blowin' in the wind

Today I wanted to go for a ride. My neighborhood is covered with blooming palo verde trees, which don't agree with me, and I didn't want to spend the time to get all the way to Colossal Cave, so I drove down to Fantasy Island, the place with the mountain bike trails just to the east of the Air Force base. I got sick at the trailhead, so I had to go home. These things happen, so I promised myself a trip to Colossal Cave tomorrow and went for a short tour of the local palo verdes for today's entertainment.

Here is what I saw:


I thought to myself, that smoke could be coming from the Air Force base, but it could just be somebody's house burning down. I kept going for about another mile before I saw this:


which really made me think something icky was going on at the base.

But actually, this is all I really know:

• I got sick near the base.
• There were puffs of black smoke from the general direction of the base.
• I have no way of distinguishing a really serious pollen reaction from, say, a delayed food reaction, or some hypothetical mysterious evil chemical on the military base.

So, see? I can take crummy pictures of black smoke with my new cell phone. I'm still glad I don't live near the base.

As long as I'm playing 'pix' with my phone, here's one I took for my dad from the freeway so he can see that we do, too, have a downtown, and it's not at Wilmot and Broadway. Wilmot and Broadway is right near one of the malls, and we don't have a crosstown freeway, so it might just as well be downtown since no one from this side of town drives to the real one if they can help it, hence the whole Rio Nuevo thingy.


And the guardrail looked fine in real life.