Hours of Daylight – 15:00
Oh the news… the news. If it isn’t Iraq it’s Karl Rove. If it’s not Rove it’s more bombs in London. If not that then it’s some other nasty tragedy going on someplace far from Boise. And then, just when the guard is down, i read Jimmy Doohan has died. So i’m not exactly a “Trekkie” in the traditional sense, but of all the characters from Star Trek:TOS, Montgomery Scott was by far my favorite. He was the supreme go-to guy, the guy who made things happen, the guy who had the solution when the solution called for action. Scotty didn’t have an ego, he had a purpose: to fix what was broken. Looking back over my illustrious career in graphics and whatnot there are many examples where i’ve played the role of “Scotty” to a host of egomaniacal “Captain Kirks.” I was the guy who could get the aging HOPE 137 E-6 processor running again… i was the guy who could swap out the deeply buried cooling fans on the old film recorders and get them working again. Were i better with math i probably would have become an engineer.
It’s sad. Sure there have been deaths of celebs closer to my generation, Kurt Cobain comes to mind quickly… and, of course, John Lennon and George Harrison. But James Doohan played a character out of my childhood… and now he’s gone.
Ok, and now the weather. It’s hot. Hot and dry. Very hot and very dry. Boise is faring better than Phoenix (hell-on-earth, IMHO) or Las Vegas where the temps are cresting over 115, but we’re still hotter than anyplace i’ve ever lived. A friend here in Boise reported the other day her central A/C was out… and that, yes, they’re sleeping in the basement. We tap danced with 101 yesterday. Addionally i was surprised to pull down the NOAA forecast for Boise a few days back and find “Smoke” as the forecast. Never seen that before. Normally it’s “Showers” or “Clear” or “Cloudy.” Nope, “Smoke.” Turns out it’s from the grass fires that are cropping up all over the place. In fact i was out on my motorcycle the day before yesterday, heading up 21 past Lucky Peak when i noticed lots of smoke off to the left. I continued the climb and cleared a nearby hill. There was the fire! Granted it was a ways off the road, but it was very close to the trail i was looking for. There was a large area to pull off the road on the right that i took advantage of. I watched the fire for a short while. It was a very active blaze, leaping and jumping up the side of sage-covered hill. I turned around and headed back down into the valley. Later i learned the fire had impinged on the highway and that the fire dept. had indeed stopped traffic on the road for about an hour. That’s a big deal here because 21 is *the* road many people depend on to get in an out of the treasure valley.