Everybody Talks About It...

Charles Dudley Warner once said "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." A funny quote, that at its core really underlies the submissive role humans play in our relationship with Mother Nature.

Some places, like San Francisco" actually have very different "micro-climates", that can change quickly from one neighborhood to another. If you don't believe me ask anyone who has lived in the Sunset District and popped out of the L-Train tunnel into DuBois Circle - totally different worlds.

On the other hand Los Angeles has a "macro-climate". The only thing that varies is the degree of heat depending on how close to the ocean you are. When it's hot on the beach, (and it usually is), then you can bet that 50 miles inland it's insufferable, and fifty miles beyond that live human thermophiles. My bro', Terry thinks LA is a great place to live, and while there is a certain attraction to the glitter and pulse of the area, if you don't like hot winters, then this might not be a good vacation spot.

Portland, Oregon ... cool, wet, and very green, not a lot of snow, and a fair amount of tolerable sunny days with moderate (not humid) temperatures. Now this piccolo player has been transplanted to the beautiful burg of William Pitt, Pittsburgh.

So... here I am in Pittsburgh. I've gone through an interesting winter, complete with snowfalls, ice storms, record low temperatures, and power outages. The spring, so far, has also proved interesting as well. The temperature has slowly climbed to the high 70's as of mid-June, and while the humidity is higher than I'm used to, it's not all that bad so far. There have been a couple of monsoon-like, torrential downpours, the last one setting a record for the most lightening strikes in 5 minute period (about 6,000). It was very reminiscent of a fireworks display with flashes and thunder coming several times a minute for a period of time.

Pittsburgh, having been built in a very hilly region has a lot of creeks and valleys (big gulleys actually), and on June 17th, we got over four inches of water in three hours. The road that runs down my neighborhood "valley" was flooded and looked like a river. There's a creek (pronounced "crik") that carved this particular valley out, Turtle Creek, and I'm sure it empties into the Monongahela River, and then the Ohio, on so on to the ocean. There are probably a few hundred plastic lawn chairs on their way to the Gulf of Mexico at this very moment.

From my old western oriented point of view, this is the east coast of the country, but I'm farther away from the ocean now, than I've ever been. It's about a 5-6 hour trip east to get to the New Jersey sea shore. Now I've never seen any beaches on the east coast, so I really don't know what to expect, but with the population density being what it is around ere, I can speculate that you might actually need to reserve a specific six-foot by six-foot patch of sand "within sight of the ocean".

I'm used to having a good 1/2 mile stretch of beach all to myself so the idea of sharing a beach with 750,000 other desperate vacationers kind of puts me off a visit to the sea. What should I plan for my free time; no mountains, no (attractive) beaches, and no good conifer forests ... maybe I'll learn to knit.

Pete