The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Posted on July 4 at 10:10 a.m.
On Rob Douglas: Citizenship in decline?

Oh, Rob, you really are new around here, aren't you?

Haven't you discovered yet that Steamboat is this little town WAY off the beaten path (no endorsement intended) where people come to work off the books, smoke dope, find easy sex with idealistic but unrealistic hippie chicks and avoid contact with law enforcement agencies that do ANYTHING except respond to 911 calls when there's an accident or a violent crime?

Doesn't the bank teller theft case tell you something about the way some of the businesses run up here?

Don't you realize that small, mostly cash businesses, are IDEAL vehicles to launder cash from trafficking in recreational drugs? Put the money in the register, close out at the end of the day, deposit the money in the bank, and VOILA! Clean money! Oh, but doesn't the daily deposit have to match up reasonably with the records of sales required by the Colorado Department of Revenue? No . . . because there are, like, two people in Grand Junction to cover the whole western side of Colorado, and I doubt that anybody in this town has EVER been audited by the CDR to see if records of daily sales are being kept.

This is a place where the level of violence is too low to attract federal attention, and as long as people are filing tax returns, there's no reason to come sniffing around. The IRS has thresholds for beginning an investigation, and they weigh the cost of the investigation against the amount that could be recovered, and don't go after the smaller cases. This makes good BUSINESS sense, but as a law-enforcement agency, it tells people that they can get away with a lot of small, hard to trace transactions which also happen to fund drug trafficking at the penny-ante level it happens among our local recreational traffickers.

So, getting involved in local committees and such requires several unique attributes. First, you've got to have the time to do it (meaning you don't have to work three jobs to live). Second, you've got to care, and that usually means you have something to gain from it around here, which would exclude you from personal gain if you worked on the committee; it's an ethics thing, covered by Colorado law. Third, you can't be paranoid about having your name or photo in the paper. Like, if you are getting workmen's comp payments from somewhere back in Michigan, you don't want publicity about how you ski, or wade around in a trout stream with a leg injury that prevents you from working for a living.

You need to get out and start a business that puts you in touch with the "gritty" elements around here. You'd be amazed at the offers you get to "barter," or the number of folks who want to work off the books, paid in cash, to hide their income and save you paying Social Security and withholding taxes to Uncle Sam.

I understand why you don't understand. I didn't understand either until I tried to be in an honest business in this town.

Posted on July 3 at 1:08 p.m.
On Rob Douglas: C.R. 36 becomes Taylor Way

Doozie. Short slang for, "Duesenberg." Duesenberg was the name of a car manufacturer which produced high-quality American automobiles between 1913 and 1937.

Posted on July 3 at 8:34 a.m.
On Ken Brenner: Are we prepared?

Silver,

The lowest-cost way to get the energy required to do this job is to produce it AT THE SITE using natural gas extracted during the process. LPG can be trucked in to seed the process.

When you talk about efficiency, you are talking about wasted heat. A process that produces heat with high efficiency and then incorporates any waste heat back into the loop just gets more efficient.

An electric space heater is just about 100% efficient in producing heat from the electricity required to power it. The waste is in generation and transmission.

So, if you can get a 1-acre site going to produce oil and gas, then you've already got your energy source to power extraction operations on the adjacent acreage.

If it took more energy to get the stuff out of the ground than could be produced, it would not be profitable, and Shell wouldn't be excited about their process.

High temperature hydrogen fuel cells can extract the necessary hydrogen fuel directly from hydrocarbon fuels, producing water and carbon (not carbon dioxide) as waste products. Theoretically, a system like the one Shell is using could extract natural gas and shale oil to be used in hydrogen fuel cells to generate the required electricity, and produce pure water (a plus for us) and solid molecular carbon for industrial use in things like carbon composite materials. They may have bought electricity off the grid for the pilot project, but I'm betting some smart engineers can come up with a system like the one I'm theorizing (or probably better) and then shale oil production will be KING!

Posted on July 3 at 8:08 a.m.
On Rob Douglas: C.R. 36 becomes Taylor Way

This is really a crazy discussion.

It reminds me of my belief, when I was a small child, that the water that came out of the faucets in the house was produced by some kind of machine that lived under the house. I knew the sewage sent into a septic tank in the yard, so that was not such a mystery.

So, anyway, the idea that our water came out of a river and was sent to a treatment plant and then piped out to all of the houses all over town was mind-boggling. The idea of "infrastructure" that makes our civilization possible is at the core of this whole debate.

Bikes are great for the things they can do, but they are very limited. Roads exist for the purpose of vehicular travel, and trade and commercial activity is the reason for having roads that are year-round passable by vehicles that carry products to market. Think about it. If farmers had to carry everything to town on horses, instead of in wagons, we'd have never evolved a network of roadways -- it would all be trails suitable for horses and, maybe, mountain bikes.

None of the homes served by the local roads would exist if the material to build them had to be brought in on bicycles. The benefit to cyclists is, at most, tertiary to any other benefit provided by paved county roads.

Posted on July 2 at 1:55 p.m.
On Ken Brenner: Are we prepared?

There was a blurb on the news the other night where Shell had used a very unobtrusive method to obtain 100,000 barrels of oil from about 1 acre of land, plus natural gas. They heat the rock with elements driven into the ground, which causes the gas and oil to be released in a recoverable form. They have proven the concept and now are moving on to a practical, deployable method.

The story didn't give a lot of detail, but it seems to me that if you can power the heating system with gas you are extracting from the ground, you've got yourself a self-licking ice cream cone of the first water!

Oh, and when they're all done, the site looks pretty much like it did before.

Hey, uh Shell guys? I've got an acre you do this on. Will I get like, $10 a barrel from you? If so, it's a deal! If you can just work around my house a little bit, I should wind up with a million bucks PLUS nicer landscaping when you're done.

Posted on July 2 at 6:49 a.m.
On Rob Douglas: C.R. 36 becomes Taylor Way

surely,

You forget that pedestrians and cyclists are forbidden on limited access interstate highways. Pedestrian traffic certainly IS regulated by law. How many cyclists do you see on I-70 going through the Eisenhower and Johnson tunnels? I've seen signs requiring cyclists to dismount and walk the bike on the pedestrian sidewalks in certain areas, such as bridges and tunnels.

Jaywalking is unlawful, so that regulates pedestrian traffic on the roads. Same for crosswalks -- pedestrians in the crosswalk have the right of way, but not at other places on the same road.

And, if you happen to be in the country illegally, you're really not entitled to use the roads, either.

Posted on July 1 at 3:31 p.m.
On Rob Douglas: C.R. 36 becomes Taylor Way

Kielbasa,

In Colorado, if you want to use a second rod, you have to buy a "second rod" stamp for your fishing license. They don't appear to offer a "third rod" stamp, or anything more than two lines, except there are additional rules that allow trot lines in combination with a rod and reel.

So, yeah, fishing poles are regulated in Colorado. I guess if you need to change rods for any reason, you need to hike back up to the truck . . . or, are you allowed to have more than one rod in your possession without a stamp, even if you're not actually fishing. Can you keep more than two in your garage?

So, if Colorado regulates fishing rods, why not bicycles? There are age requirements for a fishing license, so maybe you wouldn't need a permit for a bike until you're old enough to need a fishing license? That seems fair.

Posted on July 1 at 1:15 p.m.
On Rob Douglas: C.R. 36 becomes Taylor Way

Hey, Bob . . .

Have you got a fishing license? How many poles does it allow you to have in your possession at one time? Isn't that like regulating fishing poles . . . . ?

Posted on July 1 at 1:13 p.m.
On Suicide attempts spike in May

It's really pretty simple. People get here, spend a season or two, and realize things are tough. It can be emotional or financial, and part of it is probably related to drug abuse either as a result of emotional and financial stress, or as causes of the same kinds of stress.

There are certain people who have physical defects that make them prone to depression and suicide, and the same emotional instabilities tend to interfere with jobs, relationships, school, and every other aspect of life.

According to the people I know personally who have attempted suicide, two of them ingested pills because they just wanted the "pain" to stop. It was emotional pain stemming from broken relationships. The third is a lot harder to nail down, but childhood sexual abuse, low self-esteem (from someone who was successful both in school and in their chosen profession, and even openly admired by others), and self guilt/loathing were all part of it.

I guess the one common factor that bound them all was a quality of "magical thinking" in which they believed that some series of events would come to pass and deliver them from the emotional pain. They all lacked the ability to take personal responsibility for their "pain" and take logical steps to emerge from the situations that caused emotional conflict.

When people back into a corner, have no way out, and see no relief, suicide is the one thing they can control. Sadly, sometimes, even if there's a person there to help them out of the corner, soothe their pain and provide emotional and financial support, that's not enough. Suicide for these people is a sure sign of inability to adapt to negative circumstances.

It's never a one-size fits all issue; a man in his 70s suffering from bone cancer and a girl of 16 who has been teased mercilessly at school would each have their own reasons for wanting to end their lives.

One thing for sure, though. Steamboat Springs is not the good deal a lot of people think it will be, and if they cannot escape back to real life elsewhere, what's the answer?

In Canada, they find people out in the woods who walk out into the forest in the snow with a bottle of vodka, drink it, and freeze to death after falling asleep. Those people really want to die. There's no cry for help to be found in that method, because help won't show up in time. Seems like most of the local cases (where ingestion was the method) fall more into the "cry for help" category.

Life in these little mountain towns is tough, and marriages, businesses and lives fall victim to the financial stresses. If you come here hoping to find happiness, you may be in for a shock. Things really can be worse here than "back home."

Posted on July 1 at 12:17 p.m.
On Rob Douglas: C.R. 36 becomes Taylor Way

Bob,

Fair enough. I don't need a tattoo, because I gave my fingerprints willingly a number of times in order to gain access to benefits granted by the government; these include a Navy ROTC scholarship, special access program clearances, and even a liquor license.

I have an ID card that comes along with an index finger biometric requirement. I left the service before they started collecting DNA to identify "unknowns," but again, what's the problem? A tattoo on the arm can be removed. Try doing that with all ten fingers, and your DNA.

Regulation of bicycles as a public safety measure should not cause a problem for a law-abiding person. Neither driving or cycling on public roads are rights granted by the Constitution. If the option was to stay off county roads, or register the bike, then there's an option for those who don't want to register.

Bicyclists use a public asset, receive emergency services from public employees, and derive a benefit from traveling on a paved road (ever tried riding a street bike through the sand over in Moab?). Why shouldn't that use be regulated, just like it is for everything else that uses those roads lawfully, including pedestrians? Each and every one of us is somehow "registered" by the government except the illegals, so I just don't see the problem.