Express...Yourself

 Last week my wife and I drove down to Salt Lake for lunch. We'd eaten at this particular restaurant before, the original Red Iguana, but we have not been there in years. I'm going to blog about the reason for the lunch later, because that reason is amazing. Today, I wanted to show you what the front of the building looks like...

Or, doesn't look like.

I think in every city in every state--maybe in every country--someone decides to take a thousand bumper stickers and cover their car with them, to the point the original color of the car is hidden. If they do this to attract attention, at least for me, it works. I always check out the car and if I'm close enough, I'll try and recognize any of the stickers. With enough time, I know I'll see some of the stickers from places I know.

Same with the windows and door at the Red Iguana.

I could look at the front of the restaurant for a long time. Just looking at the pictures I took, I want to see where the stickers came from. Since it appears this is a home-grown movement created by patrons and passersby, I'll bet people have traveled all over the world and when they're there, they think about picking up a bumper sticker to add to the restaurant's collection.

I have no idea how many stickers are on the walls and door...there must be thousands. So many people expressed themselves by adding to the collection. And since the restaurant has allowed people to participate, the restaurant is expressing themselves as well.

The end result, is a sight to see.

Rush Hour In Rural Utah...A Trafficless Existence

 This morning I drove to the great metropolis that is Salt Lake City. I hit the highway at 8am.

The top picture is our rush hour in rural Northern Utah.

The second picture was taken an hour later between Farmington and Centerville. I know it looks like few cars are on the road in the second picture, but it took me several miles up north until I saw as many cars that surrounded me down south.

It took me a while living up north that I realized I never even think about traffic. Not that we went many places when we lived down south, but traffic was a constant consideration whenever we needed to go anywhere. During the day--usually not a problem. Need to go to Layton at 5pm? Might as well wait a couple of hours. Now, traffic is an afterthought. 

Living among so few is an adjustment. Our neighbors have accepted a trafficless existence. The problem is, it's not going to last. More and more are moving here all the time (like us...). Soon, the locals will be remembering the time when they never took traffic into consideration when traveling to Brigham City, or Logan, or Ogden.

We know those days are numbered. For now, I'm enjoying the uncluttered roads.

So Many Memories In One Picture...

Several months ago a video popped up on my friend's Facebook page and it took me back, back to the summer of 1983.

I was seventeen-years old.

It was quite a summer, and this picture sums up a lot of what happened.

It's amazing how so much has changed since then.

If you take just the buildings, that theater--the place where I watched Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi--is gone. In its place is a shiny high-rise office building. Across the street, just right of that big white building is the future home of where I go to work every workday.  The building won't be built for another decade or so.

Next, there's the gal taking a picture with the only camera that could give you an instant picture. Those old Polaroids were great! Of course, they took terrible photos, but quality really wasn't the point of the Instamatics. Whoever she is, she has classic 80s hair, too.

I remember the logo for one of our local television station. They were an NBC affiliate at the time--they've since changed to CBS.

And there's the river running down the street. That has only happened once in my lifetime. We had such a snowy winter that winter that the record snowfall turned into flooding, mudslides, and a wave of volunteerism that made the state famous for a reason other than the obvious. It was so bad that they turned a major downtown road in Salt Lake City into a river. That was pretty cool.

I tried looking for the video to see if I could link it on this blog post. I couldn't. It had some great pictures of my neighbors back in the day but for some reason I took a screenshot of the girl taking a Polaroid picture standing beside the Centre Theater where Return of the Jedi was showing as a river of high spring run-off raced by.

There's a lot of memories in that one picture.