Wild Fire Update

The Foresthill wildfire south of me, and the Yosemite Rim Fire further away, have combined their smoke to generate stifling white clouds of smoke today. Even the wind blowing is actually making it thicker. My eyes and throat both hurt from being out in for half an hour to buy groceries. Dad and I watched Formula 1 qualifying this morning. He's laid down for a nap. Indycar is going qualifying at Sears Point Raceway near Schelleville, at the Southern tip of the Sonoma Mountains, mountains which I grew up staring at at the North end. The Sonoma mountains, contrary to the claims of hippies, were volcanoes, big ones. A whole line of them. There is still cooling magma below responsible for 97'C water full of borate, so useless for irrigation but good for heating. As I understand it, one computer company was using it for heat prior to closing their plant again, down in Penngrove. I miss my home, though I don't like how they Nerfed(tm) it up. All this safety crap just slows down the inevitable. People who live there already want to die. Lets not pretend. Driving fast from road rage is a good way to die on those roads, and they're 10 times smoother than they were when I grew up driving on them. Weaklings. I miss the sirens and the smirks for the latest victim of hubris. Greek Gods would favor the bravery of driving those roads. It was like battle.

We would sometimes get grass fires out there, but being so close to the Pacific, the air was mostly very clean, and the rain was delicious to taste. Not like here. I'm far enough East the air is contaminated with Diesel fumes, sulphur from the refineries, phosphates from agriculture (fertilizer and pesticides), and soot from burnt stubble after harvest. There's also lots of local wood burning stoves because propane is $200-300 month in the winter and not everybody has natural gas pipes for heating. There's a good reason homes on propane are $30K cheaper. They'll cost way more than that over the course of the mortgage, and that's at current prices, not future ones. Throw in the fact that rural homes have to pay a lot more for fire insurance and must cut down all trees and brush within 150 feet of a home or the fire department won't bother to save your place, because... well you're asking for it. Do the work or don't live there. The Rim Fire in Yosemite is a crown fire which is why its so big and so smoky. It got off the ground into the tree tops and the whole tree burns in that. This winter will have terrible erosion from this, and flooding downstream. Wildfires have many costs. Preventing them has many costs too.

Today would be nice if not for the choking smoke. Today I stay indoors and watch Indycars near my hometown, at a track I used to visit to watch IMSA races, sometimes with Paul Newman behind the wheel. He was one of many. Make the best of it.