June 22, 2006
110 Degrees!
I am sitting in Las Vegas at 10:30 at night, hoping the temperature drops to under 100 degrees. It reached 110 degrees during the day today and is expected to be the same through the weekend.
I simply want to go on record as saying that no matter how backed up California traffic is, how outrageously expensive our housing becomes or what my workers comp rates get bumped to – I will not be leaving California for Las Vegas.
I’m wondering if the Nevada Chamber reps who keep telling me “it’s a dry heat” know that an oven is a dry heat as well.
BTW – My all-time favorite John Fogerty song is an old southern blues song – 110 In the Shade. Maybe he wrote it while visiting Vegas.
Comments
I had just returned from Lake Havasu City, Nevada to my campsite thirty miles south in Buckskin Mountain State Park, nestled in a bend of the Colorado River. I had gone to the city, legendary for the London Bridge that had been moved from London and reconstructed in the desert in the early 1970’s, to shop the local garage sales. Most sales begin at 6 am when the temperature is still less than ninety degrees. For the same reason, they end well before noon when the temperature reaches triple digits.
Now at 10:30 in the morning, sitting in a comfortable chair in the shade of a tree on the bank of the cool, blue, Colorado, cold drink in hand, good book ready to read, I watch the jet skiers and speed boats racing up and down the river. It is 109º and very still. Lake Havasu City is even hotter by now, probably even hotter than Las Vegas. It is a dry heat and when you step out of your car, it hits you in the face like a bucket full of the Sahara.
Unbearable? Not quite. A difficult place to live? Hardly.
You see, the streets are clean, there are relatively few cars on the road even at ‘rush hour’, there is no sign of gang activity: no graffiti, no writings on walls defining territories. There are no drive-by shootings or other acts of terrorism. Sure there is some crime, domestic disturbances, drunk and disorderly complaints, indecent exposure, even some robbery but it’s nothing like Southern California.
The housing prices are half of what they are on the South Coast and there’s a reasonable real estate market. The residents are a half and half mix of young people and older retired people. Every third house has some type of watercraft parked in the drive. The air is crystal clear and there is no pollution.
Would I consider moving from the cool, humid, coastal Ventura to the hot, dry, desert Lake Havasu City?
Back that U-Haul up right here… and tell the folks in Arizona with the thermostat to go ahead and turn it up a notch!
I had just returned from Lake Havasu City, Nevada to my campsite thirty miles south in Buckskin Mountain State Park, nestled in a bend of the Colorado River. I had gone to the city, legendary for the London Bridge that had been moved from London and reconstructed in the desert in the early 1970’s, to shop the local garage sales. Most sales begin at 6 am when the temperature is still less than ninety degrees. For the same reason, they end well before noon when the temperature reaches triple digits.
Now at 10:30 in the morning, sitting in a comfortable chair in the shade of a tree on the bank of the cool, blue, Colorado, cold drink in hand, good book ready to read, I watch the jet skiers and speed boats racing up and down the river. It is 109º and very still. Lake Havasu City is even hotter by now, probably even hotter than Las Vegas. It is a dry heat and when you step out of your car, it hits you in the face like a bucket full of the Sahara.
Unbearable? Not quite. A difficult place to live? Hardly.
You see, the streets are clean, there are relatively few cars on the road even at ‘rush hour’, there is no sign of gang activity: no graffiti, no writings on walls defining territories. There are no drive-by shootings or other acts of terrorism. Sure there is some crime, domestic disturbances, drunk and disorderly complaints, indecent exposure, even some robbery but it’s nothing like Southern California.
The housing prices are half of what they are on the South Coast and there’s a reasonable real estate market. The residents are a half and half mix of young people and older retired people. Every third house has some type of watercraft parked in the drive. The air is crystal clear and there is no pollution.
Would I consider moving from the cool, humid, coastal Ventura to the hot, dry, desert Lake Havasu City?
Back that U-Haul up right here… and tell the folks in Arizona with the thermostat to go ahead and turn it up a notch!
Posted by: Mel Knowles at June 27, 2006 11:19 AM