Monday June 24 3pm
There is a little squall out near the point, it seems to be moving this way. Most of the weather has been coming in from the north, behind me, forming up over the mountains and then slowly drifting this way during the course of the afternoon. This is different, and the winds are stronger, and there are more whitecaps then previously. All the boats have gone in.
I like weather. Big gusty winds have always been a favorite (exception: when on a motorcycle). And thunder, esp. the big ones that shake the walls. And of course rain, soft gentle tapping on the roof and momentous downpours alike.
When I first spoke with Sheila about renting this place she said “You know it’s the rainy season?” I said that was great. I of course was not thinking about hurricanes, but like always happens with me when given a new piece of information like that I wanted to know more so I looked it up. They do have hurricanes here, and earthquakes too. Good. So now I have bookmarks I can go to when it looks like there is some weather in the vicinity, to see what is going on.
On 3 of the last 7 days we have had strong winds, 15- 20 mph gusts, pretty tame by Colorado Front Range mountain standards, but today it really picked up for a while in front of that squall. The first day it happened was the day I did the Las Faro walk. I was surprised to find that though it was windy at the house at the top of the cliff it was just breezy at the bottom during the walk.
On Saturday I was sitting in a chair by the edge of the cliff for a bit, enjoying the feel of the strong wind on my face. A few minutes after I left that spot a large dead branch from the coconut tree fell next to where I had just been. It looked big and heavy, and my first thought was “I wonder if that would have killed me?” I walked over and picked it up. It was surprisingly light, but it still would have hurt.
Today it got pretty serious for a while, enough to make me move my stuff indoors and pull down the storm shutters in the kitchen, and some more branches hit the ground. After I got things moved inside I went out to stand on the cliff edge again. It reminded me of when I first moved to Boulder in 1973. My first winter there we got one of those February winds, the ones that do in fact have hurricane like velocity, 100 mph or so. I went for a walk up to the top of the Table Mesa area, near NCAR, at the height of it. Trying to move uphill against such a force was hard enough, but what really surprised me was how hard it was to breathe in that wind. It was not until last summer when I jumped out of an airplane at 18000 ft. that I felt that again.
Today’s storm is nothing like that, but it feels good to stand in it nonetheless. As I do I again notice the birds out over the water. They seem to embody most how I feel. They are up maybe twice as high as am I, and they are mostly just staying in one place, head facing into it, letting the wind keep them aloft with no effort. I love it.