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Summer solstice… the longest day of the year… well over 14 hours of sunlight for us! Oh, wait… that would be if we could SEE sunlight. It appears that this first day of summer has come in like a’lyin’… but has brought us some quality fodder for the road report!
We have rain… it’s not heavy, but the roads are wet. On this morning’s drive to Rancho Kook, there were spells of dry, then periods of rain that required the use of wipers. Fog is a factor on the mountain today: the fog is thick enough at times to hinder your visibility. It’s sort of patchy, but it’s not light, and it’s not heavy. It places quite solidly right in the middle. And, it’s all over the mountain… you’ll be in that moderate fog all the way down the mountain, until around the 2,000 foot elevation, near the Lower Waterman Canyon Road exit.
I did not see rocks on the road, but I’ve carefully calculated a “fair-to-middlin’” chance on any given hour of rocks hitting the road somewhere on Highway 18. Just keep an eye out… maybe even favor the left lane, when legal and courteous…. AND only when there’s more than one lane going on the same direction.
So, what IS the summer solstice? See, we live in the northern hemisphere… this is the half of the planet that is north of the equator (to those readers who are south of the equator, please understand that I mean thee no slight… in fact, today is the longest night of the year for you and your wallabies, kangaroos, wallaroos, koalaroos, bandicoots, wombats, tazmanian wombatarooticoots, whatever. So, my condolences to you, on your darkest of days.) Because of the way the Earth tilts on a seasonal basis, today is the day that every part of the northern hemisphere is getting its annual longest day. Even the North Pole qualifies, where today it will not even see a sunset.
You’ve surely heard the surly term “hemi” when applied to the name of certain Mopar motors, Shirley. This is because the combustion chamber for each cylinder has a hemispherical shape to it… the main advantage is that is disperses heat more efficiently… it’s cooler. And, “hemi” SOUNDS cooler. The “hemi” motor has earned a reputation as a beastly monster of power. But did you know that, like all car motors, its power is still basically related to its size… and that there are “hemis” out there, in actual cars on our roads today, that produce around 105 hp? (These went into some late 70’s—“Age of Malaise”—Dodge Challengers, built by Mitsubishi… really.) For the sake of perspective, 105 hp is only one-half to one-third the power of a typical Toyota Camry today, and only one-eighth the power produced by Dodge’s largest engine now available to consumers. On the other hand, it IS still as powerful as over one hundred horses… so there’s that.
Ok, so the summer solstice marks the first day of summer. It’s here, folks… don’t forget to set your calendars forward one season.
Okay… I wasn’t going to say anything, but… I’m sure you heard about the drone that Iran shot down on Wednesday. Well, I think that might have been my fault… my drone. I wasn’t TRYING to cause an international incident, but, the stupid thing flew out of range again. (Again, not my fault… this time it was the fault of eight beers. They should totally warn against flying while drunk. Wait… let me check the safety manual before I rant any more… it is possible that this warning is in the book… but it totally should be in BIGGER TYPEFACE, and might need more exclamation points around it, for sure!) Its arrival in the Strait of Hormuz, times out about when mine would have arrived… so, I don’t know… Actually, I do know that I probably should have just admitted it, and faced the music… but instead: I ran.
Maybe drone flying isn’t for me… I should take up gulf instead. Or camel hunting? I tried that once, on the eastern seaboard… it wasn’t very far north, and not far south… it was more middle eastern. My guide brought lunch: we had bay root, curds, and turkey, and even played a little acoustic Qatar. Then, we waited… and waited. While I get that patience is a virtue, it is hard Kuwait for so long. Then, a desert storm blew in and it started Bahrain… we were syrianly soaked! Well, a family of camels came into view… I had the chance to bag the young one or the mother, but I wanted to bag dad! (Sorry… stole that joke from Donald Rumsfeld… really.) In the end, I decided that camel hunting did not seem ethical, so I knitted an afghan instead. And then I wove a Persian rug, but I just Lebanon the floor.
So, for your weekend, may I suggest… take your sudan for a drive… but don’t leave prince on the clean windows. When somebody does that in MY car, I’m stuck between Iraq and a hard place: I find it hard to turn the other sheikh.
See you on Monday!