Hello, Great Salt Lake in Utah

June 25, 2021, 6:39 PM PDT by Parkzer • Hiking

This post is over 5 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

Due to my broken eyeglass incident (which, by the way, has an update now that I edited in yesterday), I feel like four out of the six and a half days I had in Salt Lake City were robbed from me—the first day when my glasses snapped in half at the bridge, the second day when I drove around to a repair shop and eyeglass store trying to figure out how to resolve the situation, the following day when I tried to get accustomed to my new glasses and failed hard, and yesterday when my glasses snapped in half at the leg.

With that being said, I think I still hit the two most important places that I wanted to visit in Salt Lake City—Ensign Peak, where I was able to get sweeping views of the entire metropolitan area, and Great Salt Lake, the body of water after which Salt Lake City is named.

I went to Great Salt Lake by means of the Great Salt Lake State Park, southwest of the Great Saltair; admission was $5. The park had an observation deck with a good lookout spot of the lake and beach.

There was also a beach access spot, so I went down to the sand… which was a questionable decision. I imagine it’s because of the high salt content in the lake, but there was an absolute insane amount of bugs on Silver Sands Beach. In the photograph below, you’ll see some gray stuff floating along the shoreline, as well as on the green sand. … Those are all bugs.

There were some areas of cleaner sand, but the entire area smelled terrible, presumably because of the bugs. I walked close to the water and got swarmed by bugs, and they followed me a good couple hundred feet back to the park.

There was another nice lookout point at the edge of the park that overlooked the opening for boats to sail off from the marina into the lake. The area looked like it was closed down, so not many people went over there, but it seemed like the blockade was only to stop vehicles from passing through that area. I went around the barrier and walked all the way down onto the rocks.

On my way back, I snapped a photo of the marina.

And behind the Great Salt Lake State Park, the Oquirrh Mountains served as a nice backdrop.

I don’t get too grossed out by anything, so I was fine walking around Silver Sands Beach, but it was quite frankly hilarious watching some of the other tourists go down there and freak out at the smell and bugs.

I’ve stared into the vast nothingness of the Pacific Ocean at astronomical twilight from a high point at the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles, so staring into the Great Salt Lake wasn’t anything too life-changing, but I definitely enjoyed the experience.

Today is my final full day in Utah; tomorrow, I set off for Wyoming.

Hello Salt Lake City

June 23, 2021, 4:03 PM PDT by Parkzer • Hiking, Travel

This post is a bit delayed because of my broken eyeglass situation, but I’m finally a functioning human being again, and that’s what matters.

The trip up north from St. George to Salt Lake City was fairly smooth; I drove for about two hours, took a lunch break at Fillmore, then finished the remaining two hours to the Fairfield Inn & Suites Salt Lake City Airport.

As of today, I’ve been to 26 states and have personally driven in 20 of them. Out of all those states, I would say that Utah by far has the best drivers by a noticeable margin. I think this might be attributed to the fact that Utah is the only state that has abundant signage educating drivers about various potential road situations.

A few of the ones I saw on my drive up were:

“No vehicles with trailers in left lane” and “No vehicles over 12,000 GVW in left lane,” to keep slow vehicles out of the passing lane
“Drowsy drivers take next exit in ___ miles,” because driving fatigued is basically just as bad as driving drunk
“Do not cross double white lines,” to stop people from swerving in and out of the HOV lane
“Legal to exit HOV when emergency vehicle present,” for the idiots who then proceed to never leave the HOV lane because they just saw a sign that told them not to cross double white lines, and thus impede emergency vehicles
“Fender bender take next exit and call 911,” to stop people from pulling over right on the side of the highway and causing rubbernecking traffic and putting their own selves in physical danger
“Fines up to $1000 for unsecured loads” and “Fines up to $500 for littering,” to remind people that there are actually punishments for this stuff

On the other hand, California by far has the worst drivers by an even greater noticeable margin, and could definitely use these kinds of road signs. Hilariously, the only vehicles I’ve seen so far breaking traffic laws in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area are cars with California license plates.

Apart from my broken glasses incident, my stay in Salt Lake City has been fairly uneventful. I like to avoid going places over the weekends because I don’t like when it’s too busy, and it tends to be a lot busier everywhere on the weekends. So, I usually stay indoors on Saturdays and Sundays and catch up on work.

Now that it’s Wednesday and I can actually see where I’m going, I took my first leisurely trip outside earlier today and hiked up to Ensign Peak. It was a very short but fairly steep hike; apparently it’s only about one mile round-trip, but my fitness tracker says I climbed about 41 stories during the hike up. I picked this spot as my first nature destination because it was a great location to see the Salt Lake City metropolitan area with vast, sweeping views.

My glasses randomly decided to snap in half

June 22, 2021, 10:49 PM PDT by Parkzer • General

I’ve had poor eyesight and have worn glasses since I was a fairly young child. My eyesight got progressively worse throughout elementary school and into middle school, so my parents took me to an optometrist on a routine basis to get stronger glasses.

My final optometrist appointment was when I was just shy of 14 years old, in 8th grade. At that time, my dad worked for the United States government and he had some family health spending plan that was about to run out for the calendar year. To make sure we wouldn’t lose out on free money, he got me some new glasses. There was quite a sum of money left in this government-sponsored plan, so we ended up purchasing the most expensive glasses with every single possible additional lens option. The price of the glasses exceeded US$400.00, which, adjusted for inflation, would be over US$530.00 in today’s dollars.

Since then, it didn’t really seem like my eyesight was getting any noticeably worse, so I never went back to the optometrist. I continued wearing those same glasses year after year. “You get what you pay for” definitely applied here, because those glasses were invincible. I would regularly get hit in the face with balls while playing sports, and I’ve gotten kicked in the head on numerous occasions in martial arts. Yet, my trusty glasses stood by my side.

Fifteen years later, at age 29, I am still wearing these same glasses. … At least, I was still wearing these same glasses, until a few days ago, when they decided to randomly snap in half.

These glasses were made out of a generic, off-brand version of Flexon, a flexible titanium. You can equate this to a memory foam mattress, but instead, it’s sort of like memory metal glasses. That also probably explains why they seemed to be indestructible—because they actually were, to some extent.

Unfortunately, it seems like this off-brand version of Flexon doesn’t last forever. After 15 years of daily use, it lost its flexibility enough that the bridge of the glasses became brittle and randomly snapped.

Of course, this couldn’t have just happened a month ago while I was still home. Oh no, that would be far too convenient. So now, instead, I am in Salt Lake City, three weeks into my cross-country road trip, and I do not have functional glasses.

I found some tape.

Considering that I literally cannot see or do anything without my glasses, I needed to find some sort of solution that was more viable than having a strip of packaging tape loosely holding the two halves of my glasses together as securely as an ant trying to carry a twig sixty times its mass. Because of this, everything was in a constant flux of random distortion, sending me in a spiral of dizziness.

I did some research online and found a glasses repair shop. It was almost half an hour away and two cities over from where I’m staying in Salt Lake City, but it appeared to be the only dedicated glasses repair shop in the entire Salt Lake City metropolitan area. I sent them an email ahead of time to confirm that they could fix my glasses; they let me know that they could grind off the existing bridge and install a new one, and it would take about an hour.

I showed up at the repair shop, only to discover that I was 5th in line to get my glasses repaired. The actual process itself did indeed take about an hour, but I would have to wait about four hours before the technician could start working on my glasses. The worst part is that, during the diagnosis, he took off the packaging tape that I had so intricately applied to the bridge of my glasses. So now I was left with a five-hour wait time and re-broken glasses.

He told me to come back tomorrow morning if I wanted to avoid a long wait. In the meantime, he spent about a minute haphazardly soldering my glasses back together so I could at least put them back on to drive back to my hotel room and be a functional human being for the rest of the day. He said the solder might come apart after a day and claimed it was scuffed, but it was definitely far more reliable than the tape I had put on prior.

There was also one additional minor problem. Apparently, getting my glasses fixed in this manner would cost $89. I understand that installing a new bridge and properly realigning a pair of glasses requires specialized skill, but that amount still felt a bit too high for my liking.

I started looking for some alternatives and found an eyeglass store literally next door to the repair shop. Apparently I would be able to get an eye exam (which I was clearly overdue for, seeing as the recommended time between exams is 2 years) by an optometrist on-site, and be able to walk out with a new pair of glasses on the same day in most circumstances.

For the first time in 15 years, I got my eyes checked again.

After getting my new prescription, I headed out to the retail area of the store where I went through a good 12 or so pairs of glasses until I found some that I liked. The glasses I picked? An off-brand generic version of Flexon glasses. Again.

The eyeglass store I went to apparently has a miniature laboratory at every location, so if they have the appropriate frames and lenses in stock, a technician can put together the glasses within a day. I was originally promised the glasses tomorrow morning, but they ended up having it ready for pickup by the evening, so I ended up getting same-day service.

This is my first time with new glasses in 15 years (obviously), and it’s quite a jarring experience. I have a massive headache, I’m dizzy, I have distorted vision around the edges of my glasses, I have blurred vision near the center, and I’m having much more trouble with depth perception (which is bad, because I already had issues with depth perception).

Apparently it’s normal for it to take a few days, or even up to a few weeks, for your eyes to adjust to the new lenses. My myopia got a little bit worse, but apparently I developed a substantial amount of astigmatism, and it appears like the new astigmatism correction on my lenses is what’s causing a majority of these symptoms.

I did some additional research online, and the general consensus appears to be that the quickest way to get accustomed to new glasses is to keep wearing them. Thus, I am sitting here at my computer, fighting through the nausea, writing about how everything in my life loves to troll me, even my glasses.

I leave for Wyoming on Saturday. Here’s to hoping my eyes finish adjusting before then.

—

Edit (June 24, 2021):

Well, the story doesn’t end here. The distortion on my glasses didn’t get better. In fact, it got significantly worse. The instant I put my new glasses on yesterday, I got a severe headache that lasted the rest of the day. My absence of depth perception persisted, and if I moved my eyes around at all (as opposed to just looking straight ahead), everything would be out of proportion.

I also had a few “incidents,” to say the least. The first involved exiting my hotel room and trying to go down the stairs, but literally missing the first step because I couldn’t tell how far away it was, and falling down the stairs. The second was a bit more severe and involved. It was… an “unfortunate driving situation.” I’ll leave it at that. (Nobody got hurt, and no property ended up being damaged.)

I decided that now was not the time to get new glasses. It’s not that I didn’t trust the science behind just wearing the new glasses and getting used to them. The problem is that I can’t really do that right now when I’m on a cross-country road trip and am very active on a daily basis.

If this had happened while I was still in Las Vegas, it would’ve probably been doable, but the fact that I’m not at home, coupled with the fact that my optometrist put me straight to my proper-strength prescription, about 6 steps higher than my current glasses (as opposed to incrementing me up little by little), made it so having new glasses right now is not really too viable.

I returned my new glasses and got a full refund (minus the cost of the eye exam, which is fine, because I still got a prescription signed by an optometrist, and he also inspected my eyes and informed me that they were otherwise healthy).

As for my old glasses, I went back to the repair shop and got the full bridge replacement done. The rest of my glasses were obviously still tattered, but the bridge looks as good as new. It is sturdy and securely holds both halves of my glasses together. I can continue wearing these for now, and later on, I can either go to a different optometrist when I get back home and ask them to prescribe me something that isn’t such a jarring difference, or I can just get laser eye surgery.

… The story still doesn’t end here.

I mean, what’s the fun in life if, after your glasses snap in half and you get them fixed, they don’t snap in half again at a different location.

I reattached the right leg of my glasses using super glue. I obviously can’t fold it in anymore, but at least it’s nice and sturdy now.

When I purchased the super glue, I intentionally purchased a two-pack. I’m saving the other tube for when the left leg of my glasses also inevitably snaps off.

I sold all my meme stocks

June 20, 2021, 11:34 PM PDT by Parkzer • Finance

A little over three months ago, I wrote a blog post that warned investors from going all-in on meme stocks, and I clarified that just because I enjoy talking about meme stocks doesn’t mean all my holdings are in meme stocks. I also provided a table containing a fairly detailed breakdown of my investment allocation to show that an overwhelming majority of my money is in “safe” investments.

Since that time, both GameStop and AMC’s stock prices shot up again. With the volatility of meme stocks and the fact that it appears like retail investors might just cannibalizing themselves, I figured that making any profit at all off of meme stocks is better than losing money. I made the careful but prompt decision to exit meme stocks, and proceeded to sell all my shares in GameStop, AMC, Blackberry, and Nokia over the span of a handful of days.

I made a profit of just over US$700.

Meme stocks were fun, and I was happy to be a part of the retail investor movement. But, being a resident of Las Vegas, I, more than anyone else, should know that it’s better to quit while you’re ahead.

(To be abundantly clear, and as a disclaimer, I am not a registered investment advisor and do not have the qualifications to become one. This blog post is intended to be strictly anecdotal, and I am in no way suggesting or implying that you should copy my strategy. Everyone’s situation is uniquely different, so be sure to consult with a certified professional if you have any questions or need any guidance.)

With that being said, here is a revised breakdown of my investment allocation:

Cash I try to keep a minimal amount of my assets in cash because, not only do you lose value on cash from inflation, but it also serves as greater opportunity cost from potential growth. My cash holdings were fairly high last time simply because of the timing—I just hadn’t had a chance to take money in my settlement fund and move it into investments. This is down from 17.70% from last time.	12.60%
Index funds – Domestic My allocation in domestic index funds remains mostly the same. I can also provide a breakdown of subcategories within this category: I hold 35.82% in the total United States stock market, 38.35% in stocks geared specifically towards growth, and 25.83% in stocks geared specifically towards high dividend yields.	36.10%
Index funds – International My allocation in international index funds remains mostly the same.	6.28%
Target retirement funds This category got a slight increase in allocation because, since my previous breakdown, I contributed more money into my SEP-IRA after I finished filing my taxes and calculating my maximum contribution limits for the 2020 year.	30.36%
Bonds I let go of the “I might as well hold onto these bonds I purchased when I was young” mentality and just sold them all so I can use the money to invest into something that will result in higher returns.	0.00%
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) My allocation in REITs remains mostly the same. I recently did some further research into companies like Fundrise, but did not end up following through by investing.	2.56%
Cryptocurrency To be clear, this allocation isn’t higher because my investment grew… it’s because I dumped a ton more money into cryptocurrency, and then it plummeted, so now it looks as if I had just seen a modest return on my original investment. And yes, I got trolled just as hard by Elon Musk and Tesla as everyone else. Within my cryptocurrency holdings, I own 63.38% Bitcoin and 36.62% Ethereum. I also own a tiny amount of some other blockchain asset, but I don’t really have a mastery of how that works, and the valuation of it is negligible, so I’m not including it in my calculation here.	4.81%
Speculative stocks I scrambled up my speculative stocks a bit while I was in the process of selling off my meme stocks, but these holdings remain mostly with companies in the travel industry.	0.84%
Meme stocks No more meme stocks for me. … That is, until I randomly get the urge to gamble in the stock market again, I guess.	0.00%
Private loans This is a new category, and is a type of investment that I highly discourage you from doing. Since my previous breakdown, I have put a portion of my holdings into private loans, meaning, I am a lender to a private party. Not only do you need the ability to screen your borrowers in an effective and comprehensive way to appropriately calculate risk, you also need to set aside emotion in your decision-making… which is difficult for most potential individual lenders, because the people asking you to loan them money are likely going to be people you know and to whom you have some sort of connection or attachment.	6.45%

Maybe I’ll do a breakdown like this quarterly if my investment allocation changes enough? I’ll see.

Hello, Red Hills Desert Garden & Pioneer Park in St. George, Utah

June 18, 2021, 9:53 AM PDT by Parkzer • Hiking

After arriving in Utah yesterday, I went to sleep early because I didn’t want St. George to be a repeat of Lake Las Vegas. I woke up at 6 AM this morning to head out on an adventure before the temperature rose above triple digits again.

My first stop was the Red Hills Desert Garden.

Right afterwards, I looped around up north deeper into Pioneer Park and hiked up some of the rocks.

I also made it up to the Pioneer Park Arch.

After descending from the rocks, I went into the St. George Narrows, a very small opening between two very large rock formations.

And finally, I finished my loop around Pioneer Park and headed over to the Dixie Sugarloaf and Red Hills Parkway Trail.

After having hiked some of the easier trails in Red Rock Canyon and Mount Charleston, I think Pioneer Park was mild enough that it doesn’t quite even count as a real hike. Regardless, it was a nice walk through nature to see some of southern Utah before heading up to Salt Lake City tomorrow.

Hello Lake Las Vegas

June 16, 2021, 11:13 PM PDT by Parkzer • Las Vegas, Travel

If you read my most recent blog post, you know that I just left Southern California—specifically, Long Beach—where the temperature was in the upper 60s and lower 70s°F. It’s incredibly jarring when, after driving for just four hours, the temperature is in the low 110s. Yes, the Las Vegas heat doesn’t feel as bad as the heat in other areas because of how dry it is… but once you get past 110, you start feeling like you’re cooking, regardless of how dry it is.

As my final stop prior to heading out for the real portion of my extended road trip, I swung by downtown Las Vegas to check my PO box and deposit some belongings into storage for the final time prior to leaving the city for at least two months. For my last few days in the Valley, I decided to stay in Lake Las Vegas, an oasis resort built around an artificial lake in the far northeast corner of Henderson, NV.

A little-known fact about me, mainly because I never revealed this publicly, is that, at one point, I was planning on purchasing a property in Lake Las Vegas. I think this community is extremely underrated, and as long as you don’t need to commute to the main city for work, living in Lake Las Vegas allows you to live a luxurious, upscale, retiree lifestyle. Being both an independent entrepreneur as well as a remote worker for Tempo, I figured that I would fit in well in the Lake Las Vegas lifestyle.

I’m good at identifying undervalued properties listed at below market value, and I know this for a fact because most of the homes I’m interested in usually get sold within one day. I found a new home community on the northern side of Lake Las Vegas, and I found a condo I liked with a price point of ~US$320,000.00. I went out with my real estate agent and was doing a final tour of the masterplan amenities… when we received a call from the sales center saying that someone else had contracted the property right before I was about to commit.

Needless to say, the homebuilder continued raising the price of the properties after this because they were selling so quickly, and as of today (just two months after this incident happened to me), the base price of the condo floor plan is now nearly US$370,000.00, $50k higher than when I originally wanted to secure it.

Seeing as I do have an interest in Lake Las Vegas real estate, I figured this stop in Las Vegas would be a good opportunity to immerse myself into the Lake Las Vegas lifestyle—at least for a few days—to get a preview of what it will be like living here.

Unfortunately, that immersion aspect didn’t really happen.

My hotel of choice this time around was The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa, which is a resort-style hotel with a resort fee that includes a bicycle rental. I was planning on using that perk and going biking around the community, but considering that it repeatedly reached highs of about 115°F and sustained triple-digit temperatures throughout the whole day, I mostly just stayed indoors because I didn’t want to risk getting heat stroke.

This hotel didn’t have covered parking, so the times that I did go out to get food, I would get in my furnace of a truck and drip sweat while watching my air conditioner struggle to keep up with the heat. By the time the air conditioner finally had an opportunity to catch up and cool down my cabin… enough time had passed that I had already finished the round trip to the restaurant and was back at the hotel.

Because of this, my visit to Lake Las Vegas wasn’t quite as eventful as I wanted it to be. I do want to make another trip back here at one point, but it’s definitely going to be in the spring or fall so I don’t melt every time I step outdoors.

And with that, the true “nomad” portion of my journey begins. Tomorrow, I depart for St. George, Utah, a little over two hours north of Lake Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the current heat wave is affecting this entire area, so it’s also going to be debilitatingly hot in St. George, but hopefully I can either find some indoor activities or wake up early enough before it heats up too much to explore nature.