Picked up by taxi driver Simon at 11 am. He described America as both; "Wide open spaces surrounded by teeth" (a Charles Luckman quote) and "The place where they think a hundred miles is a short distance, and a hundred years a long time." The actual quote, by Diana Gabaldon, is; βAn Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way. An American thinks a hundred years is a long time.β
We arrived, checked in, went through security, fed ourselves and wandered over to the departure gate by 1:30 pm and were pretty much straight on the plane.
Sitting on the plane to Salt Lake City I wondered what percentage of the passengers where Mormons.
My attention span is rubbish and I wondered whether I could finish a book on the flight. "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides is only 280 pages and the Kindle says I can read it in five and a half hours. We'll see Kindle - Oh, we'll see.
The first distraction was a great documentary on called; "Score: A film music documentary." Well, there was ninety minutes gone (ignoring the three times they had to reboot the whole entertainment system a few times at fifteen minutes a go).
Distraction number two was thinking about NanoWriMo. For the uninitiated, it's a yearly challenge where you have the month of November to write a 50,000 word novel. Last year I tapped out at 35,000 words. This year I'll be failing to write a sci-fi thing.
The third and final distraction was to go back to reading; "The future of mind" by Michio Kaku in which I learned that on our transatlantic flight we'd experience about a millirem of radiation per hour - equivalent to a dental x-ray.
Salt Lake City airport is pretty small so we were through security in short order and had the hire car within about thirty minutes.
An hour's drive to the first hotel in Springville, Utah we threw the stuff in the room and headed over to one of the two options for some food. Cracker Barrel. Try the grits. *
In bed by 9:45pm - which, of course, in proper English time is 4:45am.
A three hour or so drive south to Moab in the morning.
* Don't try the grits.