April 2011
04/25/11Ryder Rides Again
Ryder Gauteraux takes his hand-tooled leather work “on the road” as he and a team of builders customize a show truck for the 2011 Mid-American Truck Show. Building the Western-themed Lowmax Truck took vision; the results are like nothing I’ve seen before. Check out this video and prepare to be amazed! Ryder's custom work ranges from cowboy boots to semitrucks … don’t miss seeing what he creates this year for the 19th Annual Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale. The big event takes place in Jackson Hole at the Pavilion at Snow King Resort, September 8-11, 2011. Allison Merritt is the Western Design Conference event manager. Posted at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0 |
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04/18/11Dealing with a twister: no parlor game
When I was a kid, our family made annual treks to Kansas, ostensibly to paint my Grandmother's porch. In a dozen or more years, I think we actually executed that project – well – maybe once. But every summer we loved to go back to my dad's homestead for other kinds of fun. We'd pick strawberries, play with our friends in his little hometown of Westphalia, and one more thing: to see if there would be any tornadoes that year. It seems like every year we youngsters were thrilled at least once to the notion that we would somehow all end up in Oz. Thankfully, however, we stayed earthbound. Since then, I've learned to appreciate the damage these storms could do. One July afternoon, the house belonging to a man I worked for in college was flattened while he sat... Posted at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0 |
04/14/11Spring In (and Out of) the Tetons
Ahhhhhhhh, Spring in the Tetons. At least that is what the calendar states. However, with a solid four feet of snow around my apartment and a forecast of the white stuff on and off all week, spring sure seems a long way off. Like it often does for others living here, this time of year brings about two yearly rituals; the desire to get fit for the upcoming summer sports and activities, and the intense need to get out of Dodge. The annual migration of locals to warmer climates is as predictable and consistent as the bears coming out of their dens, and the elk retreating off of the refuge. In regard to the first ritual, I have been going to an early morning boot camp class at the Rec Center in Jackson. The twice-per-week classes, running an hour and starting at 7 am, have me... Posted at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0 |
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04/11/11Hillbilly Hellcats Tear Up the Trap
The bartender and the only four long-faced patrons at the Knotty Pine looked at us as if we were idiots. "They're playing at the Trap Bar," said Adam from behind the bar, toweling off a glass; and for emphasis, knowing we were Jackson locals, added: "That's up at Grand Targhee." Geez--a further twenty miles--that's forty round-trip. And we fifty-somethings thought we were going out on a limb with a night's outing all the way from Jackson to Victor. Would it be worth it? The final gig at the Trap Bar for this winter was certainly worth it. The bassist and the guitarist were even in our own age genre--and were giving it their all with a highly energized sound that had the Trap... Posted at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0 |
04/08/11Jackson's Yoga Community is Growing
It was eight hours of yoga in three days, the Jivamukti workshop held at Inversion Yoga. At one point, the instructor said it was the fittest group of people he had ever seen at any of his workshops across America. One of the fittest and healthiest places in America—that seems to be what Jackson, Wyoming, is all about. I moved here almost two years ago from San Francisco, where yoga was a way of life for me. Moving to Jackson led me to do a lot of more yoga on my own; there was definitely a void I felt without the yoga community like the one I had in SF. There were only two yoga studios and they both had very sporadic classes. Now, less than two years later, I found myself sitting in a yoga workshop with close to fifty people... Posted at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0 |
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04/05/11Springing onto Snowmobiles
Well, it’s finally happened. Last week, I rode a snowmobile for the first time ever. Mind you, I’ve never been adverse to the idea of snowmobiling, I’ve just never had the opportunity. Posted at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0 |
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04/01/11'Mule Bear' Sightings in Signal Mountain Area
In a phenomenon termed "an udderly improbable instance of unnatural selection" by Grand Teton National Park large mammal biologist Beau Elkington, this animal—thought to be a mule-deer-buck/black-bear-sow hybrid—was spotted and photographed last July off the Signal Mountain Road by park visitor Bernard Stearney of Cold Cod, Maine. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” said Stearney, “but the camera never lies.” Since that initial report, rangers at park headquarters received information on several additional encounters with the creature well into the fall of 2010. “Visitors took to calling it the ‘mule bear,’” said Elkington. No such sightings have yet been reported in 2011. “If... Posted at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0 |
