Tick Tock

I believe at last count it was 5 minutes to midnight. The war is not over. Temperatures rise as the economy tanks. Hurricanes. Floods. Fire. Much of it is attributable to Mother Nature... much more to the foibles of mankind. Mankind. As its numbers continue to grow, so do many species continue to disappear. Extinction. Oblivion. But why should I care? I am on this earth for only a short while, and I hope to ride out the storm (40 to 50 more years, if I'm lucky) before the clock strikes twelve. If not, courtesy. Sympathy. Taste.

Locusts Too?

Over 1,000 fires burned in California. An overnight blizzard in Denver this past July (or was that August?). Disappearing glaciers and migrating species. The southeast and gulf coast hit by a barrage of hurricanes. Flooding. Tsunamis. Is there a message in this somewhere?

Vienna la tormenta!

Respite from the Heat

We have had mild temps the past few days, staying well below triple digits. The coming work week we'll be in the 90s (today is forecast at 90), and the skies have been much clearer as the delta breezes are here to blow much of the smoke out of the valley.

Fires still continue to burn throughout Northern CA, but many of them are contained to some extent. Thankfully I haven't heard that any new dry lightning strikes have ignited additional fires.

Summer ain't over yet, but I'll keep my fingers x'd that things will smooth out for the latter half of 2008.

The Oven

That's what I feel like we're in right now. The valley is filled with smoke from the remaining fires (several hundred, from the 1000+ burning a couple of weeks ago... the smoke due to a wind shift). Temps hit a 103 degree high depending on whom you ask, and at 10:00pm PDT it's still around 90 degrees out there!

The a/c is running while I'm kicked back on my couch typing this. Headlining the news is a hazardous air quality warning in effect through at least Thursday. Record to near record temps. Ugh.

Sodom

Hehe, leave it to a Sacramento Bee reader to write in and suggest that Northern California catching fire all at once had something to do with the timing, burning shortly after the decree that gay marriage shall be deemed legal in the state.

It's no more than 90 degrees outside, but here I am indoors with the a/c (may as well, after having plunked down a fortune to replace the old unit) just to avoid the bad air as much as possible.

Holy Smokes!

I was riding west along Hwy120 toward Mono Lake in California's Eastern Sierra on Tuesday afternoon. The sky was noticeably hazy and no doubt was due to smoke from forest fires... but where, I wondered, was it burning?

I reached Hwy395 and headed up the road to the eastern entrance to the Yosemite valley, pulled into the Tioga Gas Mart (and Whoa Nellie Deli) to gas up and ask a few questions. Spoke to a guy who was riding a sportbike adorned with luggage similarly to my setup. He had been touring as far as the coast and informed me that there were big fires near Monterey. I later learned that there were 800 fires burning, many of them ignited by lightning strikes (there's a lotta dry tinder out there!).

I still haven't found news details on what's going on with all the smoke in the air (and hence, where it was burning), but the particulates certainly can't be good for anyone's health. A bit of advice for those travelling the Eastern range: be prepared to spend dearly for your fuel. It'll cost you over 5 bucks a gallon for the cheap 87 octane stuff (as it also did back in Tonopah, NV)!

Holy smokes!

Fire!

It is reportedly the largest firestorm California has ever seen... this coming at the close of the fire season. There's no predicting Mother Nature. I'd like to lambast those who build illegal campfires and carelessly let them get out of control. Also to those who freely fling their burning cigarette butts about (witness this whenever you're sitting in traffic). Arsonists. And just plain idiots. Of course there's the possibility that lightning can be the cause of all this mayhem, but as I said, there's no predicting Mother Nature. If cause be not hers, then witness her wrath in what is known as the Santa Ana winds. Let's all hope that the fires will soon be contained and many lives spared (five deaths to date).

On a lighter note, how about a list of songs that reference one of early man's greatest discoveries (loosely or otherwise)?

"Burning for You", "Ring of Fire", "Fire", "Disco Inferno", "I'm On Fire", "Play with Fire", "Summer in the City", "Fire Down Below", "House of Fire", "The Heat is On", "Great Balls o' Fire", "Jump Into the Fire".

Please feel free to chime in with any glaring omissions; I'm sure there are more. Anyone able to tag the correct artists' names to these titles?

Stay cool.

UPDATE: Arson believed to be cause of fires.

Fires

It doesn't appear that summer is about to go quietly into the night. We have a couple of major fires burning in NorCal... one in the Plumas Nat'l Forest (about 100 miles from here), and another in the Bay Area (Santa Clara - Silicon Valley). Smoke, especially from Plumas, blanketed a very broad area and caused Unhealthy Air Quality alerts in the Sacramento Valley. This weekend I rode a total of about 300 miles and witnessed our pine forests peeking out from the cloudy soup.

At least it wasn't so bad in the upper elevations where I was riding.