Ear to the ground

“I ain’t stupid baby, I jess don’t like readin’ shit.”

-A local tourist during a stopover in one of Durango’s book shops

Chipped off

Durango isn’t the only place where gravel and skinny tires rub each other the wrong way. Road cyclists in Jackson Hole, Wyo., have come out strong against a plan to chip and seal a popular 13-mile ride.

Tim Young, director of Friends of Pathways, told theJackson Hole News&Guidethat chip and seal is not only uncomfortable to ride it’s potentially dangerous.  “As those chips are run over by vehicles and migrate to shoulders, the shoulders are unrideable,” he said. “It forces you out into the travel lanes.” Young’s group hoped to rally hundreds of concerned residents to call on the Teton County commissioners to reverse the plan and go with fresh asphalt instead.

The Teton County Roads Department countered that chip and seal is approximately 40 percent cheaper than new asphalt, and that without treatment, hairline cracks and potholes would not be far off.

But Jackson riders weren’t buying that argument. Scott Fitzgerald, the owner of Fitzgerald’s Bicycles, argued that chip-sealing the road would hurt the roughly 2,000 road cyclists in the valley and his bicycle shop businesses.

“It’s the wrong decision,” Fitzgerald said. “We have limited road-cycling opportunities to begin with in the valley. It’s going to deplete the quality of cycling around here, and be dangerous.”

The electric raccoon

A local rodent found himself on the wrong side of the wire earlier this week. A lone raccoon lost its life early on the morning of Aug. 13, after bumbling into the electrical equipment that supplies power to all of Bodo Industrial Park. The raccoon was cooked and power was knocked out all over Bodo.

At 1:05 a.m., 459 customers in the park – including La Plata Electric Association – lost power until the cause was determined and damage repaired. Most power was returned by 3:09 a.m., with the towers on Smelter Mountain resuming full transmission by 5:17 a.m.

Death was apparently instant for the raccoon, and because the meddling was accidental, he was granted entrance into rodent heaven.