Picto Diary - 27 August 2015 - LastLeg

Above: Mwah (sic)'s Ducati 2015 Multistrada. Salmon, ID. 7:45 AM. 27 August 2015.

Packed and ready to go. Destination Park City, UT... just, under 400 miles.

TIMDT, now home from NYC, says she wants me to get home early... hence, the early start time.

Above: Selfie. Super 8 Motel. Salmon, ID. 27 August 2015.

Above: US 93, 30 or 40 miles south of Salmon, ID. 27 August 2015.

Wonderfully scenic road meandering along with the Salmon River on right. Little traffic. Another good road for wearing down motorcycle tire sidewalls.

The smoke had not disappeared at this point, but, it had dissipated considerably from yesterday's concentrations.

The chopper is used to drop fire retardant on forest fires in the area.

Above: The Bishop, standing by the Duc, observes part of earthquake fault at the base of Mt. Borah, Idaho's tallest mountain (12,662 feet). 2.5 miles in to the east on dirt road, from US 93, in the Big Lost River Valley... between Challis and Arco, Idaho. 27 August 2015.

The earthquake giving rise (no pun intended) to this particular fault occurred on 28 October 1983. Mt. Borah ridge plate rose about 6 feet and the valley sunk 9 feet. The fracture was 26 miles long and 7 miles deep.

This type of tectonic plate shift has been going on in this area for 20 million years. The plate movement created the range where Mt. Borah is situated.

A dozen large inland seas have covered this area over the last billion years. So, the area is a graveyard for fossils of thousands of varieties of sea creatures. Bones, shells, corals, microscopic remains have piled up in the area over the eons.

Mt. Borah is the upthrust from this fossil laden area, so sea fossils can be found at the mountain summit.

According to plate scientists, the plate will definitely move again. The valley will sink further and Mt. Borah will gain in height.

Mankind"s time on the earth is hardly measurable in the context of geological time. Prescience and foresight (of which, there doesn't seem to be much in today's America) will be required to assure civilizational survival in the face of earth's relentless, potentially dangerous (if glacially paced), change.

Recent published studies have highlighted the expected (overdue), major, tectonic shift on the US northwest coast (New Yorker) and the assured eruption of the Yellowstone caldera (Daily Mail), both events having the potential for major global civilization disruption.

The earth, in its 4.5 billion years, has been through 5 extinctions. There have been five ice ages in the last 300K years. Stephen Hawking's warning about all this is that mankind must hedge its bets by starting civilization on another planet. Now that's prescient!

Above: Valley central pivot irrigation system. Also, a Valley system in the background. Magic Valley, Big Lost River valley, ID. 27 August 2015.

According to Earp, most of these big irrigation systems come from three manufacturers in Nebraska. The systems/companies are all named for the towns where they are manufactured. The Valley system is manufactured in Valley, Nebraska.

I ride past these irrigation devices with a new appreciation for their significance, after Earp's teaching me.

Above: Mwah (sic)'s Duc Multistrada 1200 in TIMDT's garage. End of trip. 2700 miles. 27 August 2015.

I pulled into the garage at 3:45 PM. I stopped for a Subway sandwich in Pocatello, ID.

Addendum:

I guarantee you I remember it [King Kong movie] well! That was the greatest movie of all times back when I was a young teenager (probably around 1935)! There will never be a new version of King Kong that is as spellbinding as the original -- showing how careful and protecting Kong was of this beautiful young girl, putting her down carefully atop the Empire State Building as he fought those little airplanes shooting him with machine guns until he fell. I think the final words were some thing like "It was beauty that killed the beast".

Manhattan,
Park City, UT


I knew that, because I'm EVEN OLDER THAN YOU ARE Steve.

Pensacola Law,
Pensacola, FL


Everyone knows that.

Scribe,
Boston, MA

Ask some under 40,

And the card game at Lolo was also featured in "A River Runs Through It."

Pensacola Law,
Pensacola, FL