Saturday September 13, 1997 Los Banos, California USA Its still Brown season here, our last rains were mighty but short and stopped in February several months earlier then normal after doing much damage because a years worth of rain came in a few short weeks. Now today as I am surrounded by no less then three computer screens with the color TV playing in the background I ask myself not only why do TV's have screens but what if I had only had one of these pc's when I was in high school? No doubt in my own mind my life would have been different but alas they have for the most part only replaced the radio and tv as another avenue of pleasure and now communication between beekeepers and friends. Right now I am miles high looking down on the clouds that cover the eastern pacific, something I could not have even dreamed of doing in high school with a computer costing millions and filling a room without at least leaving the comfort of my home office and here comes LINDA, a real hurricane, and hopefully a tropical storm when she makes her move on California. You see we in California have never had a hurricane or even seen one up close and personal. We are human and fear not what we can not see so if we get a real hurricane you can expect the loss of life and property to be much higher then it would in areas that know about them as so many here will want to see one. We had a close one the year before I was born and 40 people who made the mistake of walking down to the sea for a up close and personal look never walked back. The storm is still a few days off and everything is normal, 90 degrees, Brown, and lots of sun. The experts say this hurricane is going to move north and change into nothing more then a tropical storm, before it turns on California. But these are government men who can't even agree on when its going to rain, everyone knows here that a 10% chance of rain translates into one weather man out of ten voting for rain. It is also a fact that what the daytime weather man gives you the night time one takes away. Never could understand why the two shifts did not at least rotate once en a while. I got the feeling this time, maybe its my sore noise, the one with the sun cancer now the size of a quarter, from second hand smoke no doubt about it or maybe just one load too many of chewing tobacco spat into the wind.. This one is different, its a first, and its heading straight for my noise and no man from the government is going to change that. I guess I will wait and see what happens but I have no plans for any trips to the coast which is less then one hundred miles west of Los Banos. It used to be a lot closer but as I have grown older the distance seems to have increased, who would believe I once thought making the trip five times a week to work bees was great fun. When LINDA hits, if she hits, things will change, some non-believers will be believers and others will be gone forever. One inch of rain here is a lot when your annual total is many times less then ten, (Linda could bring 15 inches of rain to the coast and less inland), the official amount typical of a desert is 10 inches or less, but most deserts get more then we do, anyway after the damage is done, measured, and clean up starts, our Green time starts and from that day its only 30 more until the first flowers and how to get the bees to fly in a early cold Green season is another story few around can tell as no one lives that has ever seen a hurricane come ashore in California. ttul, the OLd Drone (c) Permission is granted to freely copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk. 91397 --- ~ QMPro 1.53 ~ http://194.112.46.22/public/default.htm (Amigabee BBS)