Rain! (and bbq)

Yesterday we had our first measurable rainfall in 137 days: a whole 0.24mm (0.01 inches), as measured at the LV Airport weather station. Usually we get half our rainfall for the year during the summer monsoon storms, but it seems that we were left out of this year’s storm flow up from Mexico (where our monsoon rainstorms come from). Today it is cool (relatively) and pretty windy, gusts up to 80kmh (35mph). Hi today 34c (93f) and low tonight will be 21c (69f) full sun with no clouds in the sky at all. With the small humidity increase we had a beautiful orange ball of a sunrise, and our sage will probably bloom again. They usually go all purple whenever there is an increase in humidity (even this slight).

For some reason this reminded me of our Septembers back in San Diego. It was a lot cooler there, with the highs about equal to the lows here. I was president of the San Diego Computer Society, and used to hold picnics in our back yard. We had a large yard, on a canyon fairly close to the football stadium. My friend Cy would come over early on a Saturday morning with his BBQ rig and a pile of ribs then spend all morning slow cooking that stuff. People would show up early afternoon with an assortment of side dishes and we would all just enjoy the time together. We usually had around a hundred or so people, all celebrating Cy’s abilities. Here he is starting things up:


There was usually a breeze coming up the canyon, but spending six or eight hours out in the sun turning ribs every 15 minutes (that was his formula) he ended up pretty hot and red. Before coming he would have spent the night before preparing the meat, and using whatever his magic formula was to tenderize them overnight. They cooked dry, and he would put his magic sauce on as they were being served. If I remember correctly we never had any leftovers, no matter how much he cooked.