Saturday, October 1, 2011

Pike's Peak Paved

Well, they finally did it.  The entire road up to the top of Pike's Peak is now paved with asphalt.  The Sierra Club sued Colorado in 1999 because the dirt and gravel-paved road got washed out one rather rainy weekend and caused some washback into the local rivers and what-not which caused an eco non-disaster. 

The state exploded parts of the mountain with dynamite to expand the road wider and to add a drainage and verify two lanes all the way up.  Having been up there in the late 90's, I can attest of a few narrow locations without guard-rails, particularly near the area called, "Devil's Playground" where lightning dances from rock to rock naturally, and sometimes zaps bighorn sheep.

I have mixed feelings about this.  Obama-ites will dance with glee.  The environment is "saved" (though the runoff from the oil of the asphalt is pure death, the worker's vehicles created gobs of pollution, struggling at high-altitude and emitting huge plumes of carbon stank, dynamiting the mountain to widen it caused more debris, and runoff exists from the mountain anyway, regardless of our replacing gravel or not, costing Colorado taxpayers several dozen million dollars).  My biggest problem is now the Pike's Peak Race is now changed forever.  Cars were designed to traverse the half-paved half-gravel'ed / dirt road as a legendary ability, requiring great skill from falling off the 2000-foot straight-down drop.  Great Rally-Car racing skills were required to navigate the changing road conditions with specialized tires and aerodynamics.  This is all gone now.  Now that it's paved, Dodge Vipers and Camaros can easily compete against Subaru WRX STIs and Mitsubishi EVO IX cars.  Not the same, really.  Skill factor is decreased, or at least altered.  This is sort of like regular Poker from Texas Hold-'Em.  Regular poker requires a lot more skill because of the discard option where Texas Hold-'Em is one-dimensional.  You "bet".  That's it.  Regular poker adds the complexity of the changing of cards which can indicate a good or bad hand maybe.  This adds a level of complexity to the "bluff" option.  Same is the half-gravel track of the Pike's Peak Race-To-The-Top that has happened every 4th of July weekend since 1901.  That's 110 years of racing now gone forever.  Ah, shucks.

Well, losers, go get your Texas Hold-'Em cards ready.  It's a race to the top with your McDonald's in your minivan with your 5 kids because you couldn't buy a condom on your generic 4th of July with no fireworks 3 years running (thanks to Obama) after you buy your fluorescent light bulbs (thanks to Obama, we can't even buy incandescent light bulbs) using $5/gallon gasoline at ultra-low octane.  Don't worry if you crash, Obama-care will take care of you at everyone's expense.  Your kids learned about it when you had to donate school supplies at $200 because Obama (who is so FOR schools) dropped funding on almost all schools nationwide on all fronts (oh, but school teachers vote for the Democratic party even though historically that party has removed funding for the last 100 years for schools, and lowered teacher's paychecks and benefits).  We won!  We voted Obama and we WON!  Well, you all won anyway.  Detroit is burning, folks.  You voted for a villain and we're all suffering for it.  Notice you're unemployed?  Guess you won.

Casey Anthony is free and it's your fault.  You killed America.

Look at what's gone forever now, because of you:
http://www.usacracing.com/ppihc

and this:

http://youtu.be/_R-FZsysQNw?t=32s

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