A strange thing happened today. The normally sunny, dry weather of Arizona changed. There were these dark clouds in the sky all morning, and in the afternoon those clouds started to discharge liquid. At first I wasn’t really sure what was happening, I kept thinking that maybe I was imagining it all, but no, it actually happened. We had rain. Not the Monsoon storm rain that we get in the summer months (usually, but not for the last several years as we are in a horrible drought), but just a gentle type of rain that went on for hours. It kind of put me in mind of the weather that I got used to while living in Oregon, of course without the temperature being in the low-thirties in October. Just a very strange thing to have actual, normal rain here in Arizona, it doesn’t happen that often.
The somewhat humorous result of this (both the fact that we never get rain, and the fact that we just got rain) is that no one in the entire state of Arizona ever pays a damn bit of attention to the windshield wipers on their car. When it actually does get around to raining, you often find that your wipers have melded with the windshield sometime in the 120 degree heat, and as such the first time you try to use them all you hear is the scraping of the metal bar on the glass. All that while what used to be a flexible, rubber wiper is still absolutely either melted to your windshield, or turns to powder the first time it moves. I managed to escape the windshield wiper fate as I just replaced mine, after trying to use the little window squirter and wipers to try to clean the windshield, only to find that I had wiper integrity at about 1%.
The problem with this all, and why it is not humorous, is that the people that live here (in Arizona) don’t understand how to drive in the rain. It is pretty much common knowledge that water makes the road a bit more slick than usual. What doesn’t seem to be common knowledge, at least down here, is that water also makes oil float to the surface. While people in rainy areas are used to having the roads be a bit slick, people down here just don’t get it. You can have the best tires on your SUV, be a pretty defensive driver and have the best anti-lock brakes available. All of that is not going to stop you from skidding down the street for several blocks when you lock up your brakes in a mix of water and oil.
The lack of rain on the roads in Arizona makes it so that the oil really pools up in the low spots, as well as just making a thin coat along the whole length of any stretch of road. That is exactly the time that you have to understand that the sign posts a limit to how fast you should go: In perfect conditions, 75 mph is alright. In less than perfect conditions you should go a lot slower, especially if you value your own life. Just remember, as that SUV passes you up, going 85mph+, in the rain, that there will be a frivilous lawsuit filed somewhere when it inevitably slides as it goes into a corner, then kills all of the people in it. That is, of course, driver error, but in our society we really want someone to pay us, or the family, when we do things that are monumentally stupid.
• In sports news, the Red Sox actually did come back from a 3-0 defecit to beat the almighty Yankees. That is about all I have to say about it though, since I really don’t give a damn one way or the other who actually wins the World Series. Of course my wife did bring up the fact that Boston will actually have to win it to get rid of the Curse of the Bambino. So I guess I had better root for the BoSox in order to get my Cubbies to break their own curse.
I had no intention of posting anything today, but that thing about the rain and foolish people who don’t know how to drive in it just took over my conscious.
On the up side, I really don’t think I am going to post anything tomorrow. Of course, as always, time will tell. You just never know when some jack-Ass is going to do something so stupid that you have to bitch about it.