Wind

I had been previously warned that fall weather here is not always as perfect as what I had been experiencing.  I have been pretty in love with the weather the last few weeks...mostly upper 60's to low 70's and sunny, which is what I love about a Western Washington summer.  But now, it looks like fall is settling in. Upper 40's to Upper 50's, and WINDY.

Yesterday after work , I took a little joyride out southwest of the Tri-Cities.  Theoretically, I was deer hunting...I had a gun, and I was wearing orange, but realistically, I was just joy riding and looking at some country I had never seen before.  Big sky country...farmers fields as far as you could see, and from the posted signs, about 60% of it was open for hunting.  I didn't see any deer, but it did look like pretty good Upland Bird hunting country. 

Meanwhile, at work, I am stuck in training 3 days this week.  Painful, redundant training to learn how to be a Radiological Worker, which is something I have been doing for 17 years now.  I asked if I could just challenge the class, but alas, I just need to suck it up and 'punch the ticket'.  I did learn a few things about local requirements, maybe half-an-hour out of the 8.5 I was there...and we watched an interesting video about Chernobyl.  Scary stuff.  The worst/best of it was watching guys run around with your typical cloth face mask in situations where we wouldn't allow guys without full Self-Contained air packs. 

It was a bad situation though...those first few weeks, they had to do some bad things to people to keep things from getting worse...there were some brave scientists who knew the risks who sacrificed themselves to save others. There were also a couple of hundred poor schlub soldiers and firemen who didn't know the risk, or were flat out lied to about the risk who are now dead.

I'm not getting all preachy...I have zero doubt that similar things would happen here if the same type of thing happened.  Our first responders ran into the World Trade Centers aware of the risk...and I am also certain that OSHA requirements would go out the door if overlooking them could minimize a potential ecological disaster.