Thank goodness for Brigham Young

I spent the weekend before the election in Grand Junction, Colorado with some friends encouraging people to vote. It was great to get out of Utah for a while and just experience a "foreign" culture. One where people don't stare with disgust at the Obama '08 sticker on my car, ask me to park in a different parking lot or just generally give me a look that promises a good shanking later. I didn't have to worry about getting derogatory e-mails concerning my political candidate of choice or tiptoe around everything I said. And to share it with two of my friends was great. People were so accomadating and kind. We stayed overnight in a house belonging to someone who left us a key and told us to make ourselves at home.

Navigating around Grand Junction was often difficult and extremely confusing. The streets often had two names, a letter and an actual name. F Street was also Patterson, Unaweep was also D Street. The best part was the fractional streets. F 1/2, F 1/4, F 3/8. Seriously F and 3/8! Who does that? Apparently a name just wasn't sufficient. Not to mention that house numbers ALSO included fractions. 2650 1/2 and the like. Luckily the houses only had 1/2, we didn't have to worry about anything completely ridiculous like 7/8 or 2/5. Luckily we drove around our first day with a nice woman who had driven down from Salt Lake before and knew her way around better than we did. After that we were okay, but there is something to be said about the brilliance of how the streets of Utah have been laid out. Thank goodness for Brigham Young!