The Kenslers and Salt Lake
Gadgets firmly plugged in and luggage tossed casually in the back seat, we attempt to make contact with old friends from College now living in Salt Lake. A few quick phone calls later, we were reunited with Andrew and Marian Kensler - and meet recent arrival Daniel. Aside from sharing a name with the man, Andrew is a neat guy. While in college, I admired him, and would have listed him as one of my quieter personal heroes. At Grinnell, he majored in computer science, and a wry sense of humor. Now he is in graduate school designing a better real-time ray-tracer, and hopes to go on to work in special effects.
Of course, finding them was not without its difficulties. Salt Lake City is notable for more than the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats. It is also the heart of a major modern religion, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons. Their city takes much of its spirit from their character. It is remarkably clean, and well laid out on a precise grid whose extensively numbered organizational system is at first a total mystery - until one realizes that the point of origin from which all roads ascend in a Cartesian plane is the central temple of their faith. It is an astonishingly elegant building, and I wish we had taken the time to visit and photograph it.
We feast that night at "Pi Pizza", a comfortable eating establishment that is underground in more ways than one. It is here that we are joined by Dieter the Bold, another Grinnellian of our acquaintance. Another biology major in college, Dieter now works as tech-support for eBay, and they keep him real busy. We are fortunate to capture some of his free time on one of his rare days off. We order two massively thick pizzas heavily laden with toppings, one for the carnivores in our soul and our party, and the other pie is for the vegetarian inclined. As much as I hate to admit it, the vegetarian pizza, with its fresh tomatoes and artichoke hearts, is almost the better of the two.
Dana and I linger for a while, catching up on the simple joys of conversation with old friends and new ideas and find ourselves leaving the Kensler residence late in the evening, heading down the road towards our first true stop of this adventure: Timpanogos Cave - and a motel at which to crash the night. I decide to be clever, and try and find my way to the park in the blackness before searching out a motel. Perhaps I was merely reluctant to return to civilization with the obsidian sky lit up by the endless diamond night above us, but I did manage to get somewhat turned around on the way back to the interstate from the Park's front gate. Dana good-naturedly suggested that we might be lost, but I knew better. We were definitely somewhere - we just didn't know where yet.