Winter Sports

I write this as a passenger in a car driving in the westbound lanes of Interstate 70 amid Colorado's steep, climbing Rocky Mountains. Between the dangerous rockslides, the avalanches, crossing deer and elk, and hazardous weather, including ice and fog, my destination -- winter sports -- isn't my first extreme adventure of the day.

A rockslide on Monday sent tank-sized boulders crashing along and, in some cases, right through, the curviest part of I-70’s Glenwood Canyon, an already nerve-wracking stretch of road. Last month, a five-foot wall of snow stretching for 50 feet along the highway near Vail Pass came rumbling down. Luckily in both cases, nobody was harmed.

This morning, yet another avalanche struck. This one closed U.S. Highway 6 over Loveland Pass.

100 Years

Walk the Walker

The release of wide receiver Javon Walker by the Oakland Raiders has been a long time coming. He never really lived up to the six-year, $55 million contract he received in 2008. In fact, over the last two years, Walker only caught 15 passes and scored one touchdown. That works out to an astonishing $933,000 per catch. Not bad. The question now is "Which team will take a flyer on Walker, given his lack of production since leaving the Green Bay Packers after the 2005 season?"

One Thick Dime

Last month, an issue of the 1938 comic book in which Superman first appeared, "Action No. 1," sold for an incredible $1 million. The original purchase price: 10 cents. Now a ring that was in the 1940s a perfect compliment to the comic and the cult of Superman is for sale online -- "a silver metal ring with a brass Superman in the center, surrounded by the brass inscription 'Supermen of America Member' on a red painted background," according to its seller.

WhyDonCha Stay a While?

Don't expect Interstate 70 in western Colorado to open anytime soon. After a massive rockslide early this morning, officials expect the highway to stay closed for several days as crews work to remove debris.

Watermelons and Memos

In the future America, perhaps 100 years from now, a media personality's placement of the word "watermelons" in a sentence about a black man might not be objectionable at all. That would be because in America's most ideal future, nobody would be racist anymore and therefore few would recall the horribly racist association between blacks and watermelons except as one of those vague references somewhere in a dusty history book.

But in 2010, racism is alive and well. Just ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has condemned the actions of some students at the University of California-San Diego who last month held an off-campus event called "Compton Cookout" that mocked Black History Month. Participants defended the event as satire. Protesters on campus called it racism.

So when veteran newsman Dan Rather mentioned watermelons over the weekend in the same breath as President Barack Obama, there was sure to be commotion.