1962 Future Christian Hall of Fame

LIFE Magazine published a feature 50 years ago in September 1962 listing 100 people they considered to be "The Takeover Generation."  Each person had to be under the age of 40.

FCC Chairman Newton Minow (who is still alive today) was among them.  He made the famous statement in 1961: 

"When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

"But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland."

Some of the other names in LIFE:

Sen. Frank Church (sponsor of the Wilderness Act of 1964)
Thomas Eagleton (McGovern's running mate, briefly)
Rep. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii)
John Updike (novelist)
Gov. Mark Hatfield (Oregon, later a senator)

I got to thinking about how many of today's evangelical Christian leaders were under 40 in 1962.  Here's my list (* = still living today)

David Wilkerson, 31
   The Cross and the Switchblade, Teen Challenge

Hal Lindsey*, 33
   The Late Great Planet Earth

James Dobson*, 26
   Focus on the Family

James Kennedy, 32
   Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church

Chuck Colson, 31
   Watergate fame, "Born Again," Prison Fellowship, Breakpoint

Bill Gaither*, 26
   The Bill Gaither Trio

Barry McGuire*, 27
   The New Christy Minstrels, "Eve of Destruction," "Bullfrogs & Butterflies"

Chuck Swindoll*, 28
   Insight For Living radio program, Dallas Seminary, Evan. Free pastor

Josh McDowell*, 23
   "Evidence That Demands A Verdict," apologist with Campus Crusade for Christ

Jerry Falwell, 29
   Moral Majority, Liberty Church and Liberty University

Charles Stanley*, 30
   "In Touch" radio program, Baptist pastor in Atlanta

Elisabeth Elliott*, 36
   "Through Gates of Splendor" (the Jim Elliott story); "Gateway To Joy" radio program

Arthur S. DeMoss, 37
   DeMoss Foundation, father of Nancy Leigh DeMoss, who succeeded Elisabeth Elliott

Lloyd Ogilvie*, 32
   Presbyterian chaplain of the U.S. Senate, 1995-2003

Anita Bryant*, 22
   Miss America second runnerup, 1958 (she's kind of a stetch--I couldn't find many women)

Except for a couple of these people, they were all within 4-5 years in age.  Today they have 50 years of wisdom and experience, and are all in their 70s and 80s.

17 Miles Down Hermosa Creek

NOTE: to see photos of this trail, go to my Picasa photo album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/neuswangerk/DurangoTheThreeCreeksWeekend#slideshow


I went to Durango on June 16 and rode 17 miles down Hermosa Creek.  To reach the trail, you turn at Purgatory Ski Area (that is, “Durango Mountain Resort” to you) and drive seven miles on a dirt road over the ridge to the Hermosa Creek drainage.

The trail is a Forest Service multiple use trail open hikers, bikers, and horses, as well as dirt bikers.  The posts on the websites were written by guys who said they had ridden the full 22 miles in “two hours.”

I should have known better than to go by those reports.  But hey, it’s all downhill, right?  Sure, there’s a “little uphill” at the end, they said.  I forgot that the guys who post those reports are almost always gonzo bikers, often with downhill bikes sporting 29 inch wheels, extra long play shocks, and riders who don’t give a lot of thought to things like life insurance and having families!

I met a guy in the parking lot who had just returned from riding the trail.  He told me it took him 4 hours.  Uh oh.  I was meeting Paul, my friend’s brother in law, and told him I’d been there by 4:15.  It was already 2:15.  The guy at the parking lot (John) kindly offered to call Paul when he got into cell phone range.  “What time should I tell him?”  “Tell him to meet me at 5:00!”  “Really?”  “Yeah, I think I can get there in about three hours.”

After five miles, I met David from Denver.  He was patching a flat tire. He had ridden all the way UP the trail.  “I don’t have a spare tube.  I’m gonna have to get one when I get to town,” he said.  His patch job appeared to be working, and he didn’t seem concerned at all, so I debated giving him one of my spare tubes (I brought two), but I figured I needed them more than he did, and besides, he who rides a 22 mile trail solo with no spare gets what he deserves, eh?

Then the uphill section started.  For the next 12 miles, the trail stayed high above the creek, and it seemed like I was going uphill as much as downhill.  The trail also got a lot more narrow.  In places the trail was washed out, so that one false turn and you would be tumbling a hundred feet in a bad way!  I started watching the downhill side to be aware of my risk if I went over the side.

There were many large stones on the trail, more than I recall on other mountain bike trails.  These stones were like football size—hit one of them wrong and you’re off the trail.  I’m not sure if it was just a very rocky canyon, or if the rocks were kicked up by dirt bikers, or if there just aren’t very many hikers who might stop to push them aside.

The trail guides said the trail was 22 miles.  After an hour, I had gone 7 miles, which is pretty good time on a mountain trail, even downhill (unless you are the abovementioned gonzo biker).  I figured I could never keep up this pace on the uphill sections, but I pressed on as hard as I could, rarely stopping to enjoy the scenery I was cruising past.

After three hours, my bike computer told me I still had 11 miles to go.  This was not going well.  Paul would be waiting and waiting, and there was nothing I could do, and the harder I pressed, the more danger of making a costly mistake.

Then a runner came down the trail past me.  I said, “How many more miles?”  He glanced at his GPS and yelled “four miles,” never breaking his stride.  Four miles?  Not eleven?  I’m saved!
I kept waiting for the long downhill section that would take me to the trailhead.  It never came.  Up and down, across something like 12 side drainages.

Two miles later, I heard a noises behind and was startled to see a guy on a bike overtaking me!  He was on a “29er”—a bike with the large 29 inch wheels.  I said, “Is it two more miles?”  He said, “Oh I think you just go around the corner up here and you’ll see the parking lot below!”  Excellent!  I’m even closer than I thought!

Except I wasn’t.  Perhaps because of his advanced skills, he had a skewed perception of time and distance.  It was, in fact, two more miles.  Finally I saw the parking and camping area.  When I reached Paul, I asked, “Did you see another guy come down ahead of me?”  He said, “Yeah, he was only about 8 minutes ahead of you.”  I said, “Well, what took me 15 minutes, took him 8 minutes!”
Turns out the trailhead is five miles up the creek from the town of Hermosa, next to Hwy 550, which is where other riders leave their shuttle vehicle.  At any rate, I had ridden 17 miles in 3½ hours total time.  My bike computer said actual riding time was only 2½ hours.  This didn’t seem possible.  I hadn’t stopped for a whole hour on the trail.  Then I figured out the time clock didn’t register while I was pushing the bike up hill after hill, going so slow the speedometer usually didn’t register, but the odometer kept counting.

The next time I ride Hermosa Creek (and it is definitely worth doing again), I’ll give myself lots of time, and stop frequently to smell the roses.

Solar Eclipse 2012

Sunday, May 20, 2012

There was a rare annular lunar eclipse Sunday.  It was only partial in Colorado, but it was the first since 2003, from what I was able to glean from a NASA website.  I had not really planned to take pictures, but at the last minutes decided to try something.  This is mostly a story about how to be unprepared for an eclipse!

I set up my Canon EOS on a tripod on the roof with the idea of photographing the Grand Mesa as it got darker and darker.

Then I used a cardstock with a pinhole to project the image on a piece of paper taped to a swamp cooler on the roof.  I used my little Sony Cybershot camera to photograph it.

But after a while, I realized A) the sky was not going to get that dark, B) I screwed up the manual exposure settings on my camera and lost most of the shots anyway, but mainly C) the Sony autofocus could not focus on the piece of paper, esp. at close range, so it was useless.

So I moved the Canon & tripod to take pictures of the image on the paper.  I was literally burning daylight trying to get it into position.  Then I had to hold the pinhole sheet with one hand and snap the pics with the other, so I couldn’t hold the pinhole perfectly still.

Not that it really mattered: the image was not that sharp.  If I held the pinhole further away, the image got bigger, but also dimmer.

Then as the sun set, I realized it was being obscured by leaves from the neighbor’s trees.  So I climbed off the roof and moved to a fence with no trees.  The eclip se had passed the maximum by then.
I tried poking a smaller pinhole to see if it would produce a sharper image.  It didn’t.  It just seemed to be dimmer.

A better method would have been to use a piece of tin foil.  The foil would give a sharper pinhole.  Ideally, you use a long tube to block out as much side light as possible, but I hadn’t done that.  Likewise, you could use a west facing window with the curtains drawn, allowing just the pinhole to peek through.  I didn’t have a west facing window, though.

7:23 pm.


7: 26 pm.


7:30 pm.


7: 37 pm


7:42 pm

First Bike Falldown

Monday, April 16

First fall-down on my new road bike. Coasted up to the red light, unclipped the right foot, then tipped over to the left. You have to twist your foot to unclip, and what the law of gravity wanted was my foot immediately on the ground, which wasn’t going to happen!  Kurt hit the pavement.  Bike hit Kurt.  Ouch.  Got back up, remounted, and calmly peddled through the green light.

I’m mounting clipless pedals on my mountain bike this week in preparation for going to Moab.  I’ve never used clipless pedals for mountain biking: always used the flat pedals which are much better for outsmarting gravity.  Guess we’ll find out who wins!

Caucus Night in Colorado

Caucus Night in Colorado
Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2012

So I went to my Republican caucus Tuesday night.  The meeting was in the Orchard Mesa Middle School, but next door is the swimming pool, where a large number of kids were leaving as we caucusgoers were arriving.  I heard one mom explain to her child, "No, not haucus. Caucus. With a 'C'!"

Inside my haucus meeting, we had a large turnout of 37 people, led by county treasurer Barbara Brewer and her husband, former county GOP chairman Garry Brewer.  Assistant U.S. attorney Michelle Heldmyer served as secretary.  (This will be significant in a moment.)

Three people stood up to speak in favor of Romney, Santorum, and Ron Paul.  (Barbara Brewer was, in fact, the Romney chairman for Mesa County.)

Garry Brewer said, "I know you all have your different candidates you support for different reasons, and nobody is perfect.  In fact, there was only one man who was perfect, and they crucified him!" 

He added, "I remember we were cheering for Scott McInnis because he voted to impeach Clinton.  And then it came out that our own guy who was pushing the impeachment was doing the same thing Clinton was."  (If there was a Gingrich supporter in the room, he didn't speak up!)

Finally we marked our voting cards.  I was going to vote for Romney, but I assumed that, like 2008, he would easily win Colorado, so at the very last second, I circled Rick Santorum, just to "make things interesting" I guess.

They counted the votes and Romney had 11.  Santorum had 20!  Later we were told that all three precincts in the school had voted for Santorum.  Guess I wasn't the only one who wanted to "make things interesting."

After choosing delegates to the county convention, we were asked to name issues that we wanted the Republican party to support.  It reminded me of a Rush Limbaugh convention:

U.S. out of U.N., and U.N. out of U.S.
Secure the border
Term limits
Get rid of EPA
Get rid of Dept. of Education (at which point someone said, "Yeah, and that third one that Rick Perry couldn't remember!")

Somebody else said, "Prosecute Eric Holder!" (the Attorney General)

Michelle Heldmyer, the U.S. attorney, said, "Hey, I'm not going to write his name down.  He's my boss!"

Another person said, "Do away with the czars.  They have too much power."

Garry jumped in:  "Did you know that czar comes from caesar?  Yup, and so does kaiser in German.  They all mean the same thing!"

Somebody asked, "Which district is Laura Bradford in?  I don't like what she's been doing." (a reference to her threat to switch to the Democrats after a drunk driving incident in Denver)

Barbara explained, "She's in District 54, but the Democrats changed District 54 to include just Grand Junction, and they took part of Orchard Mesa, the part that's served by Persigo Sewer Plant.  So we call it the 'sewer district' now!  It also includes the cemetery, so it's the sewer and cemetery district."

 "Where's the boundary?  I'm pretty close to the cemetery!"

To which I replied, "Really?  You don't look that old!"  :)

Then Garry Brewer told us a story about how there used to be a room in the courthouse just for the Civil War and WWI veterans.  It contained old drums and guns and uniforms and papers.  But in 1991, John Leane and another Democrat on the county commission closed the room and gave the materials to the museum.  When Garry inquired, they said they received some lists and books, no drums or guns.  "I never found out what happened to that stuff."

Somebody said, "Did you look in John Leane's storage unit?"

Eventually the meeting was adjourned, and I came home to find out the statewide results.  CNN's John King was telling everyone, "It will come down to the vote in El Paso County, home to Focus on the Family.  They will vote strongly for Rick Santorum."  He also tweeted, "Colorado caucus counting is worse than in Iowa!" 

Meanwhile, someone at Fox News said, "At least there's no 'guy in a truck' this time!" (a reference to an AP report that the Iowa results were waiting for a guy in a truck to arrive at the courthouse--but there never was a guy in a truck)

Finally around 1:00 am New York time, the final results came in, and Santorum jumped ahead of Romney to win the vote 40% to 35%.  Since Romney had been widely expected to win Colorado, it became the big story of the day.  So even though the vote was not binding, Colorado managed to grab its share of the national spotlight.

Tebowing while Ski Hutting, 2012

 Greg, Joe and I skied in to a mountain hut by Ridgway on New Year's 2012 and did some tebowing!  We didn't know the outcome of the Broncos game.  Guess we didn't tebow hard enough! :(  Maybe it'll be applied to the playoffs.

The ski trip (10 mi. round trip) was kind of grueling.  We (I) didn't know the trail was open to snowmobiles, which had packed the snow to icy concrete.  We could have walked in (and at times wished we had)! 

Greg is still learning the ropes of cross-country skiing, so the downhill coming out was a bit of a chore as well.  When you fall on ice with a 30-pound backpack, it hurts, and then it's a bugger getting up!  Here's Greg with Mt. Sneffels (14,150 ft.) in the background:

 The San Juan Hut System is privately owned on Forest Service land, but all the huts can be accessed via roads, so they are not "wilderness" huts.

 

Water is supplied by Mother Nature and melted on the wood stove 

Greg filling the water tank with "fuel."

 

Wood is also supplied by Mother Nature and split, in our case, by Joe "Paul Bunyan" Schwarz.

We hoped to ski to a ridge overlooking Ouray, but instead, we only got Grand Mesa to the north.

The entire 5 mile trail was packed solid by snowmobiles.  The snow was only 18" at 10,000 feet, but would have been adequate for skiing except for the machines, sigh.  They flattened the entire width of the road, leaving no space for ski tracks.  Good thing we had skins, or we would have been hiking the last 1.5 miles.

Joe did much better than Kurt & Greg, thanks to his telemark skis and boots, but he did a nice faceplant at the end of this downhill run!

 Animal tracks heading straight through the fence.

Somebody spent a pile of money putting up miles of welded wire panel fencing.  Cimmaron mountains ring the horizon, and the point in the center is Wetterhorn (14,015 ft.)

Hey!  Radiodog is one of my email addresses!  :)

Rooms with a view.  And a windmill.

Tebowing, sans hats.