Green up!

The northern Santa Cruz River Valley has been fortunate enough to have received some cold front-driven rain on a couple of occasions lately. Here at Free Baja Arizona HQ, there was a small event - a tenth of an inch max - last Wednesday. The suite of ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens Engelm.) in the front yard responded immediately and began leafing out within a day. Last year's leftover patches of Goodding verbena (Verbena gooddingii Briq.) perked up and their flowers were suddenly fragrant again. Some sort of poppy (Eschscholtzia sp.) appeared in a patch of soil in the backyard. It rained again this past Wednesday, so I expect a few more plant species to get in on the act.

I responded a bit more slowly to the rainfall and wintry weather - it took me almost an entire week to get sick.

I rode my bike to and from work on Tuesday. The ride home was remarkably free of headwinds, so I went pretty hard. I got home, cooled down, and threw in a hard shift with the weights. The next morning, I woke up feeling nauseous and then spent the whole day at work alternating between deep fatigue and the churning of my guts. Was I pushing my luck by driving 80mph on I-10 and having Vietnamese food in Sierra Vista? Perhaps. Once back at home, I took as long and as hot of a shower as I could stand and went to bed early. I was unconscious within minutes. I woke only once, and that was to find the bed soaked with sweat. A fever - hello nasty. I woke up to my alarm clock and unexpectedly found that I felt fine. In fact, I felt wunderbar. I rode to work once again. There were a few occasions where I thought my 24-hour bug was exercising an option to last an additional 12 hours, but I pulled through. Once again, I rode home, lifted weights, and got on with things.

So what brought this on? I'll never know for sure, but here's a note to self: never again eat a bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese when said dairy-based spread has been sitting out in the office breakroom for 8 hours, unrefrigerated. Lets also not forget that this Bruegger's Bagels place has been the source of factory-funky (i.e. spoiled prior to opening) cream chese in the past, as well.