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Show Saturday, October 25, 1997 The Park Record A-11 And so it goes... By Tom Clyde .AN II) Official Olympic duct tape Most of you go through the freeway interchange inter-change at Kimball Junction on the overpass, turning from 224 on or off 1-80. Those of us who live outside Park City's moat, and outside of the suburban subur-ban bliss found in the meadow formerly known as Snyderville, zip underneath on 1-80. So I see the Kimball Junction overpass from the underside. It's not a pretty sight. I don't want to alarm you, but the bridge is falling down. Chunks of concrete are falling off, and the rusty rebar innards of the bridge are hanging out like a Halloween decoration. Our pals at UDOT are on the case, though, so everything is going to be OK. They are making emergency repairs. And I understand under-stand they bought the very highest grade of duct tape. They have suddenly propped the overpass up with a bunch of temporary steel supports that look like something your contractor would use while framing the back deck before the footings were poured. They've braced up the beams on the outside edges of each side of the overpass. I'm sure it won't collapse. At least not under the weight of just one car. If it's a Geo Metro. If it's going really slow. But if there is a cement truck on the bridge, and you're driving something heavy like a Suburban, you might want to stick to the center lanes. I noticed the duct tape job on the freeway the same day the article came out about the state spending spend-ing another $48 million on the Winter Sports Park at Bear Hollow. That's an additional $48 million, on top of whatever else they burned through on the ski jumps, bob and luge, and other stuff. That was something like $25 million. I knew it wasn't finished yet, and that they would be building the biggest jump the 120 meter for the truly insane. They still need to build the bleachers. There are probably heated sky boxes for the Olympic hierarchy who are not known for sitting outside on cold bleachers. , There are probably a couple of outhouses in the budget, too. The state will bring them in for less than the $333,000 the National Park Service spent on a two-hole privy in Pennsylvania, but since these are Olympic crappers, they will probably be pretty deluxe. One of the last paragraphs in the story was the announcement that they were tearing down the 90-meter 90-meter jump because it got built in the wrong place. Bummer. They are going to blast hell out of the mountain to build the 120-meter jump, and the 90-meter 90-meter is right in the path of the explosion. So, we'll tear it down and start over. The Coliseum in Rome has lasted thousands of years, and we manage to get about 30 years out of a freeway bridge and almost five out of a ski jump. The article in the Tribune said that the $60 million mil-lion facility at Bear Hollow would be used by upwards of 360 athletes for 17 days. Let's see now, $60 million bucks divided by 360 athletes, divided by 17 days... It's a bargain at twice the price. Of course, that's just the construction money. They don't even talk about the power bill to keep the bob and luge track frozen up. ' Despite what appears to be perverse spending priorities, the collapsing freeway will not be forgotten forgot-ten in our Olympic spending binge. If the duct tape holds for a couple of years, Congress will provide (even where the State Legislature fails to), and a major upgrade of the crumbling interchange is in the works. In the meantime, if you see me getting off I-80 I-80 at Kimball and then getting right back on, I'm not a lost tourist. It's just that I'm not sure I want to drive under the overpass while chunks of it are breaking off. In an effort to put the official Olympic Smiley Face on things, I understand that the overpass will be named the Official Crumbling Bridge of the 2002 Olympics. In other Olympic news, Wasatch State Park over in Midway has been named the cross country ski venue after it was discovered that the original site at Mountain Dell wouldn't work. Mountain Dell looked great in the bid presentation, but there is this problem with it not snowing there reliably, and Salt Lake City drinking the water out of the reservoir, and sewage treatment for 25,000 spectators and a few other minor details. How that all slipped past the Organizing Committee is beyond me, but they were very busy people. It's probably not the 120-meter 120-meter jump to a conclusion that they might have fudged the truth a little bit. Wasatch County is delighted by the selection, and they should be. It's a great location. It's also a facility facil-ity that can be built on State Park land that might see some real use by regular tax-paying Utahns for a long time in the future. I don't mean to suggest that regular tax-paying Utahns can't ski jump or, for $100 bucks a pop, ride down the bob sled run. It's just that I don't see a commercial market for ski jumping or bob and luge centers around the country. The market for bungee jumping is huge compared to ski jumping or luge. But cross country skiing is something some-thing people actually do. The cross country facility will cost $17 million. I have a hard time imagining what could be done to cross country ski terrain that could cost $17 million, but by Olympic standards, that's cheap. I guess there are the usual sewer line extensions, stadium seating and lutefisk stands to build. Apparently the idea of renting bleachers is not part of the Olympic ideal. Now that Wasatch County has been validated by the Olympic committee, The Park Record even editorialized edi-torialized that it might be a good idea if there were some road connections between our sister Olympic venue and Park City. Now there's an idea. A year ago, Park City and the developer of what was then called Telemark Park were in a hideously ugly lawsuit law-suit in which Park City's goal was to obstruct access between the two counties. But that was before Wasatch County was anointed with Olympic Holy Water. When there was the threat that Winnebagoes with jet skis in tow would cross over the ridge from Jordanelle into Deer Valley, it was the end of the world. City Hall threw up the tank barricades. Now that the traffic mix might include a couple of Norwegian Olympians, and there is a really cool recreational facility planned over in Wasatch County, well, that's different. -t D's allena Floral's "12th yXKmiversary and weVe Celebrating with Kosesi Winner willl be notified on November 1st. Flowers must be picked up by winner on the first of each month. No wire orders. 1 I I i i I Maiieia r o r a n 4e CalleHa -Hotel on Mam Street 649-2600 USA HOCKEY WOMEN'S NATIONAL TEAM VS. CANADIAN HOCKEY WOMEN'S NATIONAL TEAM SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25TH 7:05 PM urn TICKETS ARE $15 AND $12. AND ARE ON SALE NOW AT: THE 6 CENTER BOX OFFICE, ALL SMITH'S TIX OUTLETS, OR CALL 1400-888-TIXX 1 fi? " V "H I y g- o l I & p o b W I gj CD & CD la m I I & e I IS5 t I IK t! I I 2? I I Q O I I SI I i 3 f ES ' If 40 r if mm Writers on the Range By Ed Quillen No therapy yet for rural road rage Recently, the media, from national network specials spe-cials down to the local weekly interview with a convenient state trooper, have been bombarding us with messages about the horrors of Road Rage. Since four out of five Americans live in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas and endure freeways, the features have focused on eight-lane provocations and reactions: the aggravating jerk who insists on driving dri-ving at the speed limit, the aggressive weaver pin-balling pin-balling to the exit ramp, the aggrieved operator of an 18-wheeler so wired on crank that he hallucinates obstacles rising from the pavement and feels compelled com-pelled to smash them. Amid this coverage, there's an assumption that we, the fortunate fifth who don't habituate freeways, are somehow immune to the horrors hor-rors of Road Rage. To some degree, this is true, if the National Rifle Association is correct that "an armed society is a polite society." I don't know about you, but I tend to get rather polite, even humble, when I'm within range of the archetypal western vehicle a dented, oil-burning, cracked-windshield, beater pickup pick-up with a loaded gun rack in its rear window. Even amid those common inducements to civility, though, the rural motorist often faces provocations that inspire, if not formal urban Road Rage, afflictions that must be close relatives: Mud Rage. One of your bald tires comes to the end of its working life. No problem, you've got a somewhat-inflated spare, and so you pull over onto what looks like solid ground. Only when the bottom of your jack starts sloshing its way to China do you realize that the solid ground was a deceptive crust. As soon as the jack breaks through, the wheels start sinking, followed fol-lowed by your own feet. My considerable research here has demonstrated that continued beating on the ground with a yard-long Handyman jack handle does not keep anything from sinking further. Tool Rage. More precisely, missing-tool rage, as in "where the hell is my lug wrench?" It could have been lent to a friend last week, or it might be behind the pickup seat, under several years of beer cans, oil cans, jerky wrappers, flashlights with dead batteries, ammo cases, barbed and entangled fishing tackle all of which must be removed into the mud before one can be certain. Naturally, you're glad if someone pulls over to offer assistance, but you might have trouble expressing your elation at first, since you cant exhale without a stream of obscenities that would shame a mule-skinner. I 11 I U III llfll 1 I I 1 I IPIIIIU III BIIFl 11 t 1 t"mh usaiooXst Antics! Mmm Side-Street Rage. Although this can occur on a country lane, usually it happens in town. You see somebody you know coming the other way, so you both stop in the middle of the street and swap some speculation about the sex lives of county commissioners commission-ers and the probable effects of El Nino. Then some dolt pulls up behind one of you, and starts honking. I grant that the desire is strong to go back there and smash in the jerk's windshield with the lug wrench that suddenly leaps into your hand, but resist this temptation. Better to approach politely, and explain that you've lived hereabouts for quite a spell, and thus you know that there's absolutely nothing within a hundred miles worth hurrying to, so take it easy or else. Steppe Rage. Nature calls, especially after you've been chugging road coffee, but you want to be somewhat some-what modest. Thus you search for forest cover, but there isn't any. Mountain drivers, when forced onto the barren Great Plains, often suffer from the resulting result-ing rage, which worsens when the first decent opportunity oppor-tunity announces "Restrooms are for customers only," and nothing inside costs less than $5. Those are some of the major Rural Road-Related Rages, but hardly the only ones. There's Detour Rage, when they could have warned you 30 miles ago, when you could have taken another route, that this bridge was washed out, but they didn't. And Yupscale Invader Rage, a nearly uncontrollable desire to hammer ham-mer vicious dents into a shiny new four-wheel-drive, sport-utility vehicle with city plates that took your parking space at your favorite fishing hole. And Closed-Road Rage, when a rancher understandably locks a gate that had always swung freely before, because too many folks didn't know enough to leave gates the way they found them. The national campaign cam-paign against Road Rage hasn't mentioned any of these varieties, and so we may be forced to find our own solutions. That won't be easy. The Old West method a showdown on Main Street would just increase the carnage, and a New West approach won't work either when it comes to road-related anger we're already quite in touch with our hostile feelings. And caffeine-laden cappuccino just further energizes those deep-seated emotions. Ed Quillen lives in Salida, Colo., where he publishes publish-es a monthly journal, Colorado Central. He is a regular regu-lar contributor to Writers on the Range, a project of High Country News. 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