Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

 We Need To Consider Taxation of Church Owned Property  Please take a couple minutes to read to the end before you write me off as antireligion or some nut case with an axe to grind against religious institutions. What made perfect sense in the past no longer makes any sense in my opinion. Also, please understand from the get go, that taxing church property will have to be addressed on a national level. The City Council cannot mandate property taxes on all the churches in Lowell.  Once upon a time, way back before the condition of our infrastructure on a local, state and national level was deplorable, it was decided to not tax church property. Back when this decision was made the only “infrastructure” were dirt roads connecting people of one locality to another. There were no paved roads, no sewer systems, no municipal water delivery, no 911 emergency services, and the fire departments consisted of everyone in town showing up with a bucket and hoping for the best. These t...

 Katie Brim Is Going International By the time you read this, Lowell resident Katie Brim will be on her way to compete in her first ever international para-cycling competition. Katie will be a member of Team USA and they will be competing in two events put on by the UCI (Union Cycliste International). The first is the UCI 2022 Para Cycling World Cup that will be held in Quebec City, Canada August 4-7 followed by the 2022 Road World Champions August 11-14 in Baie Comeau, Canada. “I am extremely nervous and excited for this amazing opportunity as this will be my first time racing internationally,” Brim stated. “I am going into these races like I have every race I have done this year and that is to do the best that I personally can do and learn as much as I can.” You may have seen Katie whiz by on her low slung hand powered racing bike. She rides/trains six days a week on the roads around Lowell and Ionia. Nasty weather doesn’t slow her down a bit because she has a stationary smart tr...

  Go ahead - you can touch these frozen sand dunes. Standing slack jawed in the 109 degree heat at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area it was hard to imagine anything being frozen at any time in this natural oven. That is probably why I got such a kick out of the description of the beautiful red and tan sandstone formations surrounding me – “frozen sand dunes”. During our recent work-cation to a jewelry show in Las Vegas, Julie was busy working the search engine on her phone to find places to visit that would expose us to the incredible natural wonders that are just a short trip from the non-stop neon spectacle of the Vegas Strip. Our plane had not touched down before she had our first day trip all mapped out for us. Red Rock Canyon is just 24 miles from the Strip and is well worth the drive. One of the best things about Red Rock is that if you have absolutely no desire to exit your vehicle and take advantage of one or more of the 26 different hikes and trails, you can...

When traveling the best advice you can get about great places to visit or eat usually comes from the local people. Online reviews can steer you in a good direction, but just between you, me, and our smartphones I take online reviews with 3 grains of salt because, well they are online and Lord knows the interweb is chock full of smoke and mirrors. The gold standard of advice from a local was demonstrated big time recently. My week-ends are Sunday and Monday. I like to get all my chores at home done Sunday so I can go play on Monday when most folks are back at work. Last Monday I hopped on my trusty Zero motorcycle for a trip I really enjoy – to see Lake Michigan. I decided to head to the Douglas area since I know they have charging stations right downtown about two blocks from a great little coffee shop, Respite Cappuccino Court, that has never let me down in past visits. Had a blast riding the back roads, rode through the crowded streets of Saugatuck and out to Oval Beach thinking I mi...

Michigan truly is a water wonderland. As residents of a state surrounded by twenty percent of all the available freshwater on the entire planet, we might take water for granted. Yes, our little mitten shaped portion of the globe gives us access to one fifth of the fresh water available to the world. Let that sink in, will you? Julie and I recently took a work vacation trip to Las Vegas to attend a jewelry show. We stayed some extra days so that I could check a visit to the Hoover Dam off my bucket list (more on that later). For most of the daylight hours during our six days out west the temperatures were triple digits – the highest was 111 degrees. Sure, it is a “dry heat” compared to Michigan with the humidity levels at 10 to 15 per cent. However, 111 still feels like walking around in an oven and the decided lack of humidity, read WATER, is the subject I want to address here. In case you are unaware, many parts of the Western US have been experiencing draught conditions over the last...