Sunday evening: Zozobra returns to Santa Fe, following Fiesta torching September 2013.
Zozobra update: Upset over not being invited to White House Correspondents Association dinner on May 3, 2014. Wanted to be on the red carpet with the rest of the celebs.
DO KNOW
— Moderation in everything should extend to blogging.
— Undisciplined efforts produce shapeless results.
— Dog keeps barking at feral horses snorting in the dark.
DON’T KNOW
— Is Twitter the future of news?
— Did the president rattle the threat of a U.S. military strike in Syria only to achieve a diplomatic resolution?
— Do more people now grow old alone?
Tactical mistake on the fourth leg Sunday costs Oracle Team USA Race 10 after looking terrific and winning Race 9. Bummer. New Zealand needs just two to win compared to eight for Oracle. Oracle has been coming back strong after starting with a two-point penalty deficit, but can any team come back this far? The boats seem pretty evenly matched, although an Oracle rudder hit something under water before the Race 9 start. The official site.
Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith
Oracle looked good in Race 8 on Saturday with Jimmy Spithill sailing well to windward. Analyzers say the “learning curve” on the 72-foot boats is still dramatic and day-to-day. Hints that Oracle also made changes to daggerboards. Got to give Dean Barker credit for saving Emirates from this near capsize. Race 9 called because of too much wind. I know the Cup competition often is all about rules, but I still can’t get over the Oracle penalty for adding 5 pounds of ballast — if I i understand it correctly — to one of the 45-foot trainers. But it’s almost worth it just to see these boats come around a mark on foils and fly downwind.
I was surprised to see at 7:30 a.m. how little water was running in the channels on either side of my Placitas ridge. Either it ran out fast into Las Huertas before dawn or the ground is thirstier than I thought. The creek bed, lower right, still had a small flow but it never had been enough to flatten the Perky Sues (or golden-eyes – I’m not sure which). The arroyo to the west had only a hint of runoff left. Still getting showers that started with a downpour at 3. Turns out the moving water I’ve been hearing is the creek and not the arroyo. More feeding the creek. Anyway, water always exciting in the high desert, even if it does disappear at the drop of a hat. 
Here’s the latest from the Journal science writer John Fleck and webmaster Robert Browman on Albuquerque and the Rio Grande. And let’s hope that photo editor Morgan Petroski can stop working long enough to have breakfast.
What surely will go down in New Mexico as some kind of record-breaking string of storms persisted at dreamranch, an easy crane flight from the juncture of the Jemez and the Rio Grande, early today.
I thought I could sleep through the rolling thunder and lightning flashes at 3 a.m., then the downpour, but my mind started flooding, too. I realized I could hear the arroyo rumbling from my bed nearly a hundred yards above.
My first thought, as usual in a heavy rain at night, was that I was glad I wasn’t trying to sleep in a tent. I realized that my storm-phobic Australian Shepherd friend was wedged in a corner of the bedroom wall.
I thought I have become an indoors man, at least no longer a backpacker, remembering rain cascading off tent flaps and sleeping on rocky ground. I remember the new, lighter weight Gregory pack I bought for my 60th birthday, hanging unused in the garage since deciding that day that a nap sounded better than heading up Santa Fe Baldy.
Four a.m. and more thunder. I will await the reports of John Fleck (jfleck @jfleck) see just how epochal is this train of storms. I remember learning from him how small the mind’s eye is when trying to use its own experience to guage weather patterns over thousands of years.
I remember a big northern New Mexico snow in 1972 or 73, which caught me camping on Christmas Eve in Capulin Canyon, deep in Bandelier. Mus, an Agua Fria breed mutt, snuggled close to me on the frozen ground. I remember trying to quickly make camp in the Rio Grande headwaters, not far from Beartown, on the way down from Hunchback Pass, as an afternoon storm broke faster than I could stake out my shelter. I remember the tight grip of a wooden cot and the small warmth of a Coleman lantern in a canvas tent in the High Sierra.
I start remembering other stuff, too, but stop the replay on the mental recorder.
Is my hillside washing away in the boulder-rolling arroyo below? I am not going to zip into my clingy raingear to go out in the dark to find out. Not anymore. I’ll wait for morning light.
From my rocky ridge in the middle of New Mexico, I watched Race 5 of the America’s Cup on satellite TV last night. I’ll stick with my earlier post, saying I enjoy watching the big multihulls race on San Francisco Bay, but it’s disappointing to see so many Oracle problems.
For relief, I’m starting to look forward to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas in December with Donnie Gay, Joe Beaver and B&W ads. B&W, by the way, makes trailer hitches, not sports cars, although the way it gets pronounced during the rodeos might lead you to think the German car manufacturer has relocated to Tulsa.
You could see things fall apart in Race No. 5 when Oracle blew a tack at the second gate and stalled. Then there seemed to be problems with the daggerboards. Analyzers said the New Zealand boat is easier to sail, and it certainly seems faster upwind.
I’m two races behind in my recorded viewing. Oracle lost two more races after No. 5 and postponing No. 6 to regroup. Tactician replaced. But if design issues are leading to the tacking problems, I fear it’s over.
I could rewatch the recordings if the Oracle problems weren’t seeming so predictable.
It’s Sept. 13 and raining. Third rainy morning this week. I can see farthest to the east, clouds lifting slightly, but the kitchen on the west side of my home still dark at 7 a.m. Who turns on the lights after sunrise in a house with many windows and no curtains? I use a flashlight to fill the coffee pot. Mountain obscured. Foggy undulations of foothills. Arroyos running red, high desert trees deep green against gray light.
1. 9/11.
2. President Obama says a “credible threat of U.S. military action” in Syria was critical to movement for diplomatic resolution of chemical weapons crisis.
3. Friend struggles to save son from spiraling into chasm of mental illness.
4. Rainwater lingers in the morning.
The food I have remembered the longest was a ham and cheese sandwich washed down with chocolate milk at the Ohio State Fair sometime in the 1950s.
My only other memories of that fair are the cow made from butter and Sky King and Penny, who might have been the day’s lead entertainers.
The sandwich, which I can still taste, was on rye bread.
I know why the memories came. I woke to rain clouds on the day before the the New Mexico State Fair and thought of “state fair weather,” as an early monsoon is known in New Mexico. Then came the sandwich and the butter cow.
Thanks, Dad, for taking us. You were then a reporter for the Columbus Citizen. Maybe I am dreaming but I think Sky King and Penny asked you to come up on stage with them and dance. It was a very big stage. I was impressed, though I think I remember the sandwich and butter cow the most..
As for the weather, I’ll have to ask Journal science writer John Fleck.
dreamranch 