Meeting Mr. Thomas

Last Thursday I loaded up my car and headed north to meet Mr. Thomas Bakker. The first night I drove to Flagstaff, and slept in the parking lot of First Southern Baptist Church. Then I headed out again with the sun. My trusty pooch was my only traveling companion.

We stopped to stretch our legs and get a peek at Glen Canyon Dam.

And then took scenic highway 89 most of the way up to Salt Lake City.

I arrived in Salt Lake on Friday night, and got to meet Thomas Gordon Bakker. Short of my own kids, one of the cutest and most easy going babies I've met. And yet I somehow made it through the whole weekend without managing to snap a picture of him.

That night we worked on the ol' Volvo (see Bakker's blog for pics.) It seems it's been having vapor lock problems. We were pretty sure we had found the source of the problems... an air intake stuck on the hot setting, overheating the engine.

The next morning I got a text from Paige with big news!

Jonathan and I took a drive up into the mountains east of Salt Lake, and had lunch at Sundance.

Jonathan told me that it was typically populated with hippie liberal types, so I made sure to dress so as to blend right in.

The views up there were gorgeous, hippie liberals not withstanding.

That afternoon, we came up with a spur of the moment project, a pneumatic potato launcher. We also adapted it to launch sections of foam fun noodles, fashioned into rocket shapes using duct tape and ingenuity.

After some fine tuning, we had it working quite well (lousy video quality on the camera, but you get the idea.)

We also discovered that you can shoot marshmallows a looooong way with just an old oxygen bottle and a piece of 1" PVC.

Sunday night we busted out the 4th of July fireworks. Jonathan taught his nephew the finer points of daisy chaining fireworks.

Banjo was convinced that the fireworks were evil demons or something, since she tried to attack them every time we set one off.

On Monday, Katie and young Thomas joined us for a scenic drive up to Ruth's Diner for lunch. The drive up the canyon to lunch was very scenic, as was the drive down the freeway towards home.

Yeah. Apparently our repairs on Friday night weren't exactly successful. Good thing the weather was fairly pleasant. I'm not sure we ever did figure out exactly what was wrong. We managed to limp back home and got trouble codes for a MAF sensor and a "fuel trim" setting. We cleaned the MAF, but I haven't heard yet if that really fixed anything.

Tuesday I packed up and Banjo and I headed back home.

No videos of my drive this time (even my wife said that my last road trip video was the most boring thing she had ever seen.) I did, however, take some photos of some interesting road trip sights.

These were everywhere around Utah. I must have gone past 20 of them during my stay there.

Apparently Utah'ns aren't taking adequate care of their colons, and someone really wants them to.

And these were everywhere as well...

Now, I'm sure the inspirational billboard idea is just an effort to make the world a better place... but every time I passed one I just thought of these guys...

Someone should put those billboards up all across the state.

And finally, I don't think this one is going to fly if he gets pulled over...

It was a great trip, to visit great friends, and meet one cute little kid. At one point, after leaving a voicemail for my mom (in falsetto), she texted me back:

"Nice to feel 15 years younger for a while, isn't it?"

It sure was!

So, uhhh... sorry about that Katie. Hopefully your husband returns to his mature, 30 something, fatherly behavior soon. I shouldn't be around to revert him to adolescence again until at least next year. ;)