Friday, February 26, 2016

In Wyoming

Tonight we are in Alpine. Ellen brought Max a Lego set to make a truck and camper, and he just finished putting it together.

                     Max and his Lego camper

We left Boulder this morning at 9a.m. We estimated it would be a ten-hour drive, with stops, and it proved to be nine and a half hours. It was a beautiful day, the driving was easy, no snow, no wind. We listened to several lectures in a Teaching Company series called Cultural Intelligence. The first part was ten sets of contrasting concepts which help define differences among cultures, such as "individualism & collectivism," "tight & loose," "neutral & affective," "low context and high context," etc. We found several  lectures useful for understanding our own styles of communication with each other, and that led to some good conversation. The miles sped by. 

But let me go back a day. Yesterday, we took Betsey to work. She herself had not been to the office for a couple of weeks because of the shingles, but we had not taken her to the office since last August. In the meantime, her office had changed. She now shares an office, because her hours are much reduced, but she has her own private cubicle, and it is actually nicer than her original private office, because it has more window. She overlooks a large public space which right now is under construction to repair some heating and AC infrastructure, but by spring will be a student gathering place for the College of Engineering. And there is a large tree right in front of her window, which should be nice this spring. 

                     Betsey at her desk in her new office

               Looking up at Betsey's window from the ground. 

While Betsey worked, we did some errands - first we got a sandwich at the food bar outside Betsey's office, then got Max his Lego set at Target, got some cereal at the Sprouts market, and made a trip to the P.O. to mail things and get stamps. 

Last evening we watched most of the Republican debate. It was a cat fight. Sort of out of control. Wolf Blitzer, the moderator, could not maintain any sense of decorum, and often, Trump, Rubio and Cruz were all shouting at each other simultaneously. Quite a spectacle, which could be quite comic, except that it is actually very disturbing when you remember that these are presidential hopefuls. 

Today, on our trip, we passed a wind turbine propellor blade bring trucked along I-80.  They look sort of small from a distance, but up close on the highway, they are "yooge," as Bernie Sanders would say. 

                       Passing a wind turbine blade

We stopped at a gas station and truck stop in Rock Springs, WY, and I saw something I had never seen before - a walk-in cigar humidor! Hundreds of boxes of cigars! I thought cigars had gone out of style, but not with truckers, I guess. The air in their cabs must be something fierce! 


                    Cigars in abundance!

As we went up Route 191 toward Pinedale, we got some nice views:

                                    Beautiful Wyoming

Tomorrow Max has a ski lesson in Jackson. But it's also supposed to be windy and rainy. We'll see. 


No comments:

Post a Comment