On our way out of Provo to head to the AP World History Reading in Salt Lake City, we stopped at Cafe 300 so that Jim could get a light breakfast.

After breakfast, we got to Salt Lake City, checked in, and began to think about how we would get beer. I know that Salt Lake has a reputation for not having much in the way of alcohol, but… Scratch that. The reputation is totally deserved. Other than the two brewpubs in the city, beer is harder to find than in any other American City, and you are more likely to get hit by a car crossing the city’s barren streets than you are to find a non-brewery restaurant that posts its beer list online.

The city itself is very clean, and it feels very safe. However, there are just some odd things about Salt Lake. No, this isn’t where I make Mormon jokes! What kind of blog do you think this is? Those of you who mistakenly thought this blog would stoop to that kind of thing should go here. I only go for that kind of low hanging fruit if it involves Laura or her immediate family.

One of the odd things is that the city is just empty compared to every other city that I have seen. Public places that would be full of people in another city are deserted. There are giant six-lane roads in the city with hardly any cars, even at rush hour.

Another odd thing is that some of the crosswalks have, instead of a crosswalk signal, blaze orange flags that pedestrians are supposed to carry and wave as they cross. What other city in the nation would have such a thing? Even in Richmond a pedestrian waving such a flag in front of traffic would become a video game-like target; in New York authorities probably wouldn’t even consider it a crime to run over a flag-waving pedestrian. Somehow, in Salt Lake City, it works.

College Board put me and Jim up in the Little America, which is a pretty nice hotel. They have a turn down service, and they even put tasty chocolates on the bed each night.

The problem we ran into at the hotel was with the shower. After Jim got out on the first day, he let me know that the tub wouldn’t drain. Putting our two Master’s level educations together we studied the problem.

While Jim may look like a plumber, he in fact has no plumber skills, so after we pushed all of the buttons we could find and twisted levers, we notified the hotel of the problem.

We didn’t get a note from the hotel maintenance staff that said something like, “Hey, morons, you didn’t flip the drain plug” so I’d like to think that there was actually a problem with the drain. Still, it sure does look like we just didn’t press the drain plug the right way. So I’m looking forward to getting that note when we check out. In the meantime, I’m not touching the drain plug because there is no way I’m risking standing in Jim’s bath water another day.