Lightning, thunder and hail, oh my

Friends in Denver had been warning me of hot weather, and a need for rain for some time before arriving. There are a number of us who "bring rain" when we travel. There was some talk we may have gotten carried away.

My first day in Denver, it rained that glorious warm summer's rain I remember from summers spent in Winslow. It rained in fits and spurts over the next day or two. Then Friday afternoon, while on my way from the convention center to the Sheraton, it started up again. Thunder. Lightning. Big drops of warm rain. Wonderful stuff. I took off my hat and walked with my face turned up.

The rain came down harder and I was getting seriously wet. That's ok. It's warm. It's summer. I'll be fine.

Then the little blighter turned cold. And mean. The rain started coming down hard enough to wash paint off buildings. It added insult to injury by hailing. Swell. Not happy with trying to wash me off the sidewalk, I am now running the risk of being shredded by little bits of ice. Fortunately I got to the bus stop just as the bus got there. There was some talk on the bus of starting a wet t-shirt contest, as there wasn't one of us that didn't have some water damage.

That bus was a life saver, in many ways. Not just that day, but for the entire convention. Our hotels and the Convention Center were spread all over the place, and if it hadn't been for the free shuttle down 16th Street Mall, the convention would have been a disaster. Even for someone like me who likes to walk.

During the day, buses ran up and down 16th Street Mall, past shops upscale and down, "This Is Colorado" tourist kitsch, the inevitable multi-screen movie theater, stores you can find in any mall in any town, and a used bookstore I managed to avoid. For a bookaholic, that may sound like blasphemy, but my car was already suffering from "Wait! Since we're driving, we can take..." from the trip out. Any more stuff, and I wouldn't be able to see out the back window. LA has a pretty good set of used bookstores to get lost in. I said that loudly to myself a couple of times, as I headed away.

In the evenings, the buses were joined by bicycling pedicabs dodging around the trees and seating areas in the center of the "street", around the buses, pedestrians, and the random police car touring the town. Staying up past the time the buses ran, one night quite a lot after, the pedicabs made the trip back to my hotel refreshing and quite personal, kinda like a friendly taxi ride with a breeze. The drivers were willing to chat, sharing tidbits about their job and the town. Friday and Saturday nights, horse drawn carraiges were also scattered about. I would have liked to ride in one, but never quite arranged it.

Denvention, Aug 6-10, 2008

There are convention reviews all over the net, detailing events, people, awards. I enjoyed the gathering of friends, the sharing of stories of happenings more personal. Some friends I see several times a year, some I haven't seen in far too long, and some I met for the very first time. The party thrown by Teresa and Patrick Niesen Hayden was a great gathering of friends in person, having gathered for months and years on the blog Making Light. Teresa made her (in)famous Scurvy Cure. Made in typical fannish fashion, in the bathroom, it consisted of hand-squoze citrus, including itty bitty limes, to which was added Everclear. A lot of drinks will numb the mouth over a few sips, so the last is milder than the first. Not so with Scurvy Cure. Between the juice and oils from the citrus and the Everclear, the last sip packed as big a wollop as the first. I told Teresa so, and got a big grin in reply.

Finding a party serving sloe gin gave me another alcohol first. Family history has it my grandfather took my grandmother to a speak-easy, fed her sloe gin, thus causing her memory to cease functioning for the rest of the evening. I, on the other hand, seem to have inherited my father's head for drink, as I remember every silly, laughing moment.

The same friend (hi, John) who introduced me to Rhum Agricole, rum made from sugar cane as opposed to rum from molasses, introduced me to WristRockets. Since WristRockets are legal in the UK but not in many places in the US, I of course do not have said fun thing in my possession. Any remarks made in jest about hitting everything I aim at, because I aim at the ground, does not mean anything. Really.

Wandering thru the dealer room caused several items to leap off tables and racks, demanding that I take them home. Several pairs of earrings have been added to my collection, along with an absolutely amazingly beautiful hand-painted silk scarf. I avoided the art show, as it has proven more and more difficult to make it out of one without some far too expensive item, or sniffling because I can't. I know my limitations, and art shows test them greatly.

Spent time in ConOps with friends, old and new, including a crazy Brit (hi, Dave) who read the real estate advertisements with great zest and silliness. Nothing like perspective! I enjoyed pictures from Japan (hi, Robbie) and the worldcon last year. I met up with a friend who'd moved to Denver from LA several years ago (Hey Jude!), and had a wonderful several hour chat. Sunday afternoon's get together was both magical and wonderful, full of silliness and laughter. I'm sure the concom was delighted when the convention was over, but I was sorry to see it end.

I visited the Denver Fireman's Museum just before packing the car and heading home. Pictures to be put up later.

It Rains in the Mojave?

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Man, it pours.

Eastbound on Highway 40, just west of Ludlow, for those following at home. Just ahead were some lovely thunderheads, with that wonderful desert phenomenon of rain-that-doesn't-reach-the-ground. At ground level, the winds were kicking up some serious dust clouds. Yet, there had to be some water in there somewhere, as one of the ground level clouds looked to have a segment of rainbow in it. We'll know when we get there.

Dust blowing almost sideways, dust devils twitching over the ground, the sound of the paint on my car being scoured off. I so wanted to bring the other car, as Brunhilde has a trunk you could pack a pigmy mammoth in, but driving thru this stuff, I'm glad I didn't. She'd just gotten a new paint job.

Then a raindrop. Another. Harbinger of things to come, as within minutes, I was driving thru a massive downpour. Drivers experienced in this sort of thing had their flashers on, the rest followed suit. It made sense, as flashing lights can be seen a bit better thru a wall of water. Because that's what we had. Wind and the speed of my car blew the rain up the windshshield; never touched the wipers. Everybody slowed down, partly because we couldn't see diddly, but also because hydroplaning was getting to be a serious issue. I was keeping an eye on the trucker behind me, as he could see the traffic flow farther than I, being higher off the ground. When he changed lanes, so did I.

Then the out-of-state wusses started pulling over to the side of the road to ride out the storm. Guys, that ain't gonna do you no good. This storm may sit here for hours, dropping rain in this one spot. You hafta go on thru. Which I did. I let the trucker I'd been watching pass me, then tucked myself in behind. The rain was still blowing up my windshield, but now at a rate that was almost blinding.

And I'm having a great time! Just enough adrenaline rush to keep me focused, furious rain thundering on the roof and sides of the car, and the Kingston Trio's "South Coast" playing an appropriate song for the adventure. Poor Jim wasn't too sure of me, as I kept laughing and saying "Wa-HOO!" every so often. He did get a touch of revenge, as he pointed out this is the kind of weather that generates flash floods. Now I'm really glad I'm behind the trucker. If he stops, you know it's bad.

And then we broke out the other side. Rain lessened, then dribbled down to nothing, just as we passed the exit to Ludlow.

Starting out a little late

We started out three hours later than I'd planned, four hours later than the official time. Plans were to start out between 8 and 9am. By 10am, things were getting put into the car, and those last minute "OH! I need this." was being found and packed. (Flying keeps your wants pretty much limited to your needs. Driving means there's always one more cool thing to take along.) Then Jim decided to try slicing the bottom of his toe off again.* Last time, lots o'stitches. This time, a pressure bandage. But by the time we got back, it was almost noon. So lunch, and then on the road.

And then back to the house because I can't drive anywhere without my Kingston Trio CDs.

The desert is glorious!

From Barstow, Interstate 40 runs thru a chunk of the Mojave Desert, a land cut down to its bare essentials. Creosote bushes and sage dot the landscape. Mesquite trees, looking almost ephemeral with the trunks of the trees showing thru their sparse leaves, take hold along the highway where drainage gives them a bit more water. Yuccas and joshua trees take hold in areas with a bit more water. The bones of the land are seen everywhere, from the piles of rusty stones and broken lava flows from long-dead volcanic activity, to the sedimentary layers resting like hats on top of basaltic pillars. Distant pillars and mesas float on haze, seemingly unattached to the ground below. Close at hand, the road meanders in and around the landscape, maze-like in the randomness of the mesas. When vistas opened, I could see how high we'd come, driving into the mountains ahead. Often the only sign of human life is the double ribbon of US 40 stretching away into the distance.

As we come up on that last bit of mountain, I could smell water, water from the Colorado river, the lifeblood of the Southwest. Topping the mountain, the green of the valley stretched away in long rectangles, with a sprinkling of buildings scattered about. Spread before me was the thriving metropolis of Needles. Three offramps later, I'm headed for another row of mountains.

The road slides thru a cut, and there is the Colorado. Slow, narrow, obviously deep as there are no rapids. Cross the bridge, past the warning signs for those bringing in livestock, slide into the cut in the mountains on the other side. Colorado river, come and gone.

The road to Kingman is as stark in its own way as the Mojave, but on this side, it's the stark of desert mountains. The pillars and mesas randomly scattered thru the Mojave have morphed into wind-carved sedimentary rocks in faded reds, ochers, and sands. Occassionally, the terrain widens out to a valley, with a few buildings to show that humans are stubborn enough to live anywhere.

The final climb to Kingman is steep and twisty. It passes thru some amazingly layered sediment showing the stresses the earth put on the land to build these mountains. There are pictures of one of these currently living in the camera. I'll add them later, if they came out clear enough. There were also some tremendous thunderheads, but when we finally stopped to eat, there was a huge sign structure right smack in the middle. So you'll just have to imaging thousands of feet of billowing cloud, lighting reaching down to strike the mountain tops.

As we pulled out of Kingman in the twilight, headed for Ash Fork, the lightning inside that thunderhead lit up the clouds like some gigantic photo studio. As we drove, lightning lit up the sky, cloud to cloud, or cloud to ground, sometimes forking down, once in an amazing s-curve on the mountain tops in front of me. Somewhere between Kingman and Seligman, the promise of rain became reality. Once again, I was driving thru a wall of water, this time in the dark. On the positive side, flashers on all the other cars were much easier to see this time. Once again, I drove on, still disturbing Jim with outbursts of "Wheee!" and "Huzzah!" and "I love Arizona." I spent some childhood summers in Winslow, and have always loved Arizona's thunderstorms.

By the time we got to Ash Fork, the rain had faded to the occasional splash. Turning south on Hwy 89, the rain became a steady drizzle. This wouldn't have been too bad, except instead of having a four-lane divided highway, two in each direction, I'm now driving on a two-lane highway that often just had painted lines without reflective dots. In the rain in the dark, this meant the road markers would disappear. I kept my eye on the truck ahead of me, the center line when I could see it, and Jim kept an eye on the right side of the road to make sure I didn't slide off that way. Earlier in the day, when it was clear to do so, I was moving at 90mph, but at this point, was happy to ride behind the truck at 65. When we finally made Prescott, the rain had stopped. It's close on to 10pm at this point, and I told Jim we were taking the first motel we found that had a name we recognized or any kind of rating in the AAA tourist trap book. We found a Holiday Inn Express and checked in. I grabbed the bag with the medical supplies so I could redoctor Jim's toe, said we can get clothes out tomorrow, blogged and went to bed.

I wish I had pictures of all of it. But if I'd stopped to take pictures, I'd still be on the road. I'll see what I can do on the way home.

---

For those who absolutely must know how he does this, his sandal gets caught under the lip of the step; his momentum drives his foot forward, bending the sandal back. The sandal reaches its maximum point of bend, snaps back, dragging Jim's toe across the top edge of the step, slicing the bottom. Now you know. And we're ditching those sandals. Once is an oops. Twice is not acceptable. Actually, once wasn't acceptable, but we didn't make a concerted effort to replace those sandals. Now we will.

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You know it's hot when...

You push your glasses up only to have them slide down almost immediately.

How do you know it's really hot? You push your glasses up, they steam up immediately, then slide back down your nose.

I decided to remove my back lawn, mostly crabgrass, that I never use for anything. Crabgrass is not the surface of choice for lounging, playing on, or pretty much anything requiring contact with the ground.

So I'm digging it up.

In the summer.

What was I thinking? Well, it's mostly that I want to do it now. I'm really good at finding reasons not to do something, so when I decide to actually do something, I better get started.

It will be a series of raised planters with seating scattered around. What it is right now is one largish hole and one middlin' hole, each centered around one of the existing lawn sprinklers. Since I'm having to go out at 5:30am to dig, before it gets glasses-steaming hot, I expect I'll have two really nice 4x4 planter boxes ready for fall planting. Yes, I know it's only July. It's also crabgrass in adobe soil, and requires a pickaxe to break up. Pick, shovel, pull the grass bits out, mix in some perlite to keep the damned stuff from clumping back together, repeat. Fingernail breakage and cursing scattered randomly throughout.

But why dig it up if I'm putting in raised beds? Drainage. There isn't any. Or rather, too much. If I dig down a foot or so, the untouched adobe holds water as if in a bucket. Two, the only way to kill crabgrass is to pull it out. Three, if I dig up the dirt, mix stuff in it, I have a decent growing base and I don't have to add so much packaged soil mix stuff, expensive packaged soil mix stuff, on top.

I'm a desk-bound computer geek in real life, which doesn't lend itself to heavy duty physical exercise. With all the picking and shoveling, I am developing a really good set of shoulder and arm muscles. Just what I need for beating difficult code into submission, or intimidating difficult clients. Yeah right.

Bleedin' HOT

Why is the pavement melting?

It was 109 in Northridge, 111 in Chatsworth, yesterday, June 18. Downtown LA was 80-something, which is the one that's reported inter/nationally. The translation to metric is: bleedin' HOT. It's supposed to be that hot again today.

I am offering up prayers and sacrifices so that my a/c continues to work. The system has gone past the point where my a/c maintenance guy says, "You need to replace this unit." Now, he just shakes his head and adds more chewing gum and wire to the system. In these economic times, it's about all I can afford.