Our "Best Of Utah" Route
I was skeptical moving away from my California paradise to the arid and hot and cold Utah desert. But this red rock, Wasatch state has proven itself in the year that I have lived here. This past weekend Utah re-wowed me as I spent three days taking my parents up and down Eastern Utah for their first visit. You could call it a “best of trip,” starting with mole at Salt Lake’s Red Iguana (killer Mexican food, really). The folks had fun with the Utah altitude hiking up to the Timpanogos Caves, driving through Castle County to Arches National Park, seeing Delicate Arch that graces the Utah license plate, riding the chair lift at Sundance and poking around art galleries in Park City.
And there are several bests we didn’t have time to do, like float down the Provo River, make our way through slot canyons, eat Navajo Tacos, snow skiing or sleep under the stars.
So, I’m living proof that you can drive nearly 600 miles in one weekend with your parents and finish the trip happy…as long as you have a group of adventurous spirits and an amazing state like Utah to tour.
I pledge to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions by 450 pounds during May, which many U.S. cities, including Salt Lake City, recognize as Bike Month.
I have the farthest commute of all the SOAR team members (about 30 miles), so I’m not going to attempt to commute the entire way by bike. But I will take the bus two to three times per week, and stop asking my husband to drop me off and pick me up from my home bus stop (I learned at the Bicycle Leadership Conference that 40 percent of trips in the U.S. are just two miles and are the most polluting). If I do this during the month of May, UtahCommuter.com tells me that I can reduce my vehicle trips by 450 to 680 miles and my greenhouse gas emission by 380 to 575 pounds.
Me prepping for the Momentum bike fashion show at Interbike
I first started using mass transit because it was cheaper than buying snow tires for my 1988 California-raised Volvo. Even though the threat of snow is gone (let’s hope), I still try to commute by bus twice a week. The entire commute from point to point takes about 30-40 minutes longer than it would if I drove by myself, but I think it is worth the extra time spent. One-way bus fare cheaper than a gallon of gas and the time I have on the bus to read Newsweek and study Portuguese is priceless. Plus, I get home to my husband in a much better mood not having fought traffic for 45 minutes.
I’ll also reduce my green house gas emissions by biking around town more. I’ve been assessing every road I drive on for its bikeability and often think, “I could totally bike this. Why am I even driving a car?” I see bike trips to the gelaterie are in my not-so distant future.
You can learn how many pounds of carbon emissions your commute reduces by registering at UtahCommuter. com (hint: if you only commute by a car alone, your commute reduces NONE! Think about it.)
For more than 10 years (1994 - 2004), I wrote a self-syndicated column called “Utah Tech Watch” that began as a biweekly column and six months later moved to a weekly schedule.
Over time this column was published by three papers — the Deseret News (now the Deseret Morning News), The Daily Herald (in Provo, Utah) and The Enterprise (Utah’s weekly business paper) — as well as being distributed for free via email to several thousand subscribers.
Each year, one of my most fun and yet difficult self-directed assignments was to identify the top 10 stories of the year.
I plan to resurrect “Utah Tech Watch” as an online media property in 2008, and when I do, I’ll also resurrect its annual Top 10 stories piece. But for now, let me transpose this idea to this SOAR Communications blog with what I propose are the Top 10 Global SOAR Stories of 2007.
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On Sunday, September 16, 2007, after spending two lovely days in northernmost California I was slated to fly on United flight #5575 at 10:39 a.m. (PDT) from Eureka/Arcata (ACV) to San Francisco (SFO) on the first leg of a trip that would take me home to the greater Salt Lake City area.
Since I had only carry-on bags, I was able to bypass the extremely long line at the check-in counter and get my boarding passes electronically through the United ticket kiosk. That was nice.
However, 15-20 minutes later, United ticket counter personnel made a general announcement stating that flight #5575 was delayed due to fog at SFO, with departure now expected at 12:10 p.m. (PDT). Due to the delayed departure, I and others on the flight were warned that we would likely miss our connecting flights and that we should A) get back into line to change our reservations, or B) call the United reservations line (or log onto United.com) to change our reservations.
Given the extremely long line of people waiting at the United ticket counter, I opted to try calling the United reservations phone number. This is where my problems really began.
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