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Chapter 21
Human Behavior
This chapter is composed of columns that didnât fit nicely into any of the previous subjects, but are interesting nonetheless because they look at how we act.
Just residing in a unique area like Jackson County, Colorado, means I got to meet a lot of interesting people for a variety of reasons. I tried to learn something from all of them, so you can read here about people who somehow have the time to travel, ride, walk, meander across the US, vote on marijuana propositions, take roads that are not traveled (for good reasons), buy lottery tickets despite the enormous odds against winning, and so on through my memories of a long life, and one good friend who didnât live long enough.
We need to remember too we are merely humans living in a massively complex world. We are on this constant search for answers that might not even be out there. Or we may just be traveling in this direction because thatâs what our GPS told us to do.
The Jackson County IQ Test
November 29, 2007
This is getting stupid.
In the last two weeks, at least three vehicles have gotten stuck trying to traverse Buffalo Pass. One was a car, one was a car towing a U-Haul trailer, and one was a twenty-four-foot furniture truck.
Because we no longer have a tow service with a four-wheel drive tow truck (one went out of business, and one burned down) it falls to our emergency services to go bail out these people.
And hereâs how well that works. Sheriff Rick Rizor went to help one fellow, but his tow strap had been damaged and broke. Rizor kept having to shorten it and finally ended up with a piece about ten feet long, not enough length to snap a vehicle out of the ruts.
So Division of Wildlife officers, who have better trucks, arrived on the scene to help Rizor, who also had become stuck. So during four or five hours, we have three emergency responders up on Buffalo Pass trying to pull someone out of a snowbank and way, way far away from being able to assist anyone else in real trouble.
To compound this nonsense, the county doesnât charge these people a fee for pulling them out of clearly visible snow and mud. Rizor told the Town Board Monday night that in some circumstance, the county will bill âvictimsâ for rescue operations.
He cited three instances where bills have been sent, but none of the bills was ever paid. All of the victims lived out of state.
This used to be amusing when we had a tow truck. We could laugh at travelers who for some reason thought that a gravel road with scores of switchbacks over the rugged mountains of the Continental Divide was a shortcut to Steamboat Springs.
For those of you who donât live here, the Buffalo Pass road is not a shortcut even in summer. It winds all the way up the side of a steep ridge that rises from about 8,500 feet to over ten thousand feet. Itâs at best a 15 mph road when itâs open.
To momentarily take the side of travelers, they are sometimes surprised that there are still snowdrifts on the road as late as July and as early as October. When snow falls on that side of the mountains, it tends to stay there. And our local governments, federal and county, arenât helping. There were two signs Tuesday at County Road 24 and Highway 14; one said Buffalo Pass is open, the other said itâs closed. The signs are a hundred feet apart.
However, many of these people try to traverse the pass in vehicles that are only designed for paved roads. And many of these people try to ram through snowdrifts in vehicles with six inches of clearance. But what gave rise to what we call âThe Jackson County IQ Test,â some people try to drive over this road in the dead of winter when the snow is so deep you canât even see the road.
People ignore the signs anyway.
Gee, what is to be done? Close the road in winter.
Sorry to shout, but I brought this up at a meeting when nine or ten Forest Service personnel were in one room, and I got only ums and maybes and I donât knows. I asked Rick Rizor about this, and he said there was a gate there, but someone hit it last year, and itâs all bent up.
It seems to me that between the US government and the county government, we could come up with a gate. Even a chain and a sheet of plywood would do the trick. Then if someone gets around that barricade, send them a large bill and slap a mechanicâs lien on their vehicle to make sure they pay it.
As my colleagues down here at the paper say, this isnât rocket surgery. The Forest Service doesnât need to perform an environmental impact study to put up a gate. They close roads all the time without talking to anyone. The county government has about $6 million in its Road and Bridge Department service fund and probably could cut loose a few dollars to pay for a decent sign that says something like, âRoad Impassable Due To Snow.â
Unfortunately, we canât just leave people up there. If they froze to death, their families would sue, and equally unfortunately, the courts wonât allow âthat driver was so stupid, he should have been taken out of the gene poolâ as a defense.
And get this: a deputy gave two individuals a ride to town after their vehicle had become stuck and dropped them off at the mini-mart to use the phone. One manâs parting words were, âThanks for dropping us off in the middle of nowhere.â
Actually, they were picked up about thirty miles northwest of the middle of nowhere.
Whistle While You Donât Work
June 6, 2002
A couple of hikers got lost last weekend just over the border in Wyoming. A mother and her ten-year-old daughter, although experienced hikers, got disoriented and ended up spending a week in the woods.
They were found last Saturday. They were exhausted and hungry, but otherwise in good shape.
After they were found, I got to thinking, what if that had been me? I donât mind being exhausted and hungry, but Iâd have missed a week of work. When you own your own business, you usually canât miss a week of work without making careful preparations several years in advance.
I feel like Iâm falling hopelessly behind if I take a day off for golf. I go ahead and take the day off, but I feel badly about it.
And most small business owners I know have the same problem. We donât have full-time staff that can fill in for us when weâre gone for any significant length of time. I donât mean to brag, but this newspaper wouldnât be the same without me.
So I get a little irritated when I get a news release from, say, Jamie Fraser.
On May 7 in Williamsburg, Fraser began a trip to ride his bicycle across the United States to raise money for cystic fibrosis. I think the news release meant to say he wants to raise money to find treatments and maybe a cure for the disease.
Now, I donât have anything against people raising money to fight major diseases, but we get two, three, four, or more of these people every summer. Theyâre riding, walking, jogging, hiking, flying, walking their dog, whatever, across the US. There was one guy who was pushing a shopping cart across America.
And they take the most scenic routes. Doesnât that sound like fun? I wouldnât mind taking a stroll across the United States, stopping at all the resort towns, chatting up the locals, and seeing the sights. I just donât have the time.
If one measure of the wealth of a nation is how many of its people donât have to work for a living, the US has got to be no. 1.
What about these people who follow national leaders a...
