car we grazed.

What stood out most in Portugal, though, was a town we visited called Sintra, about 40 minutes outside of Lisbon. Due to some weird micro-climate that dumps rain on the area, the town looks like a rainforest with lush ferns growing next to moss-covered trees. On a hillside next to a windy road near the city center is weirdest place I've ever been to.

The Quinta da Regaleira is a sprawling hilly estate built by a Timothy Leary casualty who really liked Alice in Wonderland. OK, it was built by some demented opera set designer and there was no implication of drug inspiration but my explanation makes more sense. After winding our way through the trails of the estate's tropical garden, Anna and I found ourselves at the dank bottom of an upside down Tower of Babel. Yeah, I don't get it either but its pretty creepy winding your way down this tower, which ends up about 100 feet underground, as the daylight fades above you.

The rest of the estate was equally weird, connected by a series of unlit caves and narrow winding staircases puncuated by angry stone creatures and lush vegetation.

Less cool but more delicious was the meal we had in Sintra, which consisted of spicy pork and potatoes, copious amounts of insanely cheap wine and three power outages (fortunately after our food was cooked).

After Portugal we had planned to head to Granada (my mom's advice: bring a snack to the Alhambra) but we found out that the relative backwater of Lisbon offers no train service to southwest Spain. So we hatched what turned out to be a great plan b and took the overnight train to Madrid.

I rock a theme party.

Just in case you didn't believe me, here's pictures to prove that I did, indeed, tear the living shit out of my calf. If you're squeamish, don't look. Actually, if you're squeamish, do look, and make sure you have a witness to tell me what a wuss you were when you saw the photos. Enjoy.



Before




Here's a little shot to numb the pain. Oh, by the way, before it numbs the pain it's going to feel like a wasp is repeatedly stinging the inside of your gaping wound.




All better

I attended and reported on a soldiers funeral yesterday. The box listing all the Idaho war casualties was longer than the story.