She's Going To Kill Me For This One

You would think my wife might have a spirit of adventure, after all there isn't too many Chilean/Scottish couples around and combining that passionate/stubborn concoction together was a risk. But when it comes to the great outdoors that spirit of adventure is lacking.

One reason for this is she likes her high heels and flip flops too much, sensible walking shoes are not really part of her wardrobe.

She's also a desert girl which means when I am struggling from what I think is high temperatures but willing to plow on she is complaining of being frío and wanting to return to the car.

Then of course there are inevitable obstacles along the way like a closed gate on a hiking path, I come from a country where the right to roam in the wilderness is well a right, she has lived too long in a country where the right to bear arms is a deterrent to trespassers. I could almost understand her reluctance to move forward when she was wearing the wrong shoes, and there were closed gates to cross. I can explain it away as being the Latina in her as she gingerly climbed the gate whilst checking from side to side looking for policemen or crazed latino hating gun totting landowners, but when she heard barks in the distance ahead and wanted to return the car in case there were wild dogs or wolves ahead and the barks came from this fella here I just had to share.

Utah is a beautiful State, its just a shame that Salt Lake Valley itself has been spoiled by endless advertising billboards, freeways, and ill considered permissible development, not to mention all those fast food eateries peppered throughout the valley that I probably am guilty of dining too often. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to discover Salt Lake Valley before such development was allowed to take place because with the mountains to the East and to the West it certainly has the potential to be a lot more beautiful than much of it has become.

However it is fairly easy to get a picture of what Salt Lake Valley might have looked like about 150 years ago. It just takes a 66 mile drive out of the city and away from the freeway.

The weekend before last we took such a trip by making a point of visiting the Golden Spike National Historic Site. The site of the Golden Spike is the place where the Union and Central Pacific railroads joined their rails to make the first US transcontinental railroad in 1869. Anyone who has ever watched a Western should know the importance of the railroads in the shaping of the development and migration in the US, but its here (and I'm sure at many other points on the way) that you get to see how the land of the US shaped the railroads.

I'm sure as a land surveyor of the time before the railroads were built the undeveloped lands of the US screamed not only beauty but that of potential.

For the owners of the Central Pacific and Union railroads though it was nothing much more than an obstacle for a nice reward for whoever was able to complete the first transcontinental railroad. For the people who built it, mainly army veterans and Irish immigrants who worked for the Union Pacific railroad company and the Chinese immigrants who worked for Central Pacific it probably looked like something close to hell on earth or at the very least an impossible feat.

Although I can admire the way that such men managed to reshape the land to suit the purposes of their paymasters I for one am glad I was amongst their number.

 

Especially so when the railway station at Promontory Summit lasted less than 4 decades before being dismantled. The track seen there today was only relaid in 1969 to mark the centennial anniversary in 1969 and is actually only 1 and half miles long. Its actually original purpose has long had its day in the sun.

A finer more fitting monument for the work of the men might have been to leave the original track in place and have a working railroad on the site that so many muscles and backs toiled to build.

Why I Haven't Been Writing Much But Crap Lately

You might wonder why I haven't been writing as much lately. Well it seems that the online adverts for landscaping work took off. As soon as the weather turned for the better people started to phone up. The amount of interest from the adverts surprised even myself. I was expecting a slower but steadily increasing workload but no its really been gathering a head of steam the past few weeks. Last week was the best of the lot, I had enough work to make almost as much the wife, for the first time since I've been here. It felt good. I'm a man, I care about these things. We shouldn't but ego's are egos. I was thinking to myself a few more customers like this and I'll be making even more and then what happens, same week she's goes and gets herself a promotion and with it a pay rise, her second in a few short months I may add, to raise the bar again.

Ay, ay, ay - its enough to make me almost want to break into a Mexican song.

Seriously though, life is good. The only downside, most of the work seems to be coming in from the other side of the city, the side we just moved away from.

Blue Skies And Golden Light

It was probably just a few hours before that I said to the wife that I miss the golden orangy-yellow colours of the gorse bush in full bloom in the Scottish countryside when we went for a walk as the sun was starting to set when Utah did its best to replicate the golden hues with the light.

There might not be any rolling hills of green grass, there might not be any fields bordered with dry-stane walls, there might not be any flowering gorse bushes in the distance here suggesting that a Scottish summer is on the way, but even though none of that exists and this picture isn't all that interesting to look at the light at sunset on a night like this in Utah is pretty impressive.

It's Shite Being Scottish!

As I sit here stuffing my face with a damn good chocolate chip cookie I feel the need to appease the wife. You see she's get a little peeved at the fact that there is something in every day that reminds her that she is with a Scottish husband.

It could be as something as simple as watching a movie that just happens to have a Scottish character/Scottish actor/Scottish director/Scottish accent/Scottish song in it. Or we could be fast forwarding the adverts on the dvr and just happen to see a Scots Korean in full kilted regalia advertising Starburst or a Latino wearing a kilt for a wedding advert. Or it can be coming across a new young patient at the pediatric dentistry office in which she works called William Wallace. The Scottish links are everywhere and I think she's a little bit jealous of the fact that no one ever says to her "I have Chilean ancestry." I think she's starting to think that she lives in a MacWorld, and not necessarily one with ipads and iphones.

However the slow domination of the world by Scots has been a slow and painful one. So I'm going to steal an idea from Trainspotting and start a new mini series called It's Shite Being Scottish.

The inspiration for this series came from when in the film Tommy took his friends to the Highlands with the intention of them enjoying the great outdoors by going on a hike. He gets off the train and says "Doesn't it make you proud to be Scottish." Renton replied with "It's shite being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by! We're ruled by effete assholes. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference"

Now I don't necessarily go along with that but being Scottish isn't all that its cracked up to be and certainly hasn't been throughout history. There are plenty of blogs out there that show the nicer side of Scotland or being Scottish this series isn't going to show that picture. It probably won't be very regular, maybe once a week but more likely once a month but its going to show the not so great side of being Scottish.

Blogs

I do not care where you live.

I do not care what car you drive. 

Or if the clothes you wear are this years must haves. I do not care if you have a trust fund that is unlimited or have minus seventy six cents in the bank. I do not care what phone you have. Or if you want the latest fad/gadget. I do not care if you have a facebook page or are jimmy nomates page. I will not be enticed by how many people you know or who you know, whether you are A list, B list, or I never heard of you list. I do not care what you look like.

I am only touched by the words that flow from your thoughts.

It's only that that keeps me coming back for more.

Wouldn't it be nice if life was like that a little bit more often?