The Cheyenne Police Department will present a seminar specifically addressing the changes to state law regarding carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. The program will specifically highlight the changes to Wyoming Statute 6-8-104 that becomes effective on July 1, 2011.

Additional discussion will address how the new law will affect those who already have a concealed weapon permit and important information to citizens who will now choose to carry a concealed weapon. Cheyenne Police firearms experts will be on hand to answer questions during and after the presentation.

This public seminar will be presented at the Cheyenne - Kiwanis Community House (Lions Park) on June 28th, 2011, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. This seminar is free to the public. NO FIREARMS WILL BE PERMITTED ON THE PROPERTY DURING THIS SEMINAR.

So the Cheyenne Police Department is holding a seminar on Wyoming's new Constitutional carry law and you are not allowed to carry at the seminar?

Wyoming Road Rage

A friend sent me a link to this little gem from Sinks Canyon up above Lander Wyoming.

The Creation of Wyoming:

I got this is an e-mail from my niece...


Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Heaven, God was missing for six days.

Eventually, Michael the Archangel found Him, resting on the seventh day. He inquired of God, 'Where have You been?'

God sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, 'Look Michael, look what I've made!'

Archangel Michael looked puzzled and said, 'What is it?'

'It's a planet,' replied God, and I've put life on it. I'm going to call it Earth, and it's going to be a great place of balance.'

'Balance?' inquired Michael, still confused.

God explained, pointing to different parts of Earth. 'For example, Northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth, while southern Europe is going to be poor; the Middle East over there will be a hot spot. And over there I've placed a continent of white people, while over here is a continent of black people.' God continued, pointing to different countries. 'This one will be extremely hot and arid while this one will be very cold and covered in ice.'

The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to a large land mass and said, 'What's that one?' 'Ah,' said God. 'That's Wyoming, the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful lakes, rivers, sunrises, sunsets, rolling hills, high mountains with snow covered peaks, open prairie, geysers, hot springs, water falls, monumental rock formations, abundant wildlife, excellent fly-fishing streams, pure white snow in the winter, white fluffy clouds, blue skies year-round, and a place where a person can see millions of stars in the sky at night.'

God continued,

The people from Wyoming are going to be modest, intelligent and humorous and they are going to be found traveling the world. They will be extremely sociable, hard working and high achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as diplomats and carriers of peace.'

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration but then proclaimed, 'What about balance, God? You said there would be balance!'

God replied wisely, 'Wait until you see the idiots I'm putting around them in Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota, Utah, and Montana.'

Reply to Bad Sportsmanship

On Saturday my alma mater, The university of Wyoming, played a football game against the University of Utah.

The game wasn't going well. UW was losing 0 - 40 a half-time. Then with 6 minutes and 30 seconds left in the third quarter Utah scored a field goal to take a 43-0 lead.

On the ensuing kick off the University of Utah attempted an on-side kick. Fortunately for UW the kick didn't go 10 yards and they recovered the ball.

Personally I consider a team attempting an onside kick against an opponent that you are beating by more than 6 touchdowns to be really low class. I would love to hear the Utah coach, Kyle Whittingham's explanation as to why he would make such a obviously bad sportsmanship call.

The announcers of the game in CSTV had this to say:

"They are going to onside kick it? You gotta be kidding me!"

"No. This is wrong."

"What is the point?"

"But this is classless in my mind."

"I disagree whole-heartedly with this."

So what did Joe Glenn the head coach of the Wyoming Cowboys think of that play?

Well, Joe didn't waste too many words. He just grabbed his shovel dug for a little while until he got down to the same level as the Utah Coaches and said:



Under normal circumstances I would never condone this kind of behavior. But in this case I think flipping a little bird may have been deserved. Probably not appropriate but definitely deserved. I just wish the coach had expressed his disgust with Coach Whittingham in person instead of on national television.

Later when questioned about his finger Coach Glenn said that "Football is an emotional game and he got caught up in the emotions of the moment and wasn't thinking."

Wyoming Traffic Jam

The day before our family split up in Cheyenne for our separate vacations they held the annual cattle drive for Frontier Days. Since the cattle drive passes just a couple blocks from Dad's house we rousted the kids out of bed earlier than they liked and took them over to act like tourists for a while. Besides this was the kid's only chance to see a real Wyoming traffic jam.

Vote For Wyoming

We're in the finals folks and need all your votes.

Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth: Spartans vs. Cowboys

So get clicking and vote, as many times as thier system will legally allow you to.

WYO vs BYU

I'm sitting here with my family watching the University of Wyoming play football at BYU.

I have done my duty as a loyal UW graduate and taught my children that BYU stands for Bite Your Underwear.

My oldest daugher just asked me why do you hate BYU so much Daddy.

The best answer I could give her was there is on 9:21 left in the game. BYU is up 41 to 0 and their starting quarterback and his favorite receiver, their tight end Harlene are both still in the game and trying to run the score up. Which they just suceeded in doing. So the score is 48-0.

Actually my hatred of BYU stems from my years at Wyoming in the late 70s. It seemed like every school in the Western Athletic Conference had a rivalry going with BYU. Most years football and basketball conference titles came down to BYU vs Someone Else with BYU winning a lot of those games. They have good sports programs and therefore tend to inspire hatred in the schools that lose to them.

Well, BYU's special teams just scored to make it 55-0.

Karsten Sween Wyoming's starting QB is a local boy. He graduated from Burroughs High School two years ago. His starting at Wyoming means that the local paper has covered the Wyoming games a lot more than usual. Which means they at least get mentioned. This last offensive series they took Karsten out of the game to protect him and put the back up in. Third play, Wyoming uncorks an 81 yard run to finally get Wyoming on the board.

Game over. Bite Your Underwear 55 - Wyoming 7

My dear wife asked if I was upset. Not really. I'm a Wyoming fan I've gotten used to my team falling apart late in the season. But it does stink that they had to get torn apart by BYU and on national television. But there are certain truths for Wyoming football - you can end the season 2-10 as long as those two wins are against BYU and CSU it was a good year.

The Continued Woosification of America

The bleeding hearts of America who have dedicated their lives to turning us into a nation of woosies are at it again. This time they are attacking in my old home town of Cheyenne Wyoming.

Over the past few years I have seen several news articles and blog entries about how elementary school staff have been prohibiting potentially violent playground games. The favorite target of the past has been the game dodgeball. Now having pretty much eliminated dodgeball from the elementary school system the woosifiers have decided to target the game - tag.

That’s right – tag. You know, lots of kids and one kid is “it.” The child who is “it” chases the other kids until they touch one, then the touched kid becomes “it.”

Does this sound like a violent game to you?

The student handbook for Freedom Elementary School in Cheyenne WY has this list of playground don’ts:

Students will NOT:

• Engage in fighting or activities that show physical aggression such as pushing, hitting, or kicking.
  
• Tease, bully, or call other students inappropriate names.
  
• Play any type of tag. This leads to aggression and torn clothing.
  
• Use improper or inappropriate language. Such language will not be tolerated.
  
• Eat candy or food, drink beverages, or chew gum on the playground.
  
• Throw any objects (ice, snow, rocks, bark, sticks, dirt, etc.) that could hurt others.
  
• Use rough play, push or “play fight” on the playground.
  
• Pull or play “keep-away” with other people’s property (coats, hats, backpacks, etc.)
  
• Bring toys from home to play with.
  

Emphasis is theirs, not mine.

Not allowing kids to play tag is so important to the administrators at Freedom Elementary that it is only one of two lines on this page of the handbook that is in bold type. The other is:

“• Keep hands and feet to self.”

So I’m left no alternative to thinking that the staff at Freedom Elementary consider Tag to be one of the greatest playground threat to their students.

On a different note, if this set of rules had existed when I was in elementary school, recess would have consisted of a couple hundred kids standing around wondering “What the crap are we supposed to do now?”

Recess activities in the 1960s consisted almost exclusively of:fighting, physical aggression, pushing, hitting, or kicking, teasing, bullying, calling other students names, tag, throwing anything we could get our hands on (ice, snow, rocks, bark, sticks, dirt, etc.), rough play, pushing, “play fighting” and keep-away with other people’s property (coats, hats, marbles, books, etc.)

I hate to admit that I was usually on the receiving end of most of this kind of treatment. I didn’t enjoy recess all that much because of that. But I did look forward to getting out of that classroom for a break anyway. I learned to deal with the playground. It was part of growing up. Kids have to learn how to deal with all sorts of situations and protecting them from even the possibility of a push, bump or bruise is not doing them any favors.

So what is next for the Future Woosies of America at Freedom Elementary? No running, no playing, no jumping, no recess. When the teachers need a break from the students will they will make the students lie down and not move for 20 minutes. Maybe they should take away their pencils also, you wouldn’t want someone to accidentally poke them selves with a sharp object now would you? I still have the pencil lead in my right hand from where I got stabbed with my own pencil when in 6th grade.

Cheyenne is the last place that I would have expected this type of behavior to show up. Maybe the staff at Freedom Elementary should all go get jobs in Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, or even California. They might fit in better there.

Virginia 13 - Wyoming 12

The University of Wyoming Cowboys traveled to Virginia to play a football game against the University of Virginia. This is the first time that the Wyoming Cowboys have ever traveled to Virginia.

I wasn’t able to watch the game since it wasn’t broadcast. So I had to follow the game with and internet game tracker.

In the end Virginia won the game in overtime 13-12. Wyoming pretty much outplayed Virginia in all categories. However the two categories that really stood out in this game were turnovers inside the red zone and missed extra points. In the first quarter after driving downfield Wyoming quarterback Jacob Doss threw an interception on the UVA four yard line that was run back to the UVA 33 yard line. Then in the 3rd quarter Wyoming Running back Wynel Sheldon fumbled away the ball on the UVA 1 yard line and Virginia recovered it in the end zone for a touchback.

Finally in overtime Wyoming was down 13-6 and had a 4th and 2 on the UVA 3 yard line. They scored the touchdown but missed the extra point that would have sent the game into a second overtime.

I’ve been watching Wyoming football since I was a freshman there in the fall of 1976. If I had to sum up the last 30 years as a Wyoming football fan I would have to say that I am really tired of watching my team beat themselves. Sure they occasionally get outplayed by a better football team. But more often than not the Wyoming Cowboys don’t lose football games – they beat themselves.

Reunion

I am leaving today for Cheyenne, Wyoming - Again!

My 30th class reunion is being held this weekend. Originally I was not going to attend the reunion. After making the trip to Cheyenne with Dad in June and again with the family last month for our planned vacation I had convinced myself that a third trip was just too much. Besides we knew that high school volleyball tryouts were going to be sometime around this weekend and my daughter wanted me to go to them with her.

But through several different circumstances coming together I ended up getting plane tickets to fly out today and back on Sunday. This will allow me to attend the ice-breaker on Friday and the dinner on Saturday. I'll skip the picnic on Sunday in order to fly home and be here for tryouts with my daughter on Monday.

The only thing about this weekend that has me worried is looking at the website that was set up for my reunion. I'm going to be spending my weekend with a bunch of old folks.

I'm not taking my computer so I will not be blogging until sometime early next week.

UW Volleyball Camp

July 17 - 19

My Daughter Chaos was enrolled in a volleyball camp at the University of Wyoming. She was one of about 150 girls enrolled in this camp. I hung around the camp for most of the three days. I was watching the coaches and trying to learn as much from them as I could. I picked up some new drills, some twists on old drills and a few pointers on teaching certain skills.

My daughter seemed to have a good time. She came home very tired every night. After all volleyball from 8 AM to 8 PM every day at 7220 feet with a couple hours off for lunch and dinner can be pretty intense.

We discovered during this camp that it is a really small world that we live in. At the beginning of the camp they polled where all the players were from. Most were from Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. There were a couple from Ohio, one from Washington and my daughter from California.

The afternoon of the first day they divided all the players into teams of 14 or 15 girls. Each team had two coaches assigned to them.

During one of the breaks my daughter’s coach asked where in California she was from. When she told him she was from Ridgecrest he knew all about our little town. Apparently this coach, who is the head volleyball coach at Arizona Western, a small community college had recruited our local high school Varsity Coach’s daughter to come play ball for him in the fall.

So what are the chances that my daughter could travel 1100 miles to a volleyball camp and ends up being coached there by a guy who is going to be coaching the daughter of the coach that my daughter wants to play volleyball for in a couple years?

Vedauwoo Picnicking

July 16, 2006

(The next several postings will be about the vacation we just got back from. I wrote most of it while we were on vacation and finished up many of the articles after we got home.)

Since my oldest daughter was going to start a volleyball camp at the University of Wyoming on Monday the 17th I wanted to try and get her used to the altitude in Laramie. Laramie sits at a slightly elevated 7220 feet above sea level. I know that there is no way that my daughter would get acclimated to the altitude in only 2 days. But I wanted her to get used to doing things while breathing hard. So the first day there I took her out for a little 2 mile walk before going to bed that night.

The next morning my family and the friends we were staying with packed up and headed for the Vedauwoo. Vedauwoo is a large collection of rock formations that lies just north of Interstate 80 near the top of Sherman Hill between Laramie and Cheyenne. I first started playing, picnicking and climbing there when I was a junior in high school in 1975.

Vedauwoo is a great place to climb. There are small boulders that kids can play on and around and enough complex climbs to challenge the most experienced climbers.

We had a blast up there. The place has changed a lot. The parks department has taken over and you have to pay to drive in. There are some facilities there – bathrooms, drinking water and parking places. All these things were not available when I used to climb there in my younger indestructible days.

We did a little bouldering, and I did a lot of reminiscing, my family did a lot of ignoring me and then we took a walk around the park area. It was a little over 2 miles around the Turtle Rock trail.

This picture is the area called Walt’s Face where I used to climb. I free climbed the red route. Lead climbed the blue route and second climbed the green routes. The two white lines were fun rappels.

Hillbilly Cargo Carrier

My Mom’s Mom left her china closet to my Mother when she passed away 5 years ago. Mom asked us three kids if any of us were interested in having the closet. Both my youngest sister and I expressed an interest in owning this family heirloom. My mother refused to decide which of the two of us would get grandma’s china closet. She kept telling us “You two work it out.”

Well neither of us made any effort to work it out. We both suspected that Mom just was trying to start a fight and neither of us wanted any part of that. So the china closet sat in the corner of Mom and Dad’s living room, unused, for 5 years.

When my sister and I asked Dad about the China Closet last week he defaulted to Mom’s decision and told us that we would have to work it out between the two of us. So my sister and I decided to work it out between us. I immediately started referring to it as my china closet as often as I could during the week. My sister asked me what my plans for the closet were and I decided to play a little hardball just to see what her reaction would be. So I said “it goes home with me this week or it stays here.”

She stopped for a moment and asked me “Do you have a plan to be able to get it home this week?” I replied with an emphatic “Yes! I have a plan.” I did have a plan. I planned on trying to get her to let me have the china closet. After that I would come up with something. My sister just looked surprised and walked away.

After several more days of me referring to the china closet as ‘My New China Closet’ my sister finally had a sit down talk with her daughter and they decided that in exchange for some concessions on my part for several other pieces of furniture I could have the china closet. I really do like the other pieces of furniture that my sister insisted I trade for, but not as much as the china closet. So I was willing to let them go. After all I can always go visit them at her house.

This put me into a real bind. It was approximately 24 hours until we were scheduled to leave town and I had to come up with a plan on how to get that china closet home that was more than just saying I had a plan. So I waved good bye to my dear wife and headed to the lumber yard to wander around and think up an idea or two.

Two hours later I returned back to my Father’s house with three sheets of 7/16 OSB four sheets of ¾ inch Styrofoam, some plastic sheeting, five 2x2s and a box of screws.

I measured, sawed and measured again for a couple hours but didn’t get very far. I had a gallery of onlookers just hanging out in the front yard gawking at me. I don’t work well with an audience. So a puttered around and tried to ignore all the comments being made about “engineers with tools” and “it’s measure twice, cut once, not measure once, cut twice.”

The next morning I had the front yard to myself and I got a lot more done. Then 2 hours before Mom’s Memorial Service was scheduled to start I had the China Closet packed and loaded on top of the van.



As soon as the rest of the family saw this the comments started flying like mosquitoes at an everglades nudist colony.

Eventually my creation was dubbed the Hillbilly Cargo Carrier and if anyone asked we got it at Redneck Rentals.

It may have been ugly but it rode up there well. It cruised through slamming on the braked to miss a couple deer, and several miles of nasty California highway just fine. My gas milage only went down abut 3 mpg but I can't blame all of the that on the Hillbilly Cargo Carrier. We had the inside of the van really loaded down, and we bucking some pretty strong winds the last 400 miles of the trip.

The china closet arrived home undamaged. But I did get some pretty interesting looks from people at the gas stations though. We stopped for a bathroom and stretch break at Little America in western Wyoming and another traveler was making some supposedly funny remarks about aerodynamic boxes when my dear wife walked past us. I was tempted to grab her, kiss her and ask “ready to get on the road sis?” In retrospect, I should have done it.

I'm retiring the hillbilly cargo carrier today. It was put together with screws so it would come apart again. But you know, with just a little modification I could use it as a truck topper for my little dodge pickup. I'll have to run that one by my dear wife and kids.

2730 Miles

We just got home from our "vacation". We put 2730 miles on the old Dodge Grand Caravan.

We didn't get out of Cheyenne until about 6 PM last night. I was hoping for 4 PM. So much for the best laid plans. Several friends who I had not seen in several years showed up for Mom's Memorial. I just couldn't bring myself to walk out and leave without visiting as much as possible.

We spent last night in Provo UT. We got into the motel around 2 AM this morning, about an hour later than I thought we would. I tired to take the 40/189 cuttoff through Provo Canyon in order to avoid driving through Salt Lake City. But 25 miles after leaving interstate 80 I was driving away from Heber City and came across a large electronic sign that told me that highway 189 was closed from 10 PM to 6 AM and to take Interstate 80. It sure would have been nice if they had told me that 20 miles earlier.

So I had to turn around and backtrack all the way back to I80. Then drive down through Salt Lake City to get to Provo. On the way back to I80 I almost hit 2 deer. One I missed by less than 10 feet. I saw 4 others just standing on the side of the road. Weird, I didn't see a single deer on the way through there the first time. But on the way back through it was like they were sprouting up out of the pavement.

We slept in this morning and didn't get out of Provo until almost 11 AM. I needed the sleep because today's drive was going to be almost 11 hours.

We rolled into the driveway about 9:30 PM PDT. Almost 11.5 hours after we left. We made a dinner stop in Barstow that killed almost 45 minutes. It was a long hot drive today.

It's good to be home. We got the car unloaded, and the kids into bed and I'm heading there soon. I'll post some of my vacation stuff over the next couple days.

Traveling to Wyoming

We left Ridgecrest for Wyoming yesterday around 1:30 in the afternoon. This was a couple hours later than I wanted to but I had a lot of things I had put off until the last minute and it took longer to get packed and ready to go than I had planned on. I hate it when I’m the one that makes us late for arbitrary deadlines that I set. It’s much more fun nagging at everyone else who making us late for my arbitrary deadlines.

Regardless we finally hit the road. It was 108 in Ridgecrest when we left. It was 121 in Baker, CA when we drove through there a couple hours later. It was 115 degrees in Las Vegas. Basically it was HOT! DAMNED HOT! WELCOME TO HELL HOT!

To add to the heat we were driving in the middle of the LA to Las Vegas weekend traffic. This means that we were surrounded by idiots who were on their way to Las Vegas to lose all their money and can’t get there fast enough to do so. It boils down to a four hour drive in over 110 degree temperatures and surrounded by morons who if they ever knew anything about driving have forgotten it.

To top matters off my car kept overheating. The van tends to run a little hot, and when loaded down it will occasionally heat up while trying to climb steep hills AT 70 mph when it is hot out. Well it was hot out, and we were climbing steep hills AT 70 mph but we weren’t really loaded down. So I was surprised when the van kept overheating. So on top of the heat and the traffic we rode about 100 miles without our air conditioner.

Eventually I got past Vegas, the temperatures dropped a bit, the sun went down, the traffic thinned out and the van stopped overheating and we were able to get down to traveling.

We spent the night at a Travelodge in Provo Utah. This morning my first task was to check the van. There was plenty of water in the radiator, and everything else looked OK except for this one hose that came out of the manifold cover and was supposed to be hooked into the air filter cover. It was loose. I pushed it back onto its fitting and we traveled to Laramie today with the AC running the whole way with no overheating at all. Damn. I wish I would have noticed that little hose when I looked under the hood at the gas station in Las Vegas.

Just outside of Evanston WY we stopped for some lunch and I got a couple pictures of some of the local residents.

Busy Weeks Coming Up

I haven't been blogging too much lately. I may not be able to do much the next two weeks. Thursday night I have to run over to Bakersfield and pick Chaos and two of her friends from the volleyball camp they are at this week.

On friday right after Destruction gets out of his soccer camp we are loading up the van and heading for Laramie WY. Chaos is enrolled in a volleyball camp there next week. After her camp is over we are going to run over to Cheyenne for a few days.

Frontier Days starts the weekend of 21st. We are going to attend the opening Saturday Parade. I have rodeo tickets for Sunday afternoon. There is a pancake breakfast on Monday. We plan on spending several days visiting friends, being tourists and just having fun.

On Thursday the 27th we will have a Memorial Service for my Mother in Cheyenne. Dad wanted to have the Memorial Service during Frontier Days when most of his grandchildren were going to be in town. There was some mixup and miscommunications with the Pastor and we ended up with the memorial service being planned for the day after we were going to leave to come home. So we had to make some different plans. Fortunately the motel I had our return trip booked with willing to move our reservation out one day.

We didn't take much of a vacation last summer. Since we will be spending a lot of this one with family I'm not sure how much of a vacation it will be. But we will be away from work and out of the desert heat. So I guess it will qualify as a vacation.

I don't know what kind of internet connections I will be able to scare up while out of town. But I'll write some occasionally and post it when I get the chance.

The one thing I'm really gonna miss is the second half of the Tour de France. None of the places we will be visiting will have OLN on their cable systems, or they will not have cable at all.