Culturama: Symphonic Fishing

The month of August brought about some fun. My friend BING! invited me to join her for an evening in Park City to attend a performance by the Utah Symphony. The featured work of the concert was Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and there were some other numbers by Gershwin and Copland that were played.

The weather was a little ominous, but nonetheless beautiful if you can't tell by the color of the clouds in this photo. The last time I attended a concert at this venue was a couple years ago when the Symphony opened for Tony Bennett. Both evenings had similarities: lightning flashing around us (for Tony it was a few miles behind the stage, like the sky was some sort of celestial backup dancer), light sprinkles of rain now and then, and, of course, a bucket of chicken provided by yours truly. Gotta love them outside concerts!

Me and BING!, filled with classy tunes and fried chicken.

A few weeks later, old roommate and BFF Isaac was feeling a little lonely since his wife was out of town, so he organized a little outing for himself, myself, and Darrellself to do some fishing on the Provo River, followed by mountain biking at Sundance.

I used to fish these waters a lot when I took a fly fishing course at BYU. There's some good fly fishing to be had on this river, and you don't have to drive far to find it. Unfortunately, these guys weren't catching anything. My best guess is that (a) Darrell's cast wasn't so much a cast as it was random twirling of his rod directly above his head, and (b) both Darrell and Isaac were casting where currents were too strong. We weren't near enough to any natural pools where fish would be more likely to chill out and wait for a fly to land near them. Of course, I'm one to talk. I'm the wise guy who didn't bring equipment OR a license. I was stuck meandering around and in the river with my shorts hiked up to my thighs.

After a couple hours of epic fails -- including me rescuing Darrell from a baby garter snake -- we moved on to our next activity: riding the Sundance ski lift to the top of a mountain and zooming down the trails on a couple mountain bikes. Well, "zooming" was more like "creeping" for me. This was my second time attempting the Sundance trails, and I was a little more wary this time around. It probably has to do with the fact that after my last attempt, three of my limbs and my left hip came out looking like this:
Not to mention the bruises everywhere.

It was fun being in nature nonetheless -- I really missed the beauty of Provo Canyon while I was living in DC, so even while I waited for Isaac and Darrell to go down a couple trails without me slowing them down I found myself biking leisurely along the roads surrounding the Sundance Resort.