The Dominguez Boys --> Ephraim to Mystic Hotsprings

My dad and I love nothing more than to duck under "CAUTION: Closed For Construction" tape, walk on questionable castle or cliff ledges, and fall down steep hillsides through bushes. We've done this in many parts of the world as a matter of fact.

Aiming to keep our streak of dangerous living alive, me and the man who taught me to ride a bike (and the world never forgave him for it) pedaled from the city of Mt. Pleasant in central Utah all the way down to Zion Natn'l Park, singing our trademark gospel quartet and musical theater smash hits to the sagebrush, willows, and cottonwoods.

Along the way we met a surly character named Headwind, and we all came to be good friends over the next 3 days, Headwind singing bass. We told Headwind that we could've been walking faster than we were pedaling when Headwind was in our company, but Headwind just stayed on like the relative who comes to visit, who you give your bed to while you sleep out on the couch, who uses all your toothpaste, who stays a few weeks longer than planned, who's always hovering around when you're trying to talk to your sweetheart on the phone, but who you love anyway cause they're family. Headwind gave us plenty of time to become familiar with our the surroundings, ruminate on the spiritual lessons to be learned by laboring in vain, and remember our favorite lines from The Princess Bride.
We're actually going down a big hill in this video. Enough said.

- At the suggestion of a guy with an amazing mullet ("business in the front, party in the back" as they say down here) we met at The Little Wonder Cafe in Richfield, we stopped in the office of the local paper there (The Richfield Reaper). The editor was real friendly and he even went out in the rain in front of the office with his nice camera and took some shots. This picture ended up running a couple weeks later, but appeared next to the winners of the Miss. Richfield contest, so unfortunately our sex appeal was a little overshadowed. Here our sex appeal can be enjoyed without the boodie distraction of Richfield's perkiest.

- In Monroe, we met a compact, hard, brown, nutty fellow who called himself "Peanut" out in front of an historic and renovated church-building, shoveling, creating a habitat for his desert turtles. It turned out he owned the place, and when he saw how interested we were in it he invited us in to take a look. In the center of the living room was a 20 foot rope hanging down from the ceiling. "Go ahead and grab it and give it a pull," he said. I did, and soon we could hear the sound of church bells ringing above us and out through the town.

After soaking in the Mystic Hotsprings,

Peanut made us a tasty spaghetti dinner and salad with water cress he'd picked from the local river, and put us up for the night in his church. He mentioned that he'd lived in Salt Lake City for awhile, and so I asked him why he'd moved out to Monroe. His answer came straight from the rural spirit: "I don't want to live in a place where I can see the air I'm breathing." Hallelujah Peanut.

- On our way out of Monroe we were doing the "Rain Dance" (jump off the bike and put on mountain of rain-gear, pedal 20 feet, but rain stops, jump back off the bike, take rain-gear off, rpt. x 32) when we ran into a rancher who had just picked up his similarly cowboy booted, camoflauge jacketed, big belt buckled son from kindergarten. He pulled his big white truck over and started up a conversation with us. "I'm a rancher, I raise beef all year, then sell em all at once, then live on that for the rest of the year. It's long hard work. What do you guys do that you get to be out here not working? Well I'll tell you, you wouldn't catch me on one of those, it's way too much work. We ride horses. (son pipes in: "yeah horses!") How old are you? I'm 25 too! You don't gotta wife? I'll tell you what, this (puts his hand on his sons head) is what's important, your priorities'll change when you gots kids. (We ask him about the giant white "SS" carved in the mountain that we'd hoped was unrelated to Nazis) Oh that stands for "South Sevier" (as in Sevier County, we breathed easier). Hey you ever heard of Energy Solutions? Yeah the company that's bringing all that nuclear waste into Utah right. Yeah that asshole went to school at South Sevier High School with my uncle. He was a prick even then, nobody liked him then either buddy! My aunt's had cancer, my mom, my grandma, two of my uncles, my brother, all from the nuke testing they did down south of St. George. ("Yeah," I say, "who needs terrorists when we got the US Government to do such a good job of bombing us!") Well, you're not going to hear me dog the government buddy. (I wanted to say: "Why not? Sounds like they're treating you and your whole family like dogs! They sure as HELL are dogging you boy!")

It was a actually a fun conversation for the two of us I think. Both of us were genuinely curious at this other 25 year old Utah male, who couldn't have grown up any more differently than we did, who couldn't view the world any more differently, and yet who grew up right here in the same state. We said farewell there where we'd met in the middle of the road, he in his huge white truck, me on my huge white XtraCycle, he with his mini-rancher son, and me with my Chicano activist dad.