sundry

 H has been on a tear recently, exercising every single day for thirty weeks in a row and counting.  He's added trail running to his usual road cycling (alpine skiing/MTBing) routine and on Saturday, before it got too hot, did his longest run to date: nine miles through Dimple Dell.  He got up early (he always gets up early) and was out the door around 5, long before most other people (me) were even thinking about waking up.  Due to the early hour, he got cool temperatures and was finished with the whole thing by 7 a.m.!  He actually wasn't the only one out there, though, and encountered four deer, one rabbit, a duck, one person walking alone, five people walking dogs, six dogs, seven other runners and one biker.  Countless birds too.

Meanwhile, Milton and I were out the door at the much more reasonable hour of 6:30, again, trying to get our exercise in before the day got hot.  We did our Dimple Dell loop and then, indeed, the day got hot, maxxing out around 96 F and around 9% humidity (low enough to make my contact lenses sticky).  I got a little weeding done before the heat chased me inside and then it was reading, napping and trying a new recipe for the remainder of the day.  (The new recipe was creamy curried lentils and quinoa with kale from Power Plates.  It was delicious!)

In other news, the Salt Lake Tribune had an article this past week about how Alta already has to replace its "new" Supreme lift: chairlifts are supposed to last about thirty years and it's only been seven because it's a stupid lift design.  The previous lift - which I loved - was a slow and weird triple chair that you had to ride a conveyor belt to get on, and it was hidden away halfway up the mountain so tourists and beginners couldn't find it.  They replaced it with a high-speed quad - which I hate - that loads right outside Alf's lodge, so tourists and beginners can find it no problem, and it's engineered with an 8 degree bend, which is uncomfortable to ride and apparently shaking the chairs to pieces.  Their options are to build an angle station like the Collins lift has, to make that corner, or tear the whole thing down and put up new towers to straighten it out.  Which will be much more destructive to the landscape but cheaper for the company, so it's obvious which one they're going to pick.  

Apologies for the downer ending - I do try to keep it positive around here so we'll move on quickly to happier things.