From camping to cupcakes

It seems it is time for an update on my recent activities and what not. I'll begin with the 'activities' and then move into the 'what not'.

I mentioned in my last blog that I was going camping over Memorial Day weekend with my friend, Jason Bergquist. We hiked up to a little area above Alpine, Utah called the Second Hammongog. We were hoping to hike up a little further to a mountain lake and fish, but there was snow covering the trail after we had hiked up a few thousand feet. Here's a picture of our campsite just as we were getting into snow.

And this is us taking a break on our way back down.

We packed up a ton of food because we had been on campouts before where we basically starved, so we decided that heavy pack were better than empty stomachs. We ended up giving away or throwing away a lot of it but we ate like kings.

By the time we came down off the mountain, neither of us had showered for about four days and the odor was becoming palpable. We had little choice but to head to the local car wash and hose off. After some suds, a spot-free rinse, and a wax we went to a park restroom to change. I felt like a classy homeless guy.

Even though we weren't able to make it up to the lake, had to throw away a lot of food, and rinse off in a car wash, the whole trip was pretty fun. Plus I got to see Elise an Marae and my now-future-brother-in-law Ben.

I didn't have a picture of him so I had to do an online image search--the photo above came up. I don't know if it's a school picture or what, but it turns out that he was voted one of the ten 'most-wanted' men in New Mexico. Sounds like Marae got quite a catch.

With Marae occupied with Ben, Elise is feeling neglected. She now calls me about five or six times a day looking for someone to talk to. She has also posed some questions to me in a recent blog post. Basically the query stems from a brief conversation we had about fads in which I listed some current fads which have reached their climax and are, in my opinion, on their way down. I told her that fads are usually targeted at women and that a sure fire way to spot a fad is by the prevalent use of pink in the logo. She seemed skeptical so I did a search for logos of a couple fads I have observed--cupcakes.

And Frozen Yogurt...

I think you get the point. Pink seems to be used to sell a product when the product can't sell itself, either because it is of inferior quality or unjustifiable price. Can you think of any company that has a pink logo that has been around for a long time? (Aside from Owens Corning, the construction products company, who use it in their branding for entirely different reasons) But why pink? Here's my theory, pink is very feminine and invokes the 'princess mentality' as described in this article which states that girls grow up with ''all the pink, frilly and sparkly'' princess accessories and that, "For many women, there's still a piece from childhood to want to be a princess." As everyone knows, fairytale princesses can have anything they want and always have the latest and greatest--the fads. By marketing to women with pink, marketers are appealing to the inner childhood fancies of women one cupcake at a time. That's not to say fads are bad, they play an important role in a thriving economy, just don't expect current fads to be around in such invasive numbers too long. Frozen yogurt and cupcakes will be around forever, but the shops that deal exclusively in any one item will fail as soon as that item is no longer in demand. I hope that answers your question Weebs.