Just back from three weeks in the western states, starting and ending in Las Vegas, with a six-day mass bike ride in Colorado in-between; I can’t stop talking about the weather.
In Vegas it’s the same climate everywhere – air-con with acrid tobacco overtones – although the economic climate is unseasonably chilly: the state of Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in the U.S. and Las Vegas led the nation in foreclosures last year.
We got hot, even as we drove our rented Leaving LasVegas Eurovan through the biggest recorded June snowpacks in the mountains of Utah and Colorado. Brown rivers raged everywhere, barely contained, making it hard to believe the stories of unprecedented wildfires and drought in New Mexico, just half a day’s drive away.
As I write this, the biggest fire in New Mexico’s history is still burning out of control. (Some evacuees are taking refuge in a converted banquet hall at the Pojoaque Pueblo’s Cities of Gold Casino.) New Mexico is having its driest year in the last 100, Texas its driest since 1895. Phoenix just had its highest temperature ever: 48 degrees F. Farms are drier than during the dust bowl of the 1920s; golf courses have turned to dust. Farmers and natural gas frackers are fighting for water that is running at 18% of normal flows.
Back home, I met a friend who fled Vancouver’s head-butting rains and took her bathing suit to the desert city of Moab, Utah, in late May. She landed in a week of cold, steady rain – that town’s entire year’s average in one week, more than in Vancouver that week.
Amid these extreme weather events came the steady drip drip drip of news reports that no one will be seriously considered for the Republican presidential nomination if they profess to believe in climate change.
They’re running out of water; we ran out of gas, 10 kilometres from the next station – the van had a very unforgiving empty gauge. I hitched a ride into town with a retired U.S. Army officer, his rugged 4x4 plastered with American flags and freedom-fighter stickers. Then a convenience store distributor spotted me at the gas station with a full gas can and gave me a ride back to the van.
“We’ve got the lowest crime rate, the safest city in the nation here in Blandings, Utah,” he told me as he drove out of his way to help me.
“How do you manage that?” I asked. “We’re all LDS [Latter Day Saints/Mormons] and we all know each other from church and look out for each other.”
Impressive. He insisted on filling my tank for me.
“We depend on tourists enjoying our hospitality.”
He was very big, wheezing heavily as he squeezed himself into his Ford Focus. Many people are very big in the U.S., creating a whole new class of disability in stark contrast to the lean, rich “coyotes” (also known as MAMILs: middle-aged men in lycra) who made up most of the 2,400 riders on our Ride the Rockies six-day mountain tour. Barb, a United Airlines gate attendant riding on the tour, told me her job now involves telling very large people they have to buy an extra seat before they can get on the plane.
The clash of shapes, sizes and cultures is crystallizing all over the U.S., as here, around bike lanes. One town in Colorado has banned bikes entirely (it’s a gambling town with narrow streets and cyclists apparently don’t gamble enough), while the new mayor of Chicago has pledged to add 160 kilometres of protected bike lanes to city streets. That’s the equivalent of 100 Hornby Street bike lanes. Toronto plans to rip up its Jarvis Street bike lanes. Colorado will be quite happy to keep hosting destination bike tours like ours, which dropped $250,000 into every town with an overnight layover. That kind of green doesn’t depend on the weather.