There Is A Crack In the Universe

It was a dark and stormy night. Also icy.  Stop me if you’ve already heard this one.

OK, there was a full moon so it wasn’t actually dark.

We had an ice storm in Michigan the night before our departure for points west. By morning everything was still icy but road crews had done their thing and the major roads and highways were reportedly clear and wet so we proceeded with our plans. We had packed the car the day before and left it in the driveway overnight as it doesn’t fit in the garage with the car top carrier on so needless to say it was covered in ice. Raj warmed it up to clear the  ice off the windows.(BTW, that is illegal here in Park City, land of the woke; no carbon spewing car idling for you!)

Imagine our surprise to discover the melting ice left behind a yuge crack from the middle of the driver’s side to the middle of the passenger side. Best we could tell it grew from a tiny chip that appeared last June but oddly hadn’t broken through either side of the glass. In fact when we had the Safelight tech out to repair it he said he really couldn’t as the chip was completely contained inside the window. He’d have to break through the surface in order to inject his epoxy and that would cause more damage including the possibility of – you guessed it – creating a much larger crack. Nothing to do we were told but wait for it to grow worse on its own.

And sure enough, 6 months later, at the most inopportune moment, it chose to “get worse.”

“What light through yonder window crack breaks.”

I thought we should delay a day and have it fixed. Raj determined it to be fine as it was mostly below eye-level and like the original chip was completely contained within the glass. Fine, except for the caveat that we would be embarking on a cross-country trip with a weakened and compromised windshield making it more vulnerable to shattering if hit with the stray rock or ice chunk. And then there’s weather: despite having a forecast that gave us a 4 day window of clear weather all along our route when we only needed 3, experience has proven time and again that weather forecasts 3 days out can change on a dime.

Well, the windshield held out but the weather didn’t. The last day was indeed a hellish mix of wind, snow and ice. But we made it to our destination intact. I assumed once we landed in Park City we could get the Safelight crew to come to the house and change the windshield out, like you see on TV. Which of course they could…as long as the temperature remains above 32 degrees which, when we made the appointment, it wasn’t. Also given the amount of electronic sensors built into our model’s windshield which need calibrating and testing they prefer to do it in the shop, oh, and takes about three hours. Once again all the advanced technology intended to make you safer, happier and your life easier fails to deliver, at least on that last part.

So we drove into Salt Lake yesterday and dropped off the Jeep. Fortunately Salt Lake has proclaimed itself to be a “progressive city” – which they certainly are based on the city policies and the elected officials for the past 10 years. And no truly progressive city worth it’s salt (cwidt?) would be without a first class mass transportation system. So while we waited for our new windshield we were able to hop on the TRAX (“UTA's light rail system, offers convenient connections to community destinations, shopping centers, schools and universities”) and spend the morning at City Creek.

City Creek is a massive mega-billion dollar urban renewal project encompassing retail, office and residential space in the center of downtown. The project was conceived and financed by the Church of the Later Day Saints (What!? Urban renewal, not done by the government!?) It encompasses 3 entire city blocks and contains a lot of upscale retail space, as well as a real live stream stocked with brook trout.

So I spent the morning window shopped for conflict free diamonds:

Botswana!

enjoyed an overpriced latte:

And marveled that they welcomed dogs into the enclosed mall area where they presumably were also welcome to do their business as doggie bags of a different sort were provided for dealing with the aftermath of that “business.”

And then we hopped back on the TRAX and headed back to pick up the Jeep with it’s sparkling new windshield embedded with sensors and who knows what else.

Now I’m not telling you all of this because I think you really care about our windshield travails, nor do I expect you to be interested much in Salt Lake’s non-government dependent urban development. I just see this little story as an allegory. A tiny chink, a minute defect, embedded deep within the infrastructure of an otherwise strong edifice left unattended will one day manifest itself as an insidious crack threatening the integrity of the entire structure. At that point it must be dealt with categorically, radically, decisively. The damaged component needs to be chucked and replaced with something stronger, more reliable, more true.

The Deep State may have begun as a small fissure but it has grown into a deep fracture in our governmental agency. It, not PDJT, is what must be removed and replaced.

There is a crack in our universe: it must be resolved

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.