Hello God, It’s Me Josh.

Is it me?

Dear God,

I know we’ve had a rocky relationship over the years.  I say rocky, because of several incidents that occurred between the years of 1992- 1997 on my part, and a handful of indiscretions on your part regarding weather as it applies to plans that I make.

I started to sense a connection back in 1995 when I travelled with my then girlfriends family to Flaming Gorge the first week in June.  They had been telling me that the weather was historically perfect that week and that’s why they made the annual pilgrimage.   Imagine my surprise when I awoke on Day 2 to eight inches of snow which had collapsed the tent onto my sleeping future brothers-in-law.  You may remember that I acted very unselfishly by getting up and shaking the snow off the tent so they wouldn’t smother in their sleep.  King Lewis(Loo-ee), my future father-in-law would later remark that he had been making this trip for twenty years and never seen snow.  The great thing was that every subsequent trip which I participated in included at least one day of snowfall and/or  significant rainfall.  The connection goes even deeper in that the years I have opted out, have been bright and sunshiney.

Ya know, it’s one thing to wreck a trip with the in-laws, or several as the case may be.  But as the years have gone by, I’ve noticed that this trend had extended to affect activities that I really cared about,  not just fishing.

There were the several early spring trips to Moab with “the wives”(by that I mean mine and my friends wives, not “the sister-wives”).  Now, with a non-riding wife, I actually anticipated a little bit of inclement weather, and figured that this gave us a chance to do a couple of things that my wife would participate in.  Maybe catch a chilly lap on slickrock, then head into town, take in Hole-in-the-rock, hike up Negro Bill Canyon.  That type of thing.  But after several years of being beaten into submission by the weekend of our trip being frigid, but bookended by beautiful, bluebird, weather on the weekends previous and following, I gave up.  My personal favorite was the year that recorded a high of 70 degrees the weekend before our trip, and 60 the week after.  While we were down there however, there was a weather phenomenon that local weatherman Sterling Poulsen would refer to as an “arctic-outbreak”  The temperature map showed an archipelago of dark blue extending from the Yukon directly to southeast Utah.   Look it up.  I know it was 2002.  I remember because my darling wife was pregnant with my second oldest.  Tent camping, with a pregnant wife.  Our fellow campers brought a large plastic thermometer for some reason.  It never broke 25 degrees the entire time we were there.

There have been others, the 37 degree day in September that I chose as the day for a shuttled group ride on the Crest.  Last years Fall Finale barbecue which took place amid intermittent snow/rain.

And most recently the Frozen Hog.  As my maiden voyage into the race organizing world, I thought I was relatively safe with this one.  What’s the worst that could happen, freezing temperatures? Snow?  Nope.  The worst that could happen was,  and is, 40 degrees and raining at 6 am the morning of the race.

Now, it’s not that I’m feeling overly tested.  After all, I haven’t broken out in boils or anything yet.  But do you think you could manage a pass for me here in about two weeks?  You see, the Annual Spring Trip is coming up this March 12-14.  And as I look at the Fruita weather conditions, I can’t help but notice that there is still snow on the ground there.  Despite the locals posting on Facebook that the season is “….oh, so close.”  I can’t help but wonder if my perceived trials and tribulations are going to rear their ugly head once again.

I know that I don’t have a lot to complain about otherwise.  My kids all have the correct number of extremities and do well in school.  My wife can’t keep her hands off me and I live in a pretty exclusive zip code(the local cemetery is soon going to start burying couples two-deep).  But if you could just throw me a break this one  time, I promise to never repeat anything I did in the summer of ‘93.

Your friend,

Josh