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The other day when schools closed early and practices were canceled and I found myself driving west on Hwy 26 in nasty conditions, I got a bit nervous wondering if the road conditions would get worse.
I saw a State snow plow stopped at the intersection of Hwy 26 and Hwy 21. I stopped and asked him if he had been north on Hwy 21 and he said no. He told me that 26 was getting bad and to be careful and I told him that I had been on 21 earlier and it was bad then. If he didn’t plow that road I certainly wasn’t going to try to plow a lane with my Jeep.
By the time I got home around 1:45 or so, The Powers That Be closed Hwy 21. It was not a good day to be on the road and I certainly would not have left home in the first place, but I did. I was very impressed (NOT) with the guy that passed me in a 4X4 pickup with two snowmobiles on the back. Guess he thought if he got stuck he could take one off the back and go get help. My thought was if you lose control on this road and roll your pickup, those snowmobiles won’t be much help to you.
When I got home I relaxed and got on the computer to track what was going on weather-wise, and I started humming to myself a song from about 50 years ago by the Lovin’ Spoonful called “Summer in the City.” Some of you may remember the opening lyrics. ‘Hot town summer in the city, back of my neck gettin’ dirt and gritty.’
Then another old-time summer song from the same era took over my thoughts for a while. Sly and the Family Stone had a great warm-weather hit called “Hot Fun in the Summertime.” I was loving these songs and thinking about a warmer time without having to go to Arizona to make it happen.
I know we are bummed by this weather—well, at least those of us that don’t own a snow plow business aren’t real happy. We tell people that we live here because we love the four seasons. And we see posts from friends or relatives in Arizona on Facebook that are complaining because the temperature was in the 40s overnight. It’s not like the state of Arizona banned jackets or long pants. We all have expectations for our weather but we can’t do a lot about it except complain. Hopefully we will survive this glitch in the weather and once again see the golf course greens.
The concern this week is that every team will be able to make it across the state to participate in the state basketball tournaments. The passes have been a problem on more than one occasion. The regional games all played out which was better than some of the 4A district games which were postponed enough times that a couple of teams had to play two loser-out games on Feb. 18 in order to qualify for state regionals. Well, they are young and in shape and so…never mind!
I’m hoping the roads are good enough for me to take in a couple of days’ worth of basketball. I love the ‘B’ tournament. It is a lot of fun to watch these young kids play. I hope they understand how special it is and not take an appearance lightly. It takes a lot of hard work to make it and a missed free throw or made desperation three can change an outcome of a game and shatter teenage dreams quickly.
A month from now we will be chuckling about the winter of February 2019, because we really only had a month of problems—and a short month at that.
When it comes to tournament basketball I hope that the coaches don’t blame cold shooting by their team on the weather outside. There may be other reasons.
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