November 29, 2006
Cold and windy here. As I rode my bike up Old Stage Road with one hand I was reminded that this is why I moved from Kingman as soon as I could—too much wind and too much cold. As I rode on, shivering, I had the realization that this was the same exact reason my father moved to Kingman from Swea City, Iowa. And, ditto for his father’s father, who moved to Iowa from Norway. The logical progression of all this hit me like a ton of crushed ice: in two more generations we will probably all hail from hell, although I have a hard time picturing my offspring living in Yuma. Why? Well, read this missive I got from my daughter who is on the road for a certain financial institution and you will understand why:

“So, I am in the Denver airport right now, and as you may or may not be aware, Colorado just had a huge snow storm that I had to drive through last night. That's right, my very first time driving in the snow and I was alone, it was dark, and I was on a pretty barren highway on my way to Greeley, Colorado. My trip included skidding, white-knuckle-grips on the steering wheel, driving 40 miles under the speed limit, and definitely some crying. There were half a dozen cars in ditches on the way up, rescue vehicles abounded and people were slip-sliding all over the place. Needless to say, I made it to my hotel okay (after I found the 4-wheel-drive button) and slid into a parking spot far away from other cars. The most fun was waking up to about 7 inches and trying scrape the ice off my car in slip-on loafers. You should have seen the front desk agents laughing with their hot cocoa in their hands! The good news—after driving 50 miles back to Denver (slowly, at first) I am now an expert snow driver. And by expert I mean I can drive about 30 MPH, while gripping the wheel, with the radio off and the heat on full blast. Hooray for me!”
—Deena Bell

”It’s colder than a witch’s breast augmentation out here.”
—Old Vaquero Saying