Howdy! Grab a chair an’ a beer! I’m sittin’ here lookin’ out the window at the thermometer in the patio, and it’s readin’ a hundred an’ ten degrees. I want to go for a ride, but the last time I rode in this kinda heat, I stopped at my local waterin’ hole, and the bartender said, “Do I smell bacon fryin’?” I guess I’ll have to stop usin’ bacon grease as sunscreen. In Vegas, it’s a hundred an’ fifteen an’ climbing. There’s hail in Wyoming, South Dakota, an’ all over the midwest. Back east, there’s floodin’ all over the place. Has anyone else noticed that the West Coast now has the humidity from the South, the South has earthquakes from the West, an’ volcanoes are poppin’ off everywhere like zits the day of the prom? I think the Eskimo elders have it right. They’ve spent generations studyin’ the sky, and they say that the Earth’s axis has shifted, an’ that’s why the weather’s weird all over. A while back, one member of our House of Representatives was worried that if we put too many soldiers on Guam, it would tip over. If that’s the case, maybe earth’s population got all huddled together like towels in the dryer, an’ knocked us off our axis. “How about spreadin’ out a bit, there, China? Yeah, you too, Canada, a little to the right, if ya don’t mind…”
Now ol’ Al Gore wants you to think it’s all people’s fault, blamin’ our “carbon footprint,” whatever the hell that is, an’ he wants us to drive electric cars, ride mopeds, an’ take the light bulb out of the refrigerator, but just think; it was only a few thousand years ago that wooly mammoths were trompin’ all over North America an’ clear down into Mexico, ass deep in snow, wonderin’ what happened to the easy life they’d been livin’ when their only worries were saber tooth tigers, old age, an’ those crazy two-legged critters pokin’ them with sharp sticks! They had no idea how cold it was gonna get, or they all would have moved to Florida.
Jumpin’ back a few million years, glaciers were still carvin’ out the Great Lakes, an’ turnin’ dinosaurs into two-ton popsicles. Over time, the glaciers retreated, leavin’ behind deep rivers an’ lakes, a whole new selection of plant and animal life that adapted to the new climate, an’ more rottin’ mammoth carcasses than you could shake a stick at! Around that same time, scientists tell us that Antarctica was tropical, with palm trees, thatched huts, an’ prehistoric cabana boys to keep the cave women happy, but somebody left the freezer door open an’ look at it now! Maybe the Earth’s axis slipped a bit around then, too!
I just saw some Facebook posts from friends who are already partyin’ in Sturgis an’ Spearfish, an’ it’s been hailin’ there too. I guess I shouldn’t complain about a little heat; we could be enterin’ another ice age or something, an’ that would definitely throw a kink in any road trip plans we might have brewin’. I’ve been ridin’ for so many years (about 60 or so) in all kinds of weather, that about the only thing that’ll make me hunt cover is high wind. A few years ago, Reggie an’ I got trapped on Highway 395 out of Carson City, Nevada, in wind that reached 100 miles an hour, and it was coming from the side. It turned several trucks over, and yeah, I tried to pull over, but every time I did, the wind would send me into the next lane. We finally got pulled over, and with our kickstands down, the wind was lifting our tires off the ground. That wasn’t fun.
Here in Madtown, we just set a record for the most triple-digit days in a row. A whole month of the damn things all run together like slowpokes in the fast lane. As we all know, heat is not an air cooled engine’s friend, and yeah, they make little fans to cool the cylinders, which is a great invention, but the best thing for motorcycles and riders alike is to avoid the heat of the day. “How,” you might ask, “would I do that?” Well, my solution would be to ride early, then find a nice shady spot under a tree to park my bike, as long as there’s a waterin’ hole there as well. If there aren’t any trees in the vicinity, just make sure the waterin’ hole is there; the bike won’t complain. About nine at night, it starts to cool off, and it should be pretty comfortable by closing time, ridin’ in the back of that cop car with the air conditioning runnin’…
Reggie has a hard time with riding when it gets to about 100 degrees, mainly because of her meds, an’ though I can tolerate it OK, we don’t ride as much when it’s really hot. We do, however, ride the hell out of ’em when it’s cooler, an’ sometimes it’s so cold, I swear I see wooly mammoths out there in the frosty woods.
In my opinion, climate change is nature’s way of telling us that we don’t rule this planet; nature sets the rules, and we either make the best of it, or hide under the porch an’ let life pass us by, and I’m not about to do that! See ya on the road!
