reesesWeb

Whew, got back from SLC this afternoon. My mom bought weird tickets -- SFO->PHX->SLC, SLC->PHX->SFO. I spent two hours in the Phoenix, AZ, airport each way. From what I've seen from the airport, I don't have any desire to return and see the actual city. I'll catch heck for this, but once you get away from the coasts, people get ugly. All the good-looking people live near the ocean. :-)

Maybe someone can correct me on this, but Salt Lake City isn't a particularly attractive city. It's not a large city, so there aren't a lot of tall office buildings. So, you have a flat city of short buildings on a flat plain, with a big, dead lake in the distance (not next to the city!), surrounded on all sides by really, really beautiful mountains. It would be a great place if you were a religious leader and wanted a defensible, remote, hard-to-leave, isolated area to build a commune in the early- to mid-nineteeth century. Now, it would be very difficult to defend, because the perimeter is too long, and the city is too low below the peaks and passes, but two-hundred years ago, anyone coming through the passes couldn't carry artillery, and hey, we all remember the Donner party. Those mountains can be nasty. :-)

In addition to the swamp-like appearance of the city, there are no trees. The municipal government hasn't planted any trees next to the roads, the state government hasn't planted any next to the highways. I live in San Francisco, and for ten years before that, I lived in Seattle. No trees is weird!

The game (Latvija & Osterreich) was good, but I think the altitude was really a factor for the players. After playing for twenty years, I know what it looks like when hockey players run out of steam -- both teams were exhausted at the end of the second period, and the only checking being done in the third was poke-checking, or a few dirty hits from frustrated players.

After the game, the 6000 people in attendance came outside to get on the shuttle buses back to the parking area, which was a few miles away. We came out of the arena in Provo, and were herded toward the street.

Where we were stopped by a fence.

We sat behind the fence for about twenty minutes, behind a big crowd. The crowd surged forward, then, when we were about ten feet from the gate, they closed it again. For another twenty minutes. Then it opened up, and we pushed forward, only to be stopped behind barricades. What the organisers had done was build a fenced in area, with a vestibule capable of holding the number of people that could fit on one row of buses. So, when they had another row to fill they could let the people in the vestibule go. After the buses were loaded, they'd close off the vestibule, and fill it with the next group of people.

This was at 9:30pm or so. In Salt Lake City. In winter. It was cold. And, until we got up to the outside edge of the vestibule, we had no idea what was going on, if we were going to be waiting five minutes, or five hours. I felt bad for Mia, my almost-four-year-old niece. She couldn't see anything, there were big people crowding around her, and her nose was cold. She was a sport, though, and remained cheery. My sister has no idea how lucky she is to have such an easy-going kid. :-)

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