How high are the mountains, how wide is the sky, how narrow are the lanes?

  from Somebody's Father

Living in the west is usually a great experience. When people come to visit our office they are totally blown away by the mountains right out our door. To be really honest it is stunning to see the mountains rise up right against the city. While we are at about 4500 feet a 12,000 foot mountain still means 8,000 feet of what appears to be almost straight up. I guess anyone from a place without mountains would be impressed. Even if you come from a place with mountains like California, these are so close to the city they seem bigger.

    Also in the west is the low humidity. Of course that means less rain, more irrigation and very few of the days where sweating provides no relief from the heat. Low humidity also brings one other amazing thing. The last few days we have had almost perfect blue skies from east to west, north to south. My office window is perfectly positioned to see the highest mountain in the area with 180 degrees of beautiful blue skies.

    Another western thing is our love is our cars and given a lower population density we glory in our roomy freeways. But, not so much right now in our town. They are rebuilding 25 miles of freeway and by my calculation my exit is right in the middle of the project.

    But you have to give them credit, they have tried very hard to minimize the pain and suffering during the 3 year construction project. The project is 14% complete and every day is a new adventure as they continue to move the traffic from one side of the road to the other.

    They seem to have settled the traffic on the West side for about 5 miles of my commute and on the East side for the other 3 miles. Now you have to understand they have made the road a bit wider (10 feet or so) but they now have 6 lanes of traffic (three in each direction) where three lanes were just a few months ago.

    Bottom line: the lanes are not large size or even medium size. I drive a little Prius but sometimes it seems like the lane is 6” smaller than my little hybrid car. Needless to say I always stay in a side lane so I can’t get caught between two trucks. This nightmare scenario has played out for me in the past when I occupied a center seat from Boston to Salt Lake sitting between 2 people who could only very kindly be described as “generous”. I didn’t like it on the plane and am pretty sure I wouldn’t like it on the freeway.

    So, every day I enjoy the beautiful mountains and the vast blue sky outside my office window, with bookends of terror on each end as I commute 9 miles through the ever changing landscape of construction.