Kayaking Photos & Salt Lake City

Thursday, September 6th

I got my roll of film from the kayaking adventure last night. Some highlights:

Preparing to paddle: Random Girl, Vera, Suzanne, Tim & Cuz

Tim & Suzanne

JV Mid-River

Cuz and a paddle-wheeler

The Portland skyline from the river

Group two paddling out: Nigel, Amy, Piper and Patrick

Before I begin reporting from Salt Lake, it occurs to me that I completely left out one of the more fun events from Portland! Ryan celebrated his birthday in second week of Portland. On Friday night we took a group outing to Ground Kontrol an old school arcade with video games, pinball and a bar. Lots of us turned out to drink and play. I was excited to see some old favorites: Paperboy, Pole Position and Battlezone. I desperately tried to remember how to play Joust. The most wonderful surprise was on the upper level: an entire floor of pinball games! Tucked away in a corner of the balcony was this gem:

Is there anything more satisfying in the world of pinball than seeing that red spinner light come on and hearing the policeman's voice intone: "Pull over buddy!"? I must have pumped ten dollars into that machine trying (in vane, it turned out) to hear that loud CRACK of a free game. The whole time I was thinking, "Dad could have played this whole time for a quarter." I had a great time.

On to Salt Lake City:

I took the early flight to SLC in order to be here in time for the final game of the Salt Lake Bees' regular season. It was nearly a hundred degrees at game time as the Bees took on the Las Vegas 51s. I had a great seat two rows behind the screen at home plate. The field is angled away from downtown Salt Lake City, so beyond the outfield walls are arrayed the mountains. It's really beautiful!

The view from my seat.

Though the Bees won their division title and are moving on into the playoffs, they couldn't win the final game of the regular season at Franklin Covey Field. The 51s absolutely pounded the Bees' starting pitching. The reliever that the Bees brought in to stop the bleeding got hit with a comebacker and had to be taken out himself. After the 3rd inning, the game calmed down a bit, but the 51s won the game 12 -5. The Bees are the AAA affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels of Anahiem (the stupidest team name in all of sports) and are currently fielding some recognizable names. Bartolo Colon started game one of the playoffs for the Bees. He's down on a rehab assignment.

Monday and Tuesday were rough days for the crew. It was an 800 mile trip from Portland to Salt Lake City, meaning that (in theory) the first truck would arrive at the Capitol Theatre at 1 PM on Monday. 1 PM is later than we usually start the load-in, but with a good crew and a little pushing, things should have been fine. Traffic, mountain passes and flat tires delayed the trucks. The first truck arrived at 2:45. It wasn't the truck we usually begin load-in with - that truck arrived at 5 PM. The crew worked til midnight on Monday and started the day on Tuesday well behind schedule. They gained ground all day and worked through dinner to have us ready for a 7:30 PM opening night. The first night audience was a bit more reserved than we're used to, but we received a standing ovation. Things ran smoothly from a technical perspective and it seems like the crew is great.

The city itself is a little bit strange. Most noticeably, the streets are enormously wide. When the city was laid out, the streets were made 132 feet wide (that's two lanes of traffic in each direction, a turn lane, a bike lane in each direction and a lane of parking on either side) to allow "a team of four oxen and a covered wagon to turn around." The wide streets are imposing to a pedestrian. The other side of the street is awfully far away. The blocks are also very long; roughly equivalent to Manhattan's avenue blocks (each block here is 3/20 of a mile; to Manhattan's 1/20 of a mile for street blocks). In fact, the blocks are long enough that many have a cross walk in the middle. The street is so wide, however, that the city provides orange flags in buckets on either side of the street for pedestrians to carry across with them! Few things in life have made me feel like such a tool as carrying one of these flags across the street with me, but the citizens of SLC really do seem to do it.

I haven't seen much of town. Monday was Labor Day, so almost every thing was closed. I was at the theatre all day on Tuesday. Wednesday I covered the first couple hours of rehearsal at the theatre - we're putting in a new ensemble woman (welcome Jen Mathie!). I took a walk yesterday afternoon first to the grocery store (which was closed due to a power outage related to some crazy thunderstorms on Wednesday night) and then to their big shopping center: the Gateway District. It's a very nice outdoor shopping mall with office towers, residential space, an IMAX and a planetarium. It also includes Salt Lake's original Union Pacific Depot and some of the infrastructure from the '96 Winter Olympics. On the way back to work, I passed the walled compound that includes the Salt Lake City Temple.

The city is surrounded by mountains. While the landscape is beautiful, it's also a little forbidding. We're 4,300 feet up and in the desert. While the dry air has been great for my allergies, I feel dried out all the time. I hope to head up into the mountains a bit while I'm here. Growing up in Michigan, this landscape is really intriguing to me.

My Mom and Dad are coming out for a visit this weekend. I'll catch up with them for dinner between shows on Saturday and Sunday and then we'll have the whole day together on Monday. Tuesday, while they head out to Moabe, I hope to see the sites on Temple Square and hear the giant pipe organ in the Mormon Tabernacle. Next Wednesday, I'm headed out to the site of the Golden Spike where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. It appears that between rehearsals and sight-seeing, Salt Lake City will be pretty busy!

JV