Change in the weather

Well, there's no two ways around it. A drought is easily the most desirable disaster out there. I mean, if you have to go through a natural disaster in your life—and you do because you're a human and that's just a part of the ride—but if you have to go through a natural disaster, drought is the obvious, extremely easy choice. The numbers of nice days associated with earthquake, flood, tsunami, tornado, volcano and hurricane combined gotta be zero. Right? The number of nice days associated with a drought—hundreds. At least. Maybe thousands, if we're talking about a really solid, quality drought. Put another way, you don't see people playing tennis during a tornado.

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And now, with Olympic fanfares fading, this one observation from the peanut gallery. So you finish eight one hundredths of a second behind the third place guy in, say, 1,500 meter speed skating. EIGHT HUNDREDTHS OF A SECOND. It takes longer to say eight one hundredths than it takes to be eight one hundredths. You can't even think eight one hundredths of a second in eight one hundredths of a second. Eight one hundredths is just a shade above nothing. In fact, eight one hundredths is probably far less than a shade. And yet, you lose by .08 to some dude, you're a schmo. A loser. A bum. And of course, a disappointment to your entire country. The Olympics are tough, man. Tough crowd.

As for the weather in Sochi, well, jeez, I thought it was a bad sign when you saw clips of the city, and you saw all these palm trees. Palm trees? Eh? Sorry, I see palm trees, and I'm not real surprised to hear there are puddles of slush at the finish line of skiiing events.

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It was nine years ago—February '05—when one of the most spectacular natural events I've ever seen took place. It was the year of the extraordinary Bloom in Death Valley, when it seemed that the entire floor of that scorched desert erupted in one of Queen Flora's all time great displays. It was a real bustout and literally a spectacle. Everywhere you walked, you'd stumble upon yet another gorgeous rock garden, one perfectly punctuated with an extremely over-the-top arrangement of wild flowers. There was an abundance of gigantic, sweeping, OMG post card shots, featuring millions and millions of the yellow/orange daisy species called Desert Gold, and there was an abundance of little showstoppers that were fully capable of enchanting the more intrepid searcher. One needed both binoculars and magnifying glass to fully appreciate this outburst. In the end, it was just superbly cool and consistently breathtaking, a memory of a lifetime.

I couldn't help but think of that special year recently as I drove along highway 190 out of Furnace Creek. While looking along the road sides and up into the hills, I tried to spy even one blossom, just one—and got zilched. Not one freakin' flower. Anywhere. Oy vey. 2014—the dusty bookend to 2005.