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I don't think there is any doubt that Arizona's average temperature is increasing. Mother talked about how bitterly cold it was in Woodruff when she was growing up (and even making allowances for memory distortions) I think she was right. For example, Grandpa Allen talked of going ice fishing and driving his truck across the ice on the Little Colorado River. In recent winters, that stream carried much less water, yet barely accumulated ice along its edges.
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During my own sojourn in Oracle, I have witnessed the same trend. The first few winters here brought a lot more of this white stuff. Our first year here, I shoveled 14 inches off the roof of the shed (I couldn't sleep thinking it was going to collapse). The relatively small amount in these photos is the first to grace our neighborhood in two winters. Personally, I think the paucity of frozen precipitation is wonderful.
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I would like to say that we get snow so infrequently that even the snowplows slide off the road and get stuck, but the reality is that this stuck snowplow (at the eastern junction of American Avenue and Highway 77) is just a mechanical malfunction.
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As usual, more snow fell in Oracle than San Manuel, but at least there was enough to cover the church roof there. It was ward conference, and the visitors from the Stake were impressed.
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One of the benefits of working at Sun Life is that I, and my family, get our dental work at half price (if we patronize the Sun Life Dental office in Casa Grande [about a 105 minute drive from Oracle]). Sun Life is a "Community Health Center (CHC)," which translates as "caters to financially distressed (government subsidized) clients." Given that fact, we rarely attract providers with skills that rank them near the top of their profession. In fact, several of our providers are with us because the Feds will forgive a significant portion of their college loans for each year they work in a CHC. With that as a background, you can more readily understand when I say that Barbara has been jousting with the Sun Life dentists for quite sometime. This last week, a toothache got the better of her, and she visited our local dentist, Dr. Bunch. There are those who think Dr. Bunch also lacks skills that would place him near the top of his craft, but I suspect he can recognize a "cash cow" when he sees one. He did a root canal (with a crown to follow), prescribed antibiotics, cleaned her teeth, rebuilt a tooth, and performed an extraction (after concluding that the infection had been present for "at least a year.") As you can see, the offending tooth is in less than pristine condition. Barbara seems to like him, and I guess I should get to like him too, because it appears (given Barbara's plehthora of dental problems) that I will probabaly end up buying him a new car.
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Mylinda and Zeke are back from Germany, and they stopped by briefly. They arrived about 0900 hours Saturday, after driving all night. Their idea was to come in a rental car (which they did), drop it off at the airport in Tucson by 1700 hours on Saturday, then ride Zeke's motorcycle (which has been stored at his fathers place here in Oracle) back to Oklahoma a few days later. As most of you know, it rained all day Saturday, and Sunday morning there was snow on the ground. Although neither of them would admit to being cold, I suspect the weather curtailed (or perhaps even truncated) the visiting they had planned.
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Now, maybe it's just me, but somehow snow and motorcycles don't seem to be the optimal mix. At BYU, a sure sign of spring was the grinning motorcyclist with bugs on his teeth. But I don't remember seeing too many of them with icicles hanging from their mustaches (then again, maybe that was because the grooming code forbade facial foilage...).
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I derived some comfort from the fact that both Mylinda and Zeke were religiously wearing brain buckets, but (based on similar experiences) I worry about the possibility of "road rash" if they were to experience a "sudden and unplanned event" (to use legalese). I don't understand how or when, but I have morphed into my mother, and tend to fret about "trivial" (if unlikely) incidents. Do the words, "black ice" mean anything to you?
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Symantha and Nathen, et al, stopped by Monday night on their way home from being snowed-in in Eagar, and Zeke and Mylinda came over one last time. It was kind of fun, but given that one set was tired from being on the road for four days, and the other set was anxious about their cross country voyage straddling a motorized, bi-wheeled, wind machine, it didn't last too long. The plan was for Mylinda and Zeke to leave sometime yesterday (Tuesday 3-14-06) and make the trip back to Tusla Oklahoma in three legs--weather permitting. If it becomes inclement, they will simply rent a U-haul truck, load up the motorcycle, and make the remainder of the journey in relative comfort (i.e., warm and dry). As Zeke pointed out, the closer to home they rented the truck, the less expensive it would be. That plan does contain some elements of logic, but I still don't envy them...
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 Does this look like a teenager waiting to happen? |