Springville to Salt Lake City

I like America.  There's never been a town I wouldn't go back and revisit.  That is, until now.  Salt Lake City.  A truly horrible city.  It's the bastard child of Disneyland and Stepford Wives.  The kind of place where you wouldn't be surprised to be followed by a Mormon Agent, or see listening devices checking you weren't  say anything disparaging against their batshit crazy religion.  I've explored an abandoned TB hospital deep in rural Arkansas and even there I didn't feel the overwhelming feeling of dread in this horrifically anodyne hole.  For unexplainable reasons adrenaline was rushing through me causing my heart to beat heavily in my chest,  Salt Lake City was rejecting me every bit as much as I was rejecting it.  The only plus side is that I know that I will never ever have to return to this god-forsaken pit.

We threw the car back at Alamo and went to sit in the airport and wait for the flight.

Did I mention that I really didn't like Salt Lake City.  At all.

Welcome to Utah

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; “An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way.  An American thinks a hundred years is a long time.”

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.