"Operator Error," acoustic, goes out to SLC

🧗🏼‍♀️🚠🚴🏼 Track #5 from LOBES REDUCED

We spent last night in Ogden, Utah, enjoying an evening of luxuriation at the Cain family estate, a stately pleasure-dome to rival even Xanadu. And when I aver that this respite was hard-earned, I mean it. The day was devoted to plowing through the 7h45m drive from Denver to the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, with, I think, only three quick stops to intake or eject hot liquids at gas stations. Chris had assured us that this northerly route we were taking would be a crash-course in the gobsmacking beauty of the Rocky Mountains, but because he hasn’t made the drive between the two cities since he was a teenager and has spent the intervening years chipping away at his brain cells with the jackhammer tequila, he’d gotten it wrong. The route straight west is the scenic wonderland, although it’s also two hours longer, and diseased-brained tour dogs like us will choose to take a route through Hades itself if it’ll shave six minutes off of an eight-hour drive. Mind you, the drive wasn’t horrendous — We saw a couple of nice buttes. Some pleasing foothills. A couple of laudable mounds of dirt. But even the most spectacular mound of dirt will struggle to liven up a trek of this length.

The arrival at the Cain household made it all worthwhile, though. No sooner were we through the door than I was clutching the nectar I’d been anticipating since I’d learned we’d be visiting the Cains’: a French 75.  It’s Dr. Steve Cain’s drink of choice (“It gets you where you don’t want to go,” he wistfully advertises), and sharing one with the man is a distinct and all-too-rare pleasure. A grand feast was prepared by Chris (with an assist from The Pie Pizzeria, Ogden division), and much indulgence continued throughout the evening. Once again, a day off on tour proved more punishing than a show-date, and I woke this morning with a high-altitude hangover.

There’s only one cure for that, of course: an early-morning trudge. So, I laced up my boots and hauled over to Birch Creek trail, a lovely short hike up into the hills that is bewitching even on a cold and wet morning like today. And I do mean bewitching — I started getting scared, not just of the mountain lions that Dr. Cain had warned of (“You won’t hear them coming; they arrive on padded feet”) but of the necromancers and goblins that definitely live in these woods. My disquiet was only increased as I stumbled upon ominous sign after ominous sign.  These included, in order of increasing concern:

1) Some alarmingly-fresh mountain lion tracks in still-wet mud.

2) An ammunition box tucked away behind a rock atop a craggy slope that I only happened to have scrambled up because I’d lost the trail. I desperately fought my curiosity about its contents, and eventually decided not to open it because it obviously was either booby-trapped or contained a trapped demon. I decided to regard the all-caps “DO NOT OPEN” printed on the lid as sound advice.

3) A fairly nice woman’s purse tucked into the crook of a dead old tree just off the trail. That was when I turned and walked at an extraordinarily brisk pace back to the trailhead, trying not to break into an outright run and thereby incite the onlooking lions or murderers or hell-spawn into attacking.

Anyway, good news: I lived, and will learn from this mistake.  Which calls to mind today’s acoustic tune, “Operator Error,” which is of course the perfect track for Salt Lake City. Per our sources, “The song's focus on accountability and learning from mistakes can reflect Salt Lake City's historical roots in pioneering and self-reliance, along with its modern emphasis on community and family values.”

Right?  Perfect, am I right?  Right? Let’s find out…

Meetcha at the top 🏔️

🍁🍂