Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
Most places have a couple of months of bad weather every year. Minnesota has winter. Oregon has rains. Florida has humid storms. That sort of thing. Locally, we have hot summertime and here is the first forecast for July: Triple digits, up to 114F. That's 46C for our foreign friends. (When I first lived in Brazil, there was still a colonial rule on the books making it illegal to show temperatures above 40C. Too discouraging for laborers.)
When this time hits, our range of activities is less than when there are more reasonable California temperatures. I can always do my puzzles, including my new wooden ones that I ordered last month at our Liberty Puzzles factory tour in Boulder, Colorado. Wood puzzles offer a better tactile experience, but I need to do them many times to justify the cost!
Marianne can always "do art". Classes. Big projects. Small projects like the cards some of you receive from time to time. Original art work. Of course, her art studio becomes unusable at some point, because the little air conditioner just can not keep up to triple-digit heat.
If I get up early enough, I can get in a walk before it is too stressful, but past about 8am, it is not fun. In these temperatures, even the trees get stressed out. Neighbor Steve lost a big branch again from the street trees the city arborist told me were "self trimming". We do not advise street parking!
The good side of summer walks is that flowers are pretty much everywhere. The smallest are easy to miss, but dragging along a camera makes me keep my eyes open. On this particular walk, I found a couple dozen flowers and one trash can "worthy" of recording. What can I say? It keeps me entertained.
From our backyard
This might have been the last outdoor activity for awhile. I thought we should escape to the Coast, but the Fourth of July weekend is coming up and space would be hard to find. Let's see if we find something (more) interesting. A pretty low bar.
By Tuesday morning, July 2nd, heat was arriving. At 5:45 am, it was already 76F (24C), pleasant to start a day but not low enough to allow us to vent out the prior day's heat. The only "cold" in my life was was the summer head cold I had managed to catch. I never know how I could catch such contagion, since our life is pretty isolated. Oh well, things happen, and it makes us worry.
Pacific Gas & Electric also declared Tuesday and Wednesday "Smart Days". For up to 15 summer days, we have agreed to exceptionally high evening (4pm-9pm) electric rates ($0.60 per kWh) in trade for a minor reduction the rest of the time. As a practical matter, this means we turn off air conditioning and almost everything else during those five hours. On the first of these days, we simply stayed home in a quiet, no-TV house. Not too bad and, besides, I was miserable sniffling.
Our Wednesday coping was different. Marianne had a couple of morning Kaiser tasks and we followed that with lunch out at "The Third Place Global Eatery". A limited but interesting menu, but, staying inside, it was not a very inviting atmosphere. We wish them well, I suppose, but they did not make our must-come-back list.
The other half of coping was a trip to the movies. Remember, we had to kill five hours of no-AC, so going to Kevin Costner's new three-hour offering sounded good. "Horizon, An American Saga", was ... interesting. Sort of. Kind of. Well, maybe not so much. Looking at movie reviews after the fact helps explain our impression, better than my own words. "Ambitious (but) diffuse..." and "...by the end, I was still waiting for the story to start". Marianne and I left at about the two-and-a-half hour mark and spent the rest of our blackout hours analyzing. Will we return in mid-August for Part 2 of Costner's series? Stay tuned.
We started our Fourth of July with a new flower and a forecast high of 112F (44C). Good weather for cacti.
More than that, I did not know, but the plan was for a dinner-for-just-two, since family and friends have their own gatherings. Then we would hang out inside and run the air conditioning.
And that's exactly what we did. Hot dogs, potato salad, cherries, and IPA beer (non-alcoholic.) This was a far cry from Fourth celebrations we have had in the past (1999, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), with dozens coming over to enjoy real German bratwurst in our old barn or American food and bocce, but time has marched on.
This was clearly our hottest Fourth of July weekend, 110F and going up on Friday, the 5th.
Friday was a day for us to water our yard, something we do to supplement irrigation in order to keep the place green. I noticed that the crepe myrtles seem to enjoy the heat, as do the cacti, but normal succulents are suffering. I even had to add an umbrella for our patio planter.
By the time evening rolled around, Saturday and Sunday were both forecast for highs of 115F (46C) and lows of 80F (27C). I decided we needed a break. It was time to visit family in Monterey, where the expected highs were ten degrees F below Fresno's expected lows. Perfect.
We left at 10:00 Saturday morning and started hitting westbound traffic in Los Banos, halfway across the Central Valley. By the time we crossed the hills to Highway 101, traffic was crawling at parking lot speeds. The 150 mile trip, normally about 150 minutes, stretched to four-and-a-half hours. Apparently other Valley refugees shared our coastal escape idea. Amazingly, Marianne and I maintained an even disposition and, more remarkably, did not even need a potty stop! (That's good, because this route has hardly any "rest stops".) But, we were thinking this trip had NOT been our finest idea.
By arrival time in Monterey, we were hungry and Marianne Yelped a "new" place near our hotel: The Wild Plum Cafe. I think this is our new favorite lunch and breakfast stop! The staff were friendly, even though we arrived just minutes before closing, the atmosphere was California-funky, and the salads were imaginative and tasty. We will be back.
Properly fed, we checked in to our regular Best Western and headed over to Marianne's growing-up home on Colton Street. There, we caught up with brother Chris, nephew Spencer, two dogs, and two cats. (Leisa was still away, watching Wimbledon Tennis with her sister. Adam was reportedly up in Santa Cruz, hanging out with his tennis-team friends.) Sitting in the pleasant Monterey afternoon sun, we decided this had been a good idea after all.
We finished our Saturday with a visit to Marianne's step-mom Klare and partner Jack. Both in their 90s, we approach visiting them with a bit of trepidation, as "things happen" at this age. As it turned out, everything was as good as could be hoped and conversations ranged from family, to politics, weather, and food. Little mention of disease, aches, pain, and medicine. That's commendable for folks in their 70s and 90s.
Sunday started with recharging the Tesla. The 4+-hour drive had depleted the tank, but $21.47 filled it up again. Electricity here in Pacific Gas and Electric country isn't cheap, but better than our $5.20/gallon gasoline.
Next up was breakfast at The Wild Plum Cafe. Of course. Discovering new favorite cafe's is not good for weight-watching, but we will hold that concern for another day.
I needed to walk off my heavy meal with a street excursion, snapping flower pictures. Monterey is great for this, with almost-perfect climate, even sidewalks sprout. At the end, I had managed almost 100 pictures, later to be trimmed down to "just" 40 keepers. But, no, I can't do that for our diary. Here are a handful, selected almost at random:
Back at the hotel, we set up for a Zoom call with my cousins. Tom and Kathleen checked in from Idaho and Tim made it from Lisbon. Maryetta missed the fun, but there's always next month. The main topic of discussion was the political turmoil caused by the recent demonstration of presidential aging. The group was uniform in thinking it was time for Mr. Biden to hand over the baton, but no one wants the Republican-candidate-who-should-not-be-named to gain an advantage. It is going to be interesting times.
Our slow Sunday moved on to a visit with Chris and his furry friends. We sat on his front patio, discussing not much of importance. Those are good conversations. I left the talk for some more flower photos, but again, most shots ended up on the cutting room floor.
Dinner was Whole Foods sandwiches. Easy and matching our relaxed day.
On Monday, we left the chill behind and headed inland. The drive was uneventful, except for a quick Tesla charge in Santa Nella and a stop by Del Bosque Farm Stand in Firebaugh. The latter was a bit of a detour, but well worth it. Joe Del Bosque raises some of the best melons in the Valley and this time he had some peaches from a friend that may have been the tastiest I have ever experienced.
And that was our cool break. Now we are back to 114F. I wonder how we can escape again.
Stay tuned.
John and Marianne