Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Greetings from windswept Benson, Arizona.  For the last couple of days the 'hawk' has been blowin'.  We're having steady westerly winds at 25mph with gusts at 30+ mph.  Yesterday (Monday) was warm...in the mid 90's...but with the humidity at around 4% you really don't notice it.  About the only indication that it was hot was your thirst.  You don't sweat...er, perspire...in this weather.  The humidity is so low the sweat evaporates almost as soon as it forms.  But you do get thirsty.  We've noticed that a lot of folks keep water bottles nearby.  The temps dropped down to the upper 70's today (79 right now) and with the wind and 7% humidity it is more than comfortable.  If the wind would stop blowing so hard it would be near perfect.

We're staying here in Benson another week so we'll be here at least until the 25th.  So much to do and see.  And we're getting old-er so we need time to rest up between adventures.  The nights here are on the fringe of being cold, usually in the mid 40's.  But by about a half hour after sunrise the temps have usually risen to the mid 60's.  Speaking of the wind, when we pulled in our neighbors told us that the wind usually picked up around 11am each day.  And sure enough they were pretty much on the mark.  Yesterday morning the winds were calm, virtually non-existent.  Our neighbor's peace symbol flag hung as limp as a zombie's right arm.  But, at about 10:45am or so, seemingly out of nowhere, the wind went from calm to 10-15 mph.  Same thing happened this morning, just not as dramatically.

I had a conversation with someone who has been down this way for several years now about the water supply.  While the Phoenix/Mesa is served by a series of man made lakes/reservoirs, the Tucson area has no such above ground water supply.  All of Tucson's water...100% of it...is ground water meaning underground aquifers.  And those aquifers are supplemented by water from the Colorado river which is brought in via a series of canals and then pumped into the ground.  In 2000 the official population in Tucson was 487,000 persons.  The estimated population in 2006 was 519,000 and the total population of Pima county in 2006 passed the 1,000,000 mark making it similar to DuPage county, Illinois.  I couldn't find a 2007 population estimate for Tucson but I did find a reference to nearly 900,000 persons in the metro Tucson area.  Under any system of measurement the population out here is exploding and if the statistic I read that the average family of 4 uses 326,000 gallons of water per year providing a reliable water supply for those folks will be a real challenge.

We took a tour of a Titan II ICBM missile silo yesterday, one of only two such silos left intact.  The Titan II was a large reason the U.S. was able to defeat the Soviets in the Cold War.  The museum is in Sahuarita, Az. which is located just south of Tucson.  When the Titan II silos were installed back in the early 1960's, Tucson was a much, much smaller town and the silos were then waaaaaaay out in the boonies.  If the Titan's were still a part of America's active ICBM stockpile, the crews could stroll down the road and hit the Dairy Queen or Burger King and maybe pick up some electronic supplies at Best Buy.  (If the Burger King married the Dairy Queen would their son be Prince Castle???)  Imagine sitting at a window table slurping on DQ blizzard when the silo doors open and a 110' long missile carrying a 10-megaton warhead is launched.  Now THAT would be something to see.  Of course it might be the last thing you ever see but it would be awesome!

We met a ham at the museum yesterday and it turns out that he was a retired communications officer aboard the Looking Glass command and control aircraft.  Looking Glass was the not-so-secret code name for an airborne command center, sort of a plan B in case the NORAD center in, actually under, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado didn't survive the opening moments of WWIII.  The Looking Glass planes flew for 30-years...24-hours a day, 7-days a week a Looking Glass aircraft was in the air. 

But more important than that...we found gas for $3.21 yesterday!