Bend Sux

How Bend Drivers Suck, Chapter LXVIII

2012-01-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

Driving back from Whole Foods this morning, I came to a four-way stop. After stopping, I proceeded straight ahead through the intersection. A man stopped in the opposite lane of traffic had his turn signal on to make a left across the intersection.

When I didn't yield the right of way to him he frowned and shook his head. I've encountered a similar response many times, with drivers giving me the finger, blowing their horns, etc.

For your information, my fellow Bend drivers, THE CAR GOING STRAIGHT HAS THE RIGHT OF WAY over the car making a left turn across the intersection. I quote the Oregon Driver's Manual, Section 2:42: "When you make a left turn at an intersection or into an alley, private road, driveway, or any other place, you must yield the right of way to oncoming traffic until it is safe to turn."

Instead of flipping people off, I suggest you try to learn the basic rules of driving in your own state. Thank you for your attention.

They Say a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words, So Instead of Writing a Thousand Words About What I Think of Bend's Climate I'm Posting This Picture.

2012-01-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

When Bend Darkles, It Really Suckles

2012-01-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

One of my Facebook friends came up with a terrific word this morning: "darkle," a verb meaning "to grow dark, gloomy, etc."

According to Dictionary.com, the verb is a "back formation" from "darkling," an adjective or adverb that dates back to the 15th Century. "Darkling" is probably most famously used in Matthew Arnold's 1867 poem "Dover Beach":

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

"Darkle" is "a fantastic word to describe our weather," the Facebook friend said. It is indeed, with the skies gray and gloomy, the wind roaring and the rain (at times) coming down in torrents.

I liked "darkle" so much that it inspired me to coin another verb: "suckle," meaning "to grow incredibly and almost unendurably sucky, like Bend, Oregon in winter."

Based on my long experience, Bend's weather is likely to remain suckling into the middle of June.

Here's a Blog That Doesn't Suck

2012-01-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

My friend and erstwhile colleague at the Source Weekly, Aaron Switzer, told me about a new (well, fairly new) and very entertaining blog called "Bound for Bend," described as "the true story of one east coast couple who rode off into the sunset, hoping for a better life in Central Oregon."

Shelby Little, the young woman who writes the blog, apparently comes from the South and is finding some aspects of life here a little hard to adapt to. In her most recent post, she writes about arriving in Redmond and discovering that the place smells like a giant litter box:

"We couldn’t figure out if the neighborhood had a stray cat problem or if they were breeding cougars in the open field behind our house. It was a thick, glandular smell, and I struggled to identify where it was coming from. Could I hose down the front yard and get rid of it? Did we run over something between here and Boise? Oh my god, my life can’t smell like this."

The locals eventually inform Shelby that what she's smelling is the scent of juniper, a hideous, scraggly tree that blankets the Central Oregon landscape: "Those incursive evergreens are everywhere; centuries old with their twisted trucks and scabby branches. They look as awful as they smell, and according to the Oregon Department of Forestry, they are reproducing like rabbits."

Even more fun, I think, is her take on how Central Oregonians dress -- or, more accurately, don't dress:

"Forget the advice my southern college education gave me on dressing up for job interviews, 'Always wear a suit. Always dress better than you have to.' When I plan an outfit for an interview in Central Oregon, I start with my most professional look, tone it down three notches, add something that clashes and remove all accessories except my wedding ring."

The dress code for Central Oregon males is even simpler: Wear jeans and a T-shirt. In winter, throw a hoodie on over the T-shirt.

The typical Central Oregon male only wears a coat and tie on two occasions in his life. One is his funeral, and I forget what the other one is.

Yes, It's Cold and It Sucks

2012-01-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, on another (now defunct) blog, somebody told me that I was "not Bend material." After thanking him for the compliment, I told him he was absolutely right; I'd need to shave off about 80 IQ points to qualify as "Bend material."

But there's another way in which I don't make the cut: I fucking hate the cold. I don't find it bracing, invigorating, refreshing or any other absurd adjective that the idiots who claim they "love winter" apply. I just find it painful and miserable.

My friend and comrade in bloggery, Jack Elliott, tells me that one can compensate for the cold by bundling up in sweaters and coats. That's true -- but one's hands and feet and nose and ears are still out there in the open and freezing. Unless I'm going to spend all day curled up inside a Snuggie with mittens on my hands and a Balaclava on my head, cold weather means suffering.

Which is why I'm not real happy about seeing real cold weather finally arrive in Bend. Our incredible string of sunny days continues, but it's finally feeling, if not looking, like winter -- 23 degrees as I'm writing this.

The preceding month was unseasonably warm -- the thermometer hit 50 or above on 13 days -- but it looks like we've seen the last of the "comfortable" or "tolerable" days, temperature-wise, until the middle of May, if not later. And that sucks.

Monthly Totals:

Comfortable Days: 0
Tolerable Days: 0
Cold Days: 31

YTD Totals:

Comfortable Days: 98
Tolerable Days: 59
Cold Days: 89

BOO-yah! Oregon 45, Wisconsin 38!

2012-01-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

Oregon's DeAnthony Thomas, "The Black Mamba," reels off a 91-yard touchdown run in yesterday's Rose Bowl.

I may think Bend Sux, but I LOVES my University of Oregon Ducks!

Early to Bed, Early to Rise Probably Means You're a Dim Bulb

2011-12-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

One of the many oddities I noticed about Bend almost immediately after moving here was how early in the morning the inhabitants wake up. Winter or summer, cold or hot, rain or snow, they awaken long before the rosy fingers of dawn touch the tops of the Cascades and often are outside running, cycling, climbing rocks or doing myriad other "healthy outdoor lifestyle" things while it's still dark.

And of course they go to bed correspondingly early, which is one reason Bend's nightlife rivals that of a Carmelite nunnery.

I've never been able to figure out the reason for this early-rising fetish. Is is a holdover from the era when Bend had a primarily agricultural economy and folks had to rise before dawn to milk the chickens and slop the cows, or whatever? That didn't seem like a fully satisfactory explanation.

But now some research reported in Psychology Today sheds light on the question. Quite possibly, it appears, people in Bend rise early and go to bed early because they're stupid.

"Night owls are smarter than other people, and now we may know why," the story says. "The modern world contains many features our slow-to-evolve brains still find unfamiliar — cars, TVs, hot dogs on a stick. But the world has always thrown new stuff at us, and brighter humans may adapt more ably. ... Because the nocturnal lifestyle allowed by electricity didn't exist 10,000 years ago, we must now rely on general intelligence to override our early-to-bed instincts. So those with more of it stay up later."

The article mentions research by Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at The London School of Economics and Political Science, who tracked bedtimes and wake-up times for 20-year-old people of varying levels of intelligence. The results are quite intriguing: On weekends (when not compelled to rise early for a job) the "very bright" subjects (IQ of 125 or higher) awakened, on average, at 11:07 a.m., a full 58 minutes later than the "very dull" ones (IQ of less than 75), and went to bed one hour and nine minutes later.

Since the average Bendian appears to rise at 4:10 a.m., I'd guess the average IQ in this town hovers somewhere around 25. Which would be consistent with my other observations of the Bendians' behavior, such as their driving skills.

And the fact that they live here in the first place.

ADDENDUM: On the other hand, there is this: "Night owls tend to be less reliable, more emotionally unstable, and more likely to have problems with addictions and eating disorders, according to a 2008 study by psychologist Marina Giamnietro. They are also more likely to drink alcohol and smoke, says Dutch psychiatrist Walter van den Broek ..." More here. It might also be noted that research shows more intelligent people are more likely to drink, smoke and dabble with drugs than dummies.

The First Sucky Inversion of Winter 2011-12

2011-12-12T12:44:00.000-08:00

It didn't take long for this to happen: Bend is experiencing its first -- but most assuredly not its last -- "inversion" of this winter.

An inversion is a truly suckerrific weather phenomenon in which cold air slides in under a layer of warmer air and gets trapped there like a cat under a heavy blanket. Up above the inversion layer skies are clear and sunny, as in the photo above taken just minutes ago by Mount Bachelor's live weathercam. Below the layer, it's cold, cold, cold and gray, gray, gray.

Bend has an amazing variety of weather, most of it bad, and inversions, in my opinion, are the worst. There's no snow, no wind, no rain -- nothing but monotonous cold and lead-colored skies.

And it can stay that way for days and days and days.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

November Temp Stats: Into the Suck (and Out, Temporarily)

2011-12-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

Please excuse me for not posting the November temperature stats sooner; I've been too busy enjoying our Indian-summer-in-December weather and gloating over the poor skiers and snowboarders who haven't seen any fresh powder in weeks.

We've probably seen the last of the warm days in Bend until late April, at the earliest. Predictably, November produced no comfortable (high in the 70s or above) days. There were just four tolerable (highs of 60 or above) days scattered throughout the month. The skies were mostly overcast, with only 12 days recorded as sunny or mostly sunny.

After Thanksgiving, however, a marvelous ridge of high pressure moved in over the Pacific Northwest, and it's been clear and sunny (and the skiers have been moaning) ever since.

Monthly Totals:

Comfortable Days: 0
Tolerable Days: 4
Cold Days: 26

YTD Totals:

Comfortable Days: 98
Tolerable Days: 59
Cold Days: 58

Let It Shine, Let It Shine, Let It Shine

2011-12-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

A big, beautiful high pressure dome has been parked over the Pacific Northwest since right after Thanksgiving, giving us delightfully clear, sunny (but chilly) weather in Bend. It's not warm enough to qualify as a second Indian summer, of course, but I'm enjoying it immensely anyway.

I'm also immensely enjoying the moans and groans of the skiing/snowboarding addicts, who are lamenting the lack of any fresh snow on Mount Bachelor since the lifts started running on Thanksgiving Day.

Back in June, when I and many others were begging for just a little bit of warmth and sunshine, those same bastards were calling us whiners and saying, "Ooooh, ooooh, I LOVE winter! Oooooh, I hope winter never ends!"

And now when they're bitching about a shortage of snow in December they expect me to give them sympathy?

Fuck 'em.

It Is Time for Us All to Give Thanks

2011-11-21T17:38:00.000-08:00

Yes indeed, my friends, it really does suck that hard.

I am thankful for many things -- my wife and family, my friends, my (more or less) good health, my (more or less) sound mind -- but at this moment I am most of all thankful that this will be the LAST winter I spend in cold, gray, dreary, dismal, more-sucky-than-anyplace-has-any-right-to-be BEND Goddamn OREGON!

Happy Fucking Holidays!

The Bitch Arrives, Bringing The Suck

2011-11-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have to admit that October wasn't too bad -- especially compared to last October and the one before that, when we had about six inches of snow on Oct. 4.

According to data posted by The Weather Channel, there were six days on which the thermometer (just barely) rose into the 70s and 15 days on which it hit 60 or above, making a total of 21 days that ranked as either comfortable or tolerable. Although not warm enough to qualify as a true Indian summer, it was pretty damn nice.

However, all that changed on Nov. 1, when The Bitch (La Nina) brought us a chilling blast of winter. So far this month we've had only two days with a high above 50 -- 63 on Nov. 2 and 52 yesterday. The average high for the first eight days of the month was 48.13 degrees. That's almost a degree and a half below the average daily high for November -- and we haven't gotten to the really cold part of the month yet.

What will The Bitch do to us in future weeks? Three feet of snow on the ground by Thanksgiving? A "snowicane" for Christmas? Woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers in the downtown streets?

Nobody can say. But one thing's for sure: It's gonna suck.

Totals for November:

Comfortable Days: 6
Tolerable Days: 15
Cold Days: 10

Totals YTD:

Comfortable Days: 98
Tolerable Days: 55
Cold Days: 32

"Incredible Alaska 'Snowicane'" to Hit Northwest This Weekend

2011-11-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

I don't think this requires any comment from me beyond ...

WHAT THE FUCK???!!!!????

There's No Suck Like Home

2011-11-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

A harpist in the plaza in Santa Fe

We're back in cold, gray, dreary, sucky Bend again after a week-long exploration of the Albuquerque and Las Cruces areas in New Mexico. Some observations:

The desert landscapes of New Mexico are, in my opinion, far more beautiful than the desert landscapes of Eastern Oregon. The mountains loom up more boldly above the plains, shapes are more dramatic, colors are more varied and intense, and the sky is almost painfully blue. Above all, the light has a quality that makes everything stand out with crystal clarity -- no doubt a big reason why so many painters and photographers are attracted to the place.

Don't get me wrong; I love the high desert landscape of eastern Oregon. But the colors there run to muted shades of gray, gray-green and brown. It's a much more limited palette than Nature uses in New Mexico.

Cottonwood trees wearing their brilliant golden fall foliage are prettier than any trees I've seen in Bend.

The Hotel Parq Central in Albuquerque, originally built as a hospital back in the 1920s, is a delightful place to stay, and has a rooftop cocktail lounge that offers a great view and excellent Sazeracs. Highly recommended. Five stars.

Santa Fe is a pretty neat place. It's full of touristy shops, yes, but there seem to be relatively few of them selling kitschy junk (rubber tomahawks, plastic arrowheads) and relatively more selling expensive and/or tasteful wares, such as Pueblo Indian pottery and Ansel Adams prints. (You can pick up a nice one of the latter for only $40,000 or so.) They've done a good job of preserving the historic adobe buildings and making the new buildings harmonize with them architecturally. The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi alone is worth the 45-minute drive from Albuquerque.

Albuquerque is a pleasant, friendly city with many attractive residential neighborhoods. But it's a casualty of uncontrolled sprawl, and lacks a really cohesive and vital downtown core. Las Cruces, a three and a half hour drive south on I-25, is smaller, but even more sprawling and shapeless. They've attempted to revive the downtown by turning part of it into a pedestrian mall, with predictably pitiful results. I don't know of one American city where the pedestrian mall idea has worked, yet cities insist on trying it anyway.

The old Mexican settlement of Mesilla just outside Las Cruces is worth a short visit, and La Posta restaurant serves tasty Mexican food.

Bottom line: Las Cruces has been crossed off our list of possible retirement destinations because of remoteness, ugliness, and the 50-mile-per-hour winds that howl there from March to May. Albuquerque isn't officially off the list yet, but we can't seem to get really excited about the prospect of living there.

And so the search for a place to escape The Great Suck continues.

Why I Never (Well, Hardly Ever) Wear Jeans

2011-10-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

I own two pairs of jeans. I put one on occasionally, mostly when I need to do some gardening or other messy chores. Most of the time the jeans just lie in the bottom of my closet. I don't like to wear jeans.

Why? Well, in the first place, although other people seem to think jeans are the most comfortable garment ever invented, I don't agree. I think jeans are uncomfortable. They're heavy, they're stiff, they're scratchy.

I guess if you wear a pair of jeans every day for three or four years they'll get soft and flexible. But who wants to wait that long?

Jeans don't look good on me either. I don't think they look good on anybody. Okay, they look good on women with great bodies. But everything looks good on them.

The other reason I don't wear jeans -- which is probably the big one -- is that everybody in Bend always wears jeans. Next time you're traveling around town, notice how many of the Bendoids you see are wearing jeans. I'd bet the proportion is about eight out of 10 -- nine out of 10, if you just count males. (The 10th guy is wearing Lycra bicycling shorts.)

I've never liked to dress like everybody else, and the male Bend uniform -- jeans and a hoody in the winter, jeans and a T-shirt in the summer -- strikes me as especially monotonous, unattractive, drab and colorless. So I usually wear khakis and a shirt, and throw on a sweater if it's chilly.

And sometimes, when I want to really freak out the yokels, I'll add a sport coat.

"Indian Summer"? Fuhgeddaboudit.

2011-10-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

How hard does THIS suck???

After the hottest September on record -- 13 days with highs in the 90s and five more with highs in the 80s -- Bend reverted to its usual cold, grim, gray, dismal, drizzly form in October, and promises to continue in the same sucktacular mode from now until July, at least.

Every year the winters here seem to start sooner and drag on longer, and the pitifully brief summer gets even more pitiful and brief. Once upon a time Bendoids could pretty much count on decent weather through October, but that's a thing of the past.

Damn, this place sucks.

Totals for September:

Comfortable Days: 24
Tolerable Days: 6
Cold Days: 0

Totals YTD:

Comfortable Days: 92
Tolerable Days: 40
Cold Days: 22

A Bendite in Pa#a#i#e.

2011-09-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

This is not a sunset over the Cascades.

I am now several thousand miles away from Bend, thanks be to God and Alaska Airlines. The weather is warm and sunny, the ocean is delightful to swim in, the palm trees are swaying in the trade winds, and everything is perfect.

In short, it is pa#a#i#e. I promised myself not to use that hackneyed word, which is why I'm not spelling it out. Let's just say that Hawaii is what Bend pretends to be, but isn't.

And the shittiest day here is better than the best day in Bend.

Summer, We Hardly Knew Ye

2011-09-15T14:38:00.001-07:00

R.I.P. Oregon Summer

Born July 15, 2011 -- Died September 15, 2011

"Gone, and Soon Forgotten"

We're Fucked -- The Bitch Is Coming Back

2011-09-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

My colleague in bloggery, Jack Elliott, recently forwarded to me a story in Science Daily headlined: "Evidence suggests La Nina will return."

La Nina (Spanish for "The Bitch") is a weather pattern that pushes the jet stream northward, which makes the Southwest hotter and drier than normal and the Northwest and Pacific Coast colder and wetter than normal. La Nina was blamed for the record-breaking suckiness of the spring and early summer experienced by Washington, Oregon and Northern California this year.

And now The Bitch is getting ready to return. At any rate that's what the scientists at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center say.

"In July, the CPC issued a La Niña Watch, indicating favorable conditions for the development of another La Niña event in the next six months," the Science Daily story reports. "With colder-than-average waters once again upwelling in the tropical Pacific Ocean, La Niña appears to be re-forming.

"'Temperatures below the sea surface have decreased quite markedly in the last few months,' said David Unger, meteorologist at the CPC.

"In addition, he said, the Climate Forecast System model -- a state-of-the-art climate model that integrates interactions between Earth's oceans, land, and atmosphere -- has been impressive in its prediction capabilities in the last few years and has been increasingly more confident in the development of a La Niña this winter."

This news only confirms my determination to make the coming winter the last one I spend in Bend, Oregon.

And I'm already thinking about booking a place in Palm Springs for March, April and May, when the interminable Bend winter really starts to induce thoughts of murder and mayhem.

At Last, Normalcy: August Behaved Like August

2011-09-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

Well, this is easy: Every day in August recorded a high above 70 degrees except for the last day of the month, when the thermometer only managed to creep up to 66.

Twenty-three days experienced highs in the 80s, and five were in the 90s. Which is just the way things should be, because August is normally Bend's hottest month.

The cold front that brought us that 66-degree day has moved on to the Upper Midwest, and temperatures are predicted to reach the mid- to upper 80s during the Labor Day weekend. Which, again, is the way things should be.

Leaving us with the question: Will we have a real, honest-to-God Indian summer this year to partly compensate us for our totally suckitudinous spring and early summer? We haven't had one in three years, which makes me doubtful. But we shall see.

Totals for August:

Comfortable Days: 30
Tolerable Days: 1
Cold Days: 0

Totals YTD:

Comfortable Days: 68
Tolerable Days: 34
Cold Days: 22

Enjoying That Healthy (Gasp! Wheeze!) Outdoor (Choke! Gasp!) Lifestyle (Hack! Cough!)

2011-08-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

When Mrs. Blackdog and I returned to Bend Saturday from a week-long trip to Northern California, I was afraid for a moment we'd headed the wrong way on I-5 and ended up in Los Angeles.

A pall of heavy, reddish-brown, pungent smoke hung over everything, thanks to four major wildfires that had broken out on the Warm Springs Reservation to the northwest of Bend

I'm used to this phenomenon -- a predictable August occurrence here -- but I don't think I've ever seen it that bad. Not able to see the mountains? Hell, I could barely see across the street.

Incredibly, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning I observed people out exercising in this vile-smelling, nauseous gunk, running and riding their bicycles (mountain and road) and inhaling great lusty lungfuls of carcinogens and toxins.*

One delicious irony here is that most of these idiots no doubt would have a seizure if they saw somebody light up a cigarette within 30 yards of them.

But that's Bend for ya. We're gonna enjoy our healthy outdoor lifestyle even if it kills us.

*"Although wood smoke conjures up fond memories of sitting by a cozy fire, it is important to know that the components of wood smoke and cigarette smoke are quite similar, and that many components of both are carcinogenic. Wood smoke contains fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, sulfur dioxide and various irritant gases such as nitrogen oxides that can scar the lungs. Wood smoke also contains chemicals known or suspected to be carcinogens, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxin." More: http://www.ehhi.org/woodsmoke/health_effects.shtml

The Sucky Aspects of "Dressing in Layers"

2011-08-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

One of the many suckeriffic aspects of the Bend climate is the insane temperature variations we experience during the course of a typical day.

When you leave the house on a summer morning the thermometer might be in the low to mid-40s; by early afternoon it very well could be in the mid- to upper 80s, or even higher. And then as soon as the sun goes down it will dive into the 60s or 50s again. How is one supposed to deal with this craziness?

"It's easy," the loyal Bend chauvinists say. "You just dress in layers."

Hmm, okay. Dress in layers. That sounds simple enough ... until you think about the practical ramifications.

Such as: How many layers? What kind of layers?

And the big question: What are you supposed to do with the layers you progressively remove as the day goes on? Tie them around your neck? Throw them in the trunk of your car? Chuck them into a Dumpster?

One solution might be to push a wheelbarrow or drag some kind of small cart around with you all day to carry your superfluous layers, plus maybe a few spare sweaters and parkas in case one of our August blizzards unexpectedly swoops down.

The solution I prefer, however, is to move to someplace where I'll need to wear only two layers: a T-shirt and my skin.

Finally, The Suck Relents (and It Was About Time)

2011-08-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

I am going to say something now that will shock my faithful readers (all three of them): In summer (both months of it) Bend's weather really is like paradise. Or as close as we're going to get to it in this vale of toil and sorrow.

After the dismalest, dreariest, wettest and chilliest spring and early summer in my memory, La Nina or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or whatever it was finally relented and let us have a summer-like July.

The temperature rose above 60 every single day of the month. It rose above 70 on 30 days, and above 80 on 17 days. It even climbed into the 90s on four days. Aside from a chilly, wet two-day interval on the 18th and 19th, even I couldn't really find anything to complain about.

August is picking up where July left off, and I'm hoping we'll get at least two solid months of summer in. I'm even daring to hope that we'll have a nice long Indian summer to compensate for the totally suckalicious spring. But that's probably delusional.

Totals for July:

Comfortable Days: 30
Tolerable Days: 1
Cold Days: 0

Totals YTD:

Comfortable Days: 38
Tolerable Days: 33
Cold Days: 22

Note: I have decided to use the Weather Channel as my source for the daily highs because (a) it's turned into a pain in the ass to log them every day myself and (b) sometimes I'm not around to do it.

Explaining the Suck: It's The Bitch's Fault ... Maybe

2011-07-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

A Facebook friend posted a link to a story on The Oregonian's Web site that tries to explain, in sort of a half-assed way, why we had such a suckeriffic spring and are having a (mostly) sucktastic summer.

Matt Zaffino, chief meteorologist for KGW-TV in Portland, seems to think this year's La Nina* (Spanish for "The Bitch") is responsible both for the mammoth "heat dome" making life miserable in the Midwest and Northeast and the freakishly cool summer temperatures in Oregon and Washington. "When you have such a persistent, stable dome of hot air, it just sits there," he said. "By default we are on the cool, upstream side of that dome."

I'm not sure I can completely buy that explanation. The "heat dome" didn't form until this month, and Oregon's weather has sucked ever since March. In the second place, I've been through a lot of La Nina years here, but none of them was as bad as this one.

Is there any hope for amelioration of the suckiness? Well, the "heat dome" is supposed to diminish and move out to sea, and the thermometer is predicted to climb into the mid- to upper 80s in Oregon this weekend.

But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. The La Nina pattern has broken down, The Oregonian reports, but "its effect on the atmosphere has not."

Then comes the real crusher: "And there are some indications that it may return by fall."

Somebody please shoot me. Just shoot me now.

*I don't know how to create a tilde in this application, so you'll just have to imagine it. Sorry.

It Really Sucks to Be Told You Suck

2011-07-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

"You can't handle the truth."

-- Col. Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson) in "A Few Good Men," 1992

Bill Watkins is not a popular fellow in Bend.

Bill Watkins, an economist from Southern California, first came here in January 2009 to present his economic forecast for Deschutes County, which already was about two and a half years into the Great Real Estate Fire Sale. Watkins told the audience of local movers and shakers that unemployment here would hit 15%.

The movers and shakers pooh-poohed. Couldn't happen, they said. Ridiculous. No frickin' WAY. Why, people wanted to live here.

As it turned out, Watkins was wrong. Unemployment did not hit 15%. It passed 15% and breezed right on by it, reaching almost 20%.

So the pooh, as the saying goes, was on the other foot.

Flash forward to the present day. Watkins has been hired by the Deschutes Economic Alliance, a group trying to find ways to help Bend and Deschutes County extricate itself from the crapper. The other day he gave an interview to a Portland radio station.

“They’re in bad shape, with an unemployment rate ranging from just a little below 15% to over 17%, depending on the community in Central Oregon,” Watkins said, as reported in today's issue of The Bulletin. “Home prices have just been decimated, still are very weak.”

Two of the three Deschutes County commissioners became incensed at Watkins, not because he uttered untruths but because he said some things that ... well, they just weren't very nice.

“I would have expected something factual yet positive toward our area,” said Commissioner Tammy Baney. “Quite possibly that is because he doesn’t live in our area and doesn’t see what I see on a daily basis. I think you can say we have high unemployment, but you can also marry that with ‘the numbers are getting better.’ ”

Commissioner Alan Unger sounded even dumber: “We aren’t going to move forward by repeating the challenges that sort of sound doom-and-gloomy."

To his credit, the third commissioner, Tony DeBone, took it like a grownup. “Those are facts, and I don’t think I see anything wrong there,” he said of Watkins's comments.

Watkins is sticking to his guns. “I think my job is to tell the truth as I see it, and if people can clearly evaluate the situation, they’re better able to deal with it. I just don’t see how I’d be doing the community any service if I sugar-coated it.”

Poor Bill, you just don't get it. Folks in Bend don't want truth-tellers; they want cheerleaders. They don't want to swallow any bitter truth pills; they want that sugar coating. Lots and lots of sugar coating.

In fact, forget about the pills and just keep feeding them sugar. They'll adore you for it.

The Suckiness of Presenting False Choices

2011-07-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'm ready to declare the summer of 2011 in Bend over. It started July 2 and ended July 11. The temperature hasn't made it into the 70s since then, and as I write this (12:45 p.m., July 14) it's mostly cloudy and 64 degrees.

But that's not what's really annoying me right now. What's annoying me are the imbeciles -- and they are many -- who, when you complain about the profoundly and chronically sucky spring and summer we've had, retort with: "Would you rather have it be 105 degrees like it is in Oklahoma?" or wherever.

Yes, triple-digit heat -- especially when it's prolonged and accompanied by drought, as it is in much of the southern tier of the United States this year -- can truly suck. It destroys crops and can kill old people who don't have air conditioning (and younger people who are stupid enough to work out in it).

But the suckiness of weather conditions elsewhere has no bearing whatsoever on the suckiness of weather conditions in Bend, Oregon. The fact that it may suck harder someplace else does not make it suck any less here.

So comments like, "Would you rather have it be 105 degrees?" are just moronic. It's as if somebody told you he had a compound fracture of the femur and you replied: "Would you rather have metastatic colon cancer?"

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. And rather douche-baggish, frankly.

How Hard Does THIS Suck???

2011-07-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that no matter how hard Bend's weather sucks, Portland's weather is gonna suck 10 times as hard about 85% of the time.

No wonder Portlanders who move to Bend think they've arrived in "paradise." They're so glad to see the sun shine and give their socks a chance to dry out that they become delirious.

June Report: The Big Chill, Cont.'d.

2011-07-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

Bend's sucky Big Chill "spring" continued through June, with daily high temperatures running a good five to 10 degrees below normal. (And god knows the "normal" in Bend isn't that high to begin with.)

It wasn't until June 14, by my reckoning, that the mercury (metaphorically speaking; I'm using a digital thermometer) crossed the 70-degree mark -- barely. The highest temperature I recorded for the month was 84, during our three-day "heat wave" on June 20, 21 and 22. I also logged a high of 81 on June 27.

Overall the month wasn't intolerably cold; the high surpassed 60 on every day. But it wasn't exactly late-spring-like either: Only seven days managed to achieve highs of 70 or better.

Now that the disgusting Portland Rose Festival is over, the usual summer high-pressure dome appears to have formed over the Pacific Northwest and we're finally enjoying some warm and sunny weather. (It's supposed to hit 90 in Bend today.) Here's hoping summer lasts more than two months before the fall-winter suck season returns.

Totals for Month:

Comfortable Days: 7
Tolerable Days: 23
Cold Days: 0

Totals YTD:

Comfortable Days: 7
Tolerable Days: 32
Cold Days: 22

A Note About Temperature Readings: The temperatures I have recorded may or may not match the "official" highs recorded for Bend. Bend has many micro-climates; my front entryway (where my thermometer is located) may well be colder than some of them. On the other hand, it may well be warmer than some of them. Also, please don't write to tell me: "Only 84 on the hottest day in June? Are you out of your frickin' mind?!? I went fishing (or whatever) that day, and it hadda be at least 90!" The sun in Bend (when it's shining) is very intense and makes one feel very warm when one is in it, even on a fairly cold day. I take my temperature readings in the shade -- which is where temperature readings should be taken.

Another Possible Explanation for Our Increasing Suckiness

2011-06-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

This study dates back four years, but I wasn't aware of it until it was posted by a friend today on Facebook:

A study from Texas A&M University reports that air pollution from Asia is making the Pacific region cloudier and stormier, disrupting winter weather patterns along the US West Coast and the Arctic. The study, led by Renyi Zheng, was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (LA Times, 2007).

The Arctic has been freakishly warm this spring -- on any given day, Fairbanks, AK tends to be warmer than Bend, OR -- while Hawaii and the whole West Coast have been unusually wet and cool.

Oh well, guess it's just another way that the Chinese are fucking us over.

"Best Outdoor Town"? Not Even in the Running

2011-06-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

Oh woe, oh woe -- Outside Magazine is conducting an on-line poll to determine the "best outdoor town ever," and Bend, Oregon ("Recreation Paradise! Healthy Outdoor Lifestyle! 300 Days of Sunshine!") didn't even make the Top Ten list.

Adding to the shame, two Oregon cities did make the Top Ten -- Ashland and Portland. (Portland, seriously? Soggy, dismal, dreary Portland?)

Of course, this news should not be dismaying to anybody who knows how magazines go about compiling these ratings. It works something like this:

1. Ad department comes up with an idea for a Top Ten list -- top ten cities for mountain biking, top ten cities for skiing, top ten cities for backyard goat farming, whatever.

2. Ad salespersons get their marching orders, start calling up prospective advertisers in the cities on the list and making their pitch: "We're coming out with our Top Ten Cities for Catching Chlamydia in September, and (Bend, Portland, Ashland, Sioux Falls, etc.) is in the running! I'm sure you'll want to be part of this fantastic advertising opportunity!"

3. Cities where the advertisers cough up sufficient bucks stay on the list; cities where they don't get bumped in favor of ones where they do.

4. Editorial staff cranks out puff pieces on each of the "winning" cities, making sure to regurgitate all the bullshit Chamber of Commerce talking points.

Which means, essentially, that all of these Top Ten lists are as phony as a $3 bill -- or as Bend's "300 Days of Sunshine."

You Can't Eat the "Lifestyle"

2011-06-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

From this morning's Oregonian. Note especially the third paragraph:

Forget about expanding Portland's economic pie anytime soon. A new report predicts the metro area must wait until mid 2014 just to recover the number of jobs it had before the recession.

Corvallis will do better, returning to pre-recession peak employment in 2013, according to the report Monday by IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm. Medford will take until 2018 and Eugene-Springfield until 2019, the report said.

Metro Bend? Oregon's poster city for the housing bubble won't stage a jobs comeback until "beyond 2021," the forecasters said. They see double-digit unemployment gripping Deschutes County through 2013.

I'm ceaselessly amazed by how many people come to Bend without a job or any prospect of one because "they just want to live here." They stay until their savings are exhausted -- one month, two months, six months -- and then they either leave or become a burden on the social services system.

Maybe we need to stop encouraging people to move here for the "healthy outdoor lifestyle" unless they've got a healthy paycheck in the offing.

One Hundred Years of Bullshit

2011-06-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

As the poster above (circa 1911) attests, the tradition of hyping Bend and Central Oregon as some kind of "paradise" is a long, if not necessarily honorable, one.

In the first decade of the 20th century, railroad moguls James J. Hill and E.H. Harriman had a race to build the first railroad to Bend. Hill won, finishing his Oregon Trunk Railway from the Columbia River to Bend in 1911. On Oct. 5 of that year, Hill came to Bend to personally drive the golden spike symbolizing completion of the link.

The Oregon Historical Society reports: "Hill encouraged people at the ceremony to focus their efforts at cultivating agricultural products for consumption by urbanites. According to Hill, 'There is no reason why Central Oregon should not produce enormous wealth. We have a good deal of faith in it. If we did not have we would not have come here.'"

Trying to make the Oregon Trunk Railway profitable, according to the historical society, Hill "promoted the Bend area as an agricultural garden spot. Some settlers were disappointed, finding the altitude and aridity of the region a hindrance to agriculture. Similar sentiments among settlers on the Northern Plains earned Hill a dubious legacy in the form of this schoolyard rhyme: 'Twixt Hill and Hell there’s just one letter. Were Hill in Hell we’d feel much better.'"

Once the would-be settlers figured out that the "fertile Deschutes Valley" was more suited to the cultivation of rocks, sagebrush and scrub juniper trees than peaches, apples and tomatoes, the "agricultural garden spot" scam pretty much played out. It was left for later generations of hucksters to come up with a fresh one: the promotion of Bend as an "outdoor recreation paradise." But we're still waiting for Central Oregon to "produce enormous wealth" for anybody but real estate hustlers.

And so it goes.

Taking Anti-Troll Measures

2011-06-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Due to the recent upsurge in troll activity, I have decided to tighten the security for comments on this blog. Anonymous comments will no longer be allowed, and you will need a Google account for identification. To establish a Google account, go to google.com and click on "Sign In" on the upper right-hand corner. If you don't already have an account you'll be prompted to set one up.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. As usual, it's a case of one or two douchebags spoiling things for everybody else.

Send in the Trolls

2011-06-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

The past couple of posts on this blog have attracted an invasion of trolls. Actually I think it's only one troll, but it worked itself into such a frenzy of rage that it fired off six comments in rapid succession last Tuesday.

I don't publish comments that are personally insulting, especially if they're anonymous and especially if they're insulting to me. (This is my fucking blog, after all.) But I'll quote some choice excerpts just to give you the flavor:

"DIE YUPPIE SCUM!"

"Get outta here loser! Go invest in california!"

"I'll give you a ride to california tomorrow cheese dick!"

(I'll admit I had to go to the Urban Dictionary to look up "cheese dick." The first definition: "A guy who is not only cheesy with the ladies, but is also an arrogant dick head. He almost definitely wears gel in his hair at all times and/or dresses in nice expensive clothes." Now, an arrogant dickhead I may sometimes be, but I have NEVER worn gel in my hair and I rarely dress in nice expensive clothes, for the simple reason that I don't have many nice expensive clothes. Of course, in Bend if you wear anything other than a T-shirt, a hoodie and jeans people will ask why you're "all dressed up.")

And finally this one:

"Bruce, you're a piece of shit. If you don't like it here please move! You are the kind of loser who is ruining this town!"

That last sentence was particularly intriguing. How, exactly, am I "ruining this town"? I'm a law-abiding, property-owning, tax-paying citizen. I don't deal drugs or expose myself to children at playgrounds or build vast crappy housing tracts.

Evidently the troll thinks I'm "ruining this town" by mentioning some of the negative aspects of it. I'm "ruining" it by refusing to be a cheerleader -- by not doing my part in pushing the "Bend is PARADISE!!!" fantasy.

Behind this attitude -- which is pretty common among the Bendoids, especially the lifers -- is a lingering faith in the Doctrine of Bend Exceptionalism and the deluded belief that if we just sell the fantasy hard enough, we can convince millions of people that Bend really is Paradise, the real estate bubble will re-inflate and the good times will roll again.

For those who still cling to that delusion, here are two points to think about:

1. If Bend really had been even 27% as wonderful as it was made out to be, the real estate bubble never would have popped.

2. If people in Bend hadn't bought their own bullshit propaganda about Bend being Paradise, to the point of believing everybody in the world wanted to live here and would pay any price to live here, the real estate bubble and the economic disaster resulting from its collapse would never have happened.

Which raises the question: Who really "ruined" Bend -- those who peddled the bullshit, or those few who told the truth?

Tra-la, It's May, the Sucky Month of May*

2011-06-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

The Spring Suck Marathon continueth.

According to my highly accurate and sophisticated records, Bend did not enjoy a single 70-plus degree in May. That's right, nary a one. Zero, zilch, zip, nada.

In fact, only nine days out of the 31 managed a high of 60 or above, and at least three of them didn't even reach 50. The month's "heat wave" was from May 10 through May 13 -- four above-60 days in a row. Yippee.

The forecasters say we're finally going to get some unsucky, spring-like weather this weekend, with highs in the mid-70s on Saturday and Sunday. All the Bendians are chortling with glee and rushing out to buy petunias and fuchsias.

Me, I'll believe it when I see it.

May Totals

Comfortable Days: 0
Tolerable Days: 9
Cold Days: 22

*Adapted from Lerner & Loewe's "Camelot," 1960

Stuck in the Middle of Bend

2011-05-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

This priceless gem by Holly Hamilton deserves an encore. Strangely, it says nothing about the utterly sucktacular Bend climate, but it covers most of the other low spots.

"It Clears Up So It Can Get Colder"

2011-05-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

7:04 a.m.: Suck-free

8:22 a.m.: Suckiness moving in

10:57 a.m.: 100% complete suckiness achieved

7:02 p.m.: Cleared up and ready to get colder

Long, long ago, when I had lived in Bend for only a year or two, I commented on a peculiar local weather phenomenon to one of my colleagues at The Bulletin who had lived here all her life.

"I've noticed that many times the day starts off clear, and then it gets cloudier and cloudier until it's completely cloudy, and then just before sunset the clouds mysteriously go away," I said. "Why does the sky clear up at sunset?"

"It clears up so it can get colder," was her simple reply.

It might not be sound meteorological science, but it makes sense if you subscribe -- as I do -- to the doctrine that the Bend climate not only sucks profoundly, but actually is malevolent and sadistic.

It teases you with one or two pleasant days and then whacks you in the head with winter again. It taunts you by presenting you with what promises to be a sunny day, only to move the clouds in before noon -- and then pull them away at sunset so the earth and air will lose what little warmth they have been able to absorb during the day, and tomorrow you'll be freezing your nuts off again.

The sequence of photos above, taken over a 12-hour period yesterday from the same spot on my patio, documents this infuriating phenomenon, which is a major contributing factor to Bend's overall suckitudinousness.

I Don't Care What the Calendar Say ...

2011-05-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

... gonna wear my summer shoes anyway. Because in Bend you've gotta grab your summer when you can, which generally means grabbing it in little bits and pieces -- three days in January, two days in February, two days in May, etc.

Besides that, I've been re-reading The Great Gatsby and I'm in kind of an F. Scott Fitzgerald frame of mind. And besides that I wore them to astonish the Bend yokels, most of whom (males) have a footwear collection consisting of (a) sneakers or work boots for winter and (b) flip-flops for summer. Except for the yokels who wear cowboy boots year-round.

Bend's Strange Stokenphobia*

2011-05-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

The city government of Bend hasn't had many good ideas in the last 25 years, but I can think of at least one: traffic roundabouts.

Roundabouts -- otherwise known as "traffic circles" -- are far superior to four-way stops or traffic signals in terms of both safety and efficiency. They reduce the amount of stop-and-go needed to get through an intersection (thereby improving gas mileage and cutting pollution) and they virtually eliminate the often deadly "T-bone" crashes that happen when people run stop signs or red lights.

Yet when the city started putting in roundabouts about 12 years ago, the local citizenry was close to panic. Everybody was all, like, "Mah GAWD, Ethel, the cars will be goin' around in circles! We're all a-gonna DIE!"

There are now 29 roundabouts in town, making Bend one of the top five roundabout cities in the United States. Most of them are (naturally) on the ever-so-fashionable west side. The city is trying to sell the voters on a bond issue that would pay for as many as five more. A couple of them would be placed on Reed Market Road, which is one of the few routes from the west side to the east side and experiences Southern California-style congestion during rush hours.

Although anti-roundabout sentiment isn't as prevalent as it was a decade ago, it's still out there. For instance, here's what one letter to the editor in the Source Weekly, our local alternative paper, had to say about building more roundabouts:

"Did one of the [city] planners take a course in college entitled 'Traffic Circles 301' that he, or she, really, really liked? ... [D]o we really want to buy three more traffic circles at $3 million each? ... Enough with the traffic circles already!"

Ah, well. Bendoids, I've observed, do not adapt well to new ideas. Many of them are still trying to figure out what a "Yield" sign means and how to merge into traffic on a freeway.

*No, I did not make that word up. It means an irrational fear of circles.

"Quiet Little Town"? "Great Place to Raise Kids"?

2011-05-13T18:36:00.000-07:00

Reprinted without comment from KTVZ:

BEND, Ore. -- A 23-year-old Bend man was arrested this week on drug charges, accused of conducting a heroin deal in downtown Bend near the library, a school and the Boys and Girls Club, authorities said Friday.

The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office Street Crimes Unit received information around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday about a planned delivery of heroin, arranged to take place near on Wall Street near Kansas Avenue, close to the library, Amity Creek Magnet School and the Boys and Girls Club of Bend, said sheriff’s Sgt. Bryan Husband.

The unit then began a surveillance operation and saw several pedestrians, some apparent juveniles, conducting activities typical for the area, Husband said.Two males, already suspects in a previous heroin investigation, arrived in the area on foot, he said.The Street Crimes Unit contacted the men, one identified as Zachary William Cheney, who Husband said was found to be in possession of a street-level amount of heroin and about $300 in cash.

Husband said the two men admitted being in the area to make a drug deal.Cheney was arrested and lodged at the county jail on charges of heroin possession and delivery within 1,000 feet of a school.

More Bend Strangeness: Charred Stumps as Garden Decor

2011-05-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

A fine specimen of charred-tree-stump garden decor

This post isn't about Bend's suckiness per se, but about a strange phenomenon I've wanted to comment on for some time: charred tree stumps as garden ornaments.

People in various parts of America use some pretty weird shit as garden decor -- plaster gnomes, old tires painted white, wooden figurines of fat ladies bending over and presenting their asses to the passerby -- but Bend is the only place where I've seen charred tree stumps employed for that purpose.

When I first saw these charred stumps on people's property I assumed they were simply left over from some long-ago forest fire. But it's not so: They have been brought in deliberately and positioned in lawns and flower beds for decorative purposes.

Why Bendians think a charred tree stump adds to the beauty of their domestic landscape is a mystery. Maybe the explanation is that charred tree stumps, along with rocks, bark dust and juniper bushes, are among the few garden items that can tolerate the Bend climate.

This is a topic that requires further research, and possibly another post.

East Bend ... or East LA?

2011-05-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

From our local TV news Web site today:

BEND, Ore. -- Dozens of police cars swarmed the side parking lot at the east Bend Safeway Thursday evening after a call on two possibly drunk men soon led to an officer drawing her gun on five people who refused to get out of a car. Three were arrested -- two on theft or drug charges, all three for parole or probation violations.

The incident began shortly after 6 p.m. at the Safeway on Highway 20 at NE 27th St., said Sgt. Nick Parker.A female officer responded to a report of two suspicious men in the parking lot, described as acting "very unusual," "talking weird" and possibly intoxicated, Parker said. The caller told dispatchers the men got into a car parked in the lot and were leaving.

When the officer arrived, she learned of a reported fight in the bottle return area on the east side of the store, by 27th Street, Parker said. The two men were described as similar to the earlier call of two suspicious men, one of them having a cane, he said.

The officer spotted the car on the east side of the store, with four people inside, Parker said. Another man was running from the bottle return area to the car, apparently to avoid police contact, Parker said.The officer confronted the people in the car, ordering them out with their hands up.

When none of them would do so, and not knowing if anyone was armed, she was forced to draw her gun and held all five at gunpoint until backup arrived, called to the "high risk" stop.

"Small-town charm"? "Quiet little village nestled in the Cascades"?

Maybe once. Not now. And not ever again.

Another Aspect of the Suck: The Big Bend Chill

2011-05-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

"This year, April took a chill pill" says the headline on this morning's daily Bend newspaper. "April 2011 will go into the books as one of the coldest Aprils in Central Oregon and around the Northwest in years," said the story under it.

The average daily high in Bend in April was a truly sucktacular 40.1 degrees, which was 3.6 degrees below the long-term average (1971 to 2000) of 43.7.

Last month was, indeed, chillier than usual for Bend and the Northwest. But Bend takes a chill pill every year.

Long-term data from the Oregon Climate Service shows that the average daily high in Bend surpasses 70 degrees in only four months: June, July, August and September. It surpasses 60 degrees in two more months -- May and (barely) October.

Bear in mind also that a high in the 70s or 60s does not mean the temperature is in the 70s or 60s for all, or even most, of the day. It might climb into the 60s or 70s for only a couple of hours before dropping back into the 50s, 40s or 30s. And of course it's notorious that after sunset, the temperature in Bend goes down faster than a $20 hooker.

(As an aside, Bend's climate is not exactly hospitable to baseball, especially night games. When Bend had a minor league team back in the day, locals joked about attending "30-30" games -- 30 people in the stands, 30 degrees on the field.)

Last year I examined Bend's "300 days of sunshine" claim and proved through rigorous scientific investigation that it is pure double-distilled 200-proof bullshit. This year I intend to focus on a different aspect of Bend's suckiness: the temperature. I'm going to track the daily high temperature and score each day as comfortable* (high of 70 or above), marginal (high of 60 or above) or sucky (high below 60). I'm starting with today's reading (May 1) and will go through April 2012.

To add interest, I'm also starting a contest to guess how many comfortable (above 70) days Bend will experience over the coming year. Whoever comes closest to the exact number will receive an appropriate prize.

I'm betting the total will be 102.

*NOTE: I define 70 and above as "comfortable" because it is the temperature range in which I can feel comfortable outdoors without wearing a sweater, jacket, coat, parka, anorak or similar extra insulation (unless the wind is blowing, which it usually is in Bend).

If the Royal Wedding Was Held in Bend, Kate Would Have Frostbite

2011-04-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

It's the next-to-last day of April 2011, the Royal Wedding day. It's partly cloudy and 68 degrees in London. (Congratulations, Kate and Bill.) Here on the other side of the pond, it's sunny and 56 degrees in Minneapolis. Sunny and 65 in Portland, Maine. Sunny and 67 in New York. Partly cloudy and 67 in Denver.

In other words, it's spring -- real spring -- in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. But it's cloudy, 32 degrees and snowing in Bend, Oregon.

Need I say more? BendSux(TM)!!!

How's This for Springtime Suck?

2011-04-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

The Baby Chick Zombie sends springtime greetings from sucky Bend, where it presently is 33 degrees and snowing.

My Vacation Is Great. Your Life Sucks.

2011-04-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

There is a singularly stupid and obnoxious bumper sticker in Bend. It isn't very common, but I've seen it three or four times. It says:

MY LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOUR VACATION.

And under that are the words: "Bend, Oregon."

This is stupid because the person who stuck that thing on his car knows nothing about the people who see the bumper sticker, or where and how they vacation. Maybe they spend three months a year in their villa in Tuscany. Maybe they spend the summer cruising the Mediterranean in their 60-foot yacht.

Vacations like those are a hell of a lot better than your life, dude -- unless your idea of a terrific time is freezing your ass off in a boring little town in the middle of nowhere.

As for the obnoxious part: This bumper sticker encapsulates not only the stupid provincialism of Bend ("No place in the world can possibly be as all-around super-duper wonderful as this place") but also the colossal arrogance that led Bendians to march lemming-like over the cliff of the real estate bubble ("This place is so gosh-darn all-around super-duper wonderful that everybody in the world is dying to live here and will pay anything to be able to do it").

So up yours, pal. My vacations are spent in Hawaii. Your life is spent in Bend.

Which means my vacation is great. And your life sucks.

The Dark Underside of "Paradise"

2011-04-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

One of the most cherished and assiduously promoted myths about Bend is that it is a wholesome place, an outdoorsy place, a place where folks are happy and friendly and crime is rare. "It's a great place to raise kids," people here are always saying, as if kids were a crop like alfalfa or corn that needs a particular set of conditions to grow.

Mayberry on the Deschutes.

As is usually the case with Bend, the reality is somewhat less rosy than the Chamber of Commerce hype. Some examples:

Yesterday police recovered a body believed to be that of Sandy Meyer, a 72-year-old woman who had been missing for more than a month. The body was in an underground utility box in the backyard of the home in a pleasant gated community in Southeast Bend where she had lived with her husband.

The body of the husband, John, had been found inside the home one week after he reported his wife missing. The cause of death was a gunshot wound. Police think it was a case of murder and suicide. There are rumors that the Meyers had financial problems and John had lost a considerable amount of money day-trading.

On April 14, Kipp Rusty Walker, 19, was singing and playing keyboard at an open mic night at Strictly Organic Coffee, a popular local youth hangout. Without warning he suddenly stood up, pulled out a knife and repeatedly stabbed himself in the chest. He was taken to a hospital, where he died of his injuries.

On April 8, the Oregon Medical Board suspended the license of prominent Bend gynecologist Dr. David Redwine for having sexual relations with a patient. The patient was Tami Sawyer, a former Bend real estate broker currently under federal indictment for assorted alleged fraudulent activities. She also was the defendant in a lawsuit brought by none other than Dr. David Redwine. (Yes, this really is a small town.)

On April 7, Darrell Middlekauff, 48, was convicted of murdering his wife, Brenda. Brenda was reported missing in 2002; three years later, her body was discovered stuffed into a steel drum buried near the couple's home in southern Deschutes County. After murdering Brenda, Darrell was shacking up with a 17-year-old girl.

The point of this gruesome recital is not that Bend is a crime-infested hellhole. The point is that people here are like people everywhere -- driven by lust, passion and greed to sometimes do horrible things. And if people are lustful, greedy and dishonest, moving to Bend won't change them. The pretty scenery and clean air will not bring about a magical transformation. As the old saying has it, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Even if you go to "paradise."

ADDENDUM: I forgot about this one ...

BEND, Ore. -- A shooting in central Oregon that left a Bend woman and her daughter dead, and seriously injured her 2-year-old boy, was a murder-suicide, police said.

Julie Angela Still, 39, shot and killed her 5-year-old daughter, wounded her son, and then turned a .22-caliber pistol on herself at their home last December, according to a Bend police report released Monday.

More here.

The Sheer Horrifying Suckiness of Bend's "Spring Festival"

2011-04-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

The horror. The horror.

It's a classic Bend spring day -- gray, windy, 48 degrees and drizzling. Naturally, this was the day they picked to hold the second annual "Spring Festival" in Northwest Crossing, which, for the benefit of those of you who don't live here, is a yuppified development in the northwest quadrant of Bend full of faux "Craftsman" houses, Volvo and Subaru station wagons and thin blond white people who wear Lycra a lot.

Mrs. Blackdog and I rode by there early this afternoon, and in spite of the weather there seemed to be about a thousand people milling around in the cold drizzle. Bendoids are like that; they will turn out in hordes for any event, no matter how shitty the weather may be. I attribute this to two factors: 1) the high boredom quotient in Bend and 2) the low Intelligence Quotient in Bend. Probably in equal parts.

The whole scene was just too ugly and sad and depressing and horrible, and I got the fuck out of there as fast as I could.

Why did it bother me? I think it's because holding a "spring festival" in Bend in mid-April is not only monumentally stupid but seems like a taunt, a heartless, jeering mockery of the dashed hopes of those of us who keep dreaming that somehow, some year, by some blessed miracle, spring will bring a little sunshine and warmth.

In commemoration of the horribleness of it all I bought, for $2, this creepy little plaster figurine of a baby chick zombie, and I'm making it the official emblem of "spring" in Bend.

Which really, truly, deeply, profoundly and horribly sucks.

Sucked In by the Sucky Bend Springtease

2011-04-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hopeful green shoots, April 3

Less hopeful green shoots, April 6

It happens every year: People in Bend -- even some of the old-timers, who really should know better -- get fooled into thinking "spring" has arrived in early April, when it won't truly get here for another two and a half months.

After five weeks of almost non-stop suck from late February through March, we had a spell of sunny and (relatively) warm weather that lasted about four days. Crocuses popped up. My "friends" on Facebook posted photos of their crocuses and started babbling about the gorgeous gardens they were going to have this year.

"Yesterday was like the perfect Bend weather day," chirped Duncan McGeary, one of the old-timers who definitely should know better than to be chirping, on April 2.

Then -- wham! -- winter smacked us upside the head again. As I write this the temperature is in the 30s and the forecast calls for a "wintry mix" of scattered rain and snow (most likely graupel too).

What makes "spring" weather in Bend even harder to take are the imbeciles -- typically the skiers and snowboarders -- who revel in its suckiness and yammer about how they wish the winter would never end.

One of them was a Facebook "friend" of mine until this morning, when he posted yet another comment about how delightful Bend's endless winter is. I unfriended him. I just couldn't take any more of that crap.

The Bend "spring" is a shameless tease. She lets you buy her drinks, flirts with you, smiles at you, winks at you, puts her hand on your knee, gets you all hot and bothered ... and then walks out of the bar with some other guy.

It sucks.

Spring. Yeah. Right.

2011-03-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

This is a crocus that popped up in my backyard on Monday and got crushed by Wednesday. Sort of emblematic of the annual hopes of Bend residents for "spring."

Grappling With Graupel

2011-03-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

This stuff is graupel.

For the past couple of weeks in Bend, we've been treated (using the word in a general sense) to occasional showers of graupel. Graupel is snow that takes the form of pellets. It is created when layers of rime accumulate around snow crystals.

In appearance, graupel resembles those small white plastic pellets that you'll find inside a beanbag chair, should you be unfashionable enough to still own a beanbag chair and foolish enough to cut it open. Graupel looks like hail and is easy to mistake for hail on first glance, but it's soft. You can tell graupel from hail when it's falling because graupel doesn't bounce.

I had never seen graupel before moving to Bend, and my reaction the first time I saw it was along the lines of: "What the fuck is THIS shit?!?" But after two and a half decades in Bend, I have lost the ability to be surprised by anything that falls from the sky. If flaming toads started falling from the sky in Bend it wouldn't surprise me.

Graupel almost never accumulates enough to cause any problems, so we take it in stride. It's just part of the ever-changing, never-ending pageant of suckiness that is Bend weather.

Postscript: Just drove home from taking Mrs. M's car to Les Schwab to get the studded tires taken off (another absurd aspect of life in Bend that I'll blog about someday) and rode through a pretty intense graupel storm. What's the verb to describe graupel coming down? Is it "graupeling," as in, "It's graupeling really hard now"? Does anybody know?

Almost Live Blogging With Elliott

2011-03-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

3:10 pm: Sitting at the bar in the 10 Barrel pub drinking a Tullamore Dew next to comrade-in-bloggery Jack Elliott, who talked me into joining his annual St. Patrick's Day pub crawl. Jack is having some kind of "Irish" red ale. Doesn't think much of it.

One respect in which Bend doesn't suck too hard is it's a good drinking town. There isn't a hell of a lot else to do, so people kill time in the many brew pubs. As Holly Hamilton sings in her wonderful parody, "Stuck in the Middle of Bend": "There's one job for every 10 people here, so we sit around and drink micro-beer."

Gotta bug out of this pub crawl before too long or I'm gonna have a macro-hangover.

4:05 pm: Made it to O'Kane's without any casualties. First Tullamore Dew has settled well -- now working on the second one. Elliott was kind enough to let me scarf up some salami and provolone from his antipasto at 10 Barrel. Gotta keep the stomach well-coated. Steady as she goes.

4:17 pm: Even on St Patrick's Day, O'Kane's refuses to play anything but the goddam Grateful Dead. "This is a Grateful Dead cigar bar," I was told once when I requested a change in the music. WTF is a Grateful Dead cigar bar? A Grateful Dead marijuana bar ... now, THAT would make some sense. Fortunately there is a bagpiper outside who is more or less drowning out The Dead.

5:20 pm: Leaving O'Kane's. Eliott is headed off for Velvet, another pub, to continue the crawl. I'm crawling home. Two drinks is enough for me, considering I don't want to arrive home completely shitfaced for Mrs. Miller's special St. Patrick's Day dinner. An enjoyable mini-crawl it was, nonetheless.

Outdoor, Yes. Healthy? Maybe Not So Much.

2011-03-12T16:52:00.000-08:00

It’s almost impossible to spend more than 15 minutes in Bend without hearing about its “healthy outdoor lifestyle.” Bend’s “healthy outdoor lifestyle” is touted ad nauseam by the locals, as well as the professional booster groups and the local daily newspaper, which seems to run stories about it at least five times a week.

How true is the “healthy outdoor lifestyle” claim? Like most other Bend boasts, this one appears to consist of a small kernel of truth wrapped inside many layers of puffery.

True, Bend is home to an unusual number of world-class athletes, especially endurance athletes – marathoners, triathletes, bicycle racers. They get a lot of attention from the media, and the implication is that their lifestyle and level of physical fitness are representative of the town in general.

But of course elite athletes are a tiny minority anywhere, even in Bend. How outdoorsy is the ordinary Bendite? Is he outdoorsier than most other people? And if he is, does that make him healthier?

Reliable numbers are hard to come by, but The New York Times has posted a cool interactive map that may furnish some clues.

The Gallup polling organization has been calling up 1,000 randomly selected Americans all across the country each day for the past three years and asking them questions about 20 different “well-being indicators,” including everything from how happy they are with their jobs to whether they eat fruit and vegetables. The numbers are broken down in the Times map by congressional districts.

Turns out that people in the 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses all of Eastern Oregon including Bend, actually are pretty outdoorsy – or anyway they get a fair amount of exercise, which isn’t quite the same thing, but close enough. Well over half of them – 56% – said they got at least 30 minutes of exercise on at least three of the previous seven days.

But this is only about average for the western third of the United States, where (according to Gallup) people exercise considerably more than folks on the East Coast or in the Midwest. The four other congressional districts of Oregon have almost exactly the same percentage of exercisers.

Ah, but are people in Eastern Oregon healthier because of all their huffing and puffing and grunting and sweating? Gallup’s numbers suggest they are not.

Asked if they “have health problems that prevent [them] from doing any of the things people [their] age normally do,” 26% of those polled in CD2 answered “yes.” That’s worse than any of the four other districts except CD4 (southwestern Oregon), which had 31%. And it’s worse than Southern California, where the percentages tend to run in the teens and low 20s.

27% of Eastern Oregonians reported they had been told by a physician or nurse that they had high cholesterol – again, more than in any other congressional district except the fourth, and more than in most areas of California. For diabetes and obesity the pattern was similar.

What to make of all this? One obvious point is that being outdoors will not, in itself, make you healthy. Sitting in a fishing boat drinking beer all day or riding around in a golf cart doesn’t do much for your health.

The other thing that jumped out at me while looking at the Times map is that if there’s one thing good health clearly seems to correlate with, it isn’t exercise – it’s money. The more affluent areas of the country (mainly those on the coasts and around large cities) generally scored better on the health questions than the less affluent areas, meaning primarily the inland, rural ones.

Lack of a good job and economic opportunity – and the likely concomitant, lack of access to necessary health care – may well be more hazardous to your health than couch potato status. So if health is what you're after, instead of moving to Bend for the “healthy outdoor lifestyle” you might be better off moving to LA or San Francisco for a healthy paycheck.

Update: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has just published new rankings that show Deschutes County as the seventh-healthiest of Oregon's 36 counties. We're below the national benchmarks for adult obesity and smoking, but way above the benchmark for "excessive drinking" (18% vs. 8%) and spectacularly above the benchmark for sexually transmitted infections (273 cases of chlamydia per 100,000 population vs. a benchmark of 83 cases). The data suggest that even more than climbing rocks and riding mountain bikes, folks in Bend like to get drunk and screw.

The Official City Anthem of Bend

2011-03-11T17:49:00.000-08:00

This song, which the lovely, talented and saucy Mrs. Jack Elliott e-mailed to me today, says just about everything.

My one bitch: They didn't need to change the lyrics of the chorus. "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right" works perfectly for Bend.

Addendum: I should note that while the song was sent to me by Mrs. Elliott, it was written and performed by a talented local singer named Holly Hamilton.

Prineville: Perhaps Somewhat Less Sucky Than Bend

2011-03-06T13:59:00.001-08:00

Today I took a long drive out to Prineville, a pretty little town about 40 minutes northeast of Bend, and up the scenic Crooked River toward Bowman Dam for no particular reason other than to blow the stench of Bend off myself and get the sight of strip malls and clogged highways out of my eyes.

I was glad I did. I was reminded of what we originally moved to Bend for, and what Bend doesn't have anymore: small-town charm, friendly and down-to-earth people, a slower pace of life, affordable homes, wide-open spaces, unobstructed views, no traffic congestion. (Two cars passing each other on Main Street at the same time is almost a traffic jam; see photo above.)

Bend offered all that and more 25 years ago, but thanks to decades of hell-bent-for-leather development it's been uglified and crappified and suckified beyond all recognition -- especially on the Eastside, where I have the misfortune to live.

A quick examination of the climate charts on city-data.com indicates that Prineville also has at least a somewhat milder climate than Bend. For example, the average daily high in Prineville in mid-April is 60 degrees; in Bend it's 55. The average daily high in Prineville in mid-May is around 68; in Bend it's 65. I can't be certain, but the graphs for sunshine and cloud cover seem to show that Prineville gets a little bit more sun too.

This tends to bear out the fact, well-known to locals, that Prineville is the Banana Belt of Central Oregon. Gardeners can grow plants there that wouldn't survive in Bend outside of a greenhouse.

I'm not saying Prineville is paradise. It's even more isolated than Bend, for one thing, and has even fewer entertainment options and cultural amenities. And the political climate is so conservative it makes Bend look like Berkeley.

So I don't think we'll be pulling up stakes for Prineville in the foreseeable future. But it's good to pay the place a visit once in a while just to remember what Bend once had, and stupidly threw away.

Premature Spring Ejaculations

2011-03-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

There is a couple who owns a little shop on the Eastside of Bend selling things for gardening and raising chickens and what-not. On the last day of February they put this message up on the sign in front of their shop: “ONLY 20 DAYS UNTIL SPRING.”

I have never met them, but I have heard they are nice people. I bear them no ill will. I wish them success in their business and happiness in their lives.

But if they really believe that spring comes to Bend on March 20, they are idiots.

March 20, of course, is marked as the first day of spring on all the calendars. But all that means is that on March 20 the sun is directly over the equator at noon and days and nights are of equal length. (Thus the name “vernal equinox.”) On June 21, the summer solstice or first day of summer, the sun will be directly over the Tropic of Cancer at noon, giving the northern hemisphere its longest day.

In reality, however, the date of March 20 means absolutely nothing in Bend. It still looks and feels like winter here, and will look and feel like winter until sometime around the middle of June.

Yesterday our local daily newspaper ran its monthly story about the latest measurements of the depth of the snowpack in the Cascades. The snowpack was looking skimpy in mid-February, but a couple of storms blew through in the latter part of the month and now it’s is pretty much back to normal.

The most interesting thing about the story, though, was a little graph that showed snowpack levels through the year, with trend lines for this year, last year, and the historical average from 1971 to 2000.

The historical average line shows that the snowpack reaches its maximum on April 1 and then starts to decline, as fewer and less fierce storms blow in from the Pacific. By July it’s almost all gone.

Based on this, it would make some sense to observe April 1 as the first day of spring in Bend, or at least as the turning point at which winter begins slowly and grudgingly loosening its icy grip on us. But it would make more sense to celebrate June 15 as the real first day of spring, when winter finally relents and warm, sunny weather arrives at last.

On second thought, maybe June 21, which is observed as the first day of summer in parts of the Northern Hemisphere that have a normal climate, should be celebrated as the first day of spring in Bend.

As for when we'd mark the first day of summer ... well, August 1 seems to be the likely candidate.

Bend Slobbery Really Sucks

2011-02-18T11:57:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned that most people in Bend -- the men especially -- are disgusting slobs?

On New Year's Day, my lovely wife and I went out to dinner in a nice restaurant in Bend's Old Mill District. When I say "nice" I'm talking about linen tablecloths and napkins, silverware and entrees starting around $22. Not Le Cirque, but nice.

Most of the guys there, many of whom appeared to be taking their wives or girlfriends out on a date, were wearing the universal male Bend uniform*: jeans (often not too clean), T-shirt with a hoodie (often not too clean either), sneakers and a baseball cap. (The baseball cap, incidentally, is NEVER removed, indoors or out. I think these guys shower with it on.)

A little more than a month later we went to dinner and a jazz performance at The Oxford Suites, which is considered Bend's swankiest hotel. Again, the ubiquitous hoodies, jeans and baseball caps.

Now, I'm not the sort of man you'll see on the cover of GQ or Esquire. I don't insist that guys wear dinner jackets to restaurants. Hell, I don't own a dinner jacket myself. I don't even insist that they wear jackets and ties ... although that sure would be nice.

But for the love of God, people, you don't go out to dinner dressed like you're planning to go fishing or clean out the septic tank. And you most emphatically do not go out to dinner looking like you just DID clean out the septic tank. It is offensive to your fellow diners. At any rate it is offensive to me, and that's what matters.

And one other thing: TAKE OFF THE FUCKING BASEBALL CAP. Thank you very much.

*The Bend female uniform is not much different except for the absence of a baseball cap, sometimes.

Pothole Season Truly and Deeply Sucks

2011-01-30T09:09:00.000-08:00

Pothole angling is a favorite summer pastime for the youth of Bend.

The City of Bend does many things badly, and road maintenance is one of the things it hardly does at all.

We're barely into the winter here in Bend, and the local streets and roads are in the worst shape I've ever seen them. Every heavily traveled arterial resembles a shell-pocked World War I battlefield. If you drive over one at any speed in excess of 10 miles per hour, you're probably going to have to make an appointment with your dentist for a couple of new crowns.

Things weren't always this bad. More than 25 years ago, when we first moved here, the streets were kept in pretty good repair. The city even plowed the snow off them -- at least the major ones.

So what went wrong? There's a one-word answer: GROWTH.

Back when Bend was a small town, the city's finances were pretty stable. It took in enough money in property taxes to perform basic municipal services. The potholes were patched, the snow was plowed, the schools stayed open, the water flowed through the water mains and the poop flowed through the sewers.

Then Bend took off in a frenzy of balls-out, hell-for-leather growth, expanding in all directions. Suddenly there were many more miles of streets and water mains and thousands more kids in the classrooms.

SDCs -- Systems Development Charges -- levied on developers are supposed to pay for the new infrastructure that growth requires. But they're set so low that they cover only a fraction of the costs. And they don't pay anything toward the maintenance of the roads, water mains and sewer lines once they're in place -- nor do they contribute anything toward the public school system.

The city got away with it for a few years by running what was essentially a Ponzi scheme, counting on new growth to generate the revenue needed to pay for present growth. But all Ponzi schemes collapse sooner or later, and when the real estate bubble popped, Bend's did.

Add to that the special problems created by Bend's embrace of sprawl -- development spread out over a wide area requires more miles of roads, sewers and water mains than more compact development -- and one can see why the city is now utterly and totally fucked. Municipal services of all kinds are worse in Bend now that it's an "affluent" city of 86,000 than they were in 1985, when it was a poor town of about 26,000.

If you're fortunate enough to live in a place that is NOT Bend and some local politician tries to sell you a line of bullshit about how growth will mean prosperity for your town, bring him to Bend, throw him into one of our potholes and shovel asphalt over him. You'll be doing both yourself and us a favor.

Out With the Old Suck, In With the New Suck

2011-01-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

The last month of 2010 turned out to be considerably less sucky than I had anticipated. There actually were a few rather pleasant sunny (though bitterly cold) days scattered through it, including a whole four-day stretch from the 14th through the 17th. And the month ended with two brilliantly sunny, crisp days.

All that, however, could not prevent December from recording more suckiness than sunniness, with a total of 12 days of sun vs. 19 days of suck, for a suck-to-sun ratio of 60:40. Overall, the year had 205 days of sun and 160 days of suck, yielding a sun-to-suck ratio of roughly 56:44.

Which at first glance doesn't look too bad. Like other averages, however, this one can be misleading. The bulk of the sunny days --118 of them -- occurred in the five-month period from June through October. During the whole period of January through May, only 81 sunny days were logged.

June through October were the only months in which sunny days predominated over sucky ones. And the first three-quarters of June and the latter half of October were mainly sucktacular, so the predominantly sunny period was really only about four months long.

What have we learned from this year-long experiment? I believe the data point clearly to two conclusions:

1. The "300 days of sunshine a year" claim is (as originally hypothesized) pure bullshit. It's inflated by almost 50%.

2. If you want to enjoy sunshine, be in Bend between mid-June and mid-October and get the hell out of here for the eight other months of the year.

December Totals:

Days of Sun: 12
Days of Suck: 19

2010 Totals:

Days of Sun: 205
Days of Suck: 160

The Sucky Winter-T-Shirt-and-Sandals Phenomenon

2010-12-22T08:23:00.000-08:00

Every winter, I notice a strange phenomenon in Bend: People walking around in sub-freezing temperatures attired as if they were strolling to a beach in Kauai.

They'll be wearing shorts. Or a thin T-shirt. Or flip-flops. Or all three.

They're not always hot-blooded kids in their teens and 20s, either. The other morning, with the thermometer nudging 27 degrees, I went to the local Starbucks to get my daily coffee, biscotti and copy of the New York Times. There was a customer inside -- a man of at least middle age -- wearing shorts and Teva sandals. Such sights are not at all uncommon here.

I can come up with only four possible hypotheses:

1. These people are emigrants from California and they still haven't figured out that it gets cold in Bend in the winter.

2. They don't own any long pants, long-sleeved shirts or shoes.

3. No brain, no pain.

4. They simply refuse to admit that it's ever cold in Bend. (Bend residents are the queens and kings of denial.)

I'm leaning toward a combination of #3 and #4.

How Does Bend Stack Up for Retirement? Truly Sucktacularly.

2010-12-18T12:46:00.000-08:00

"Honey, I think we missed the Palm Springs exit."

The professional Bend-boosters have put a lot of time, money and effort into promoting Bend and Central Oregon as a terrific place to retire. They've even managed to get it included in several of those "10 Best Places to Retire" lists that magazines are always putting out.

Truth be told, however, Bend is emphatically not a good place to retire. It actually is one of the suckiest places to retire on the face of the planet -- or at least North America.

First, let's consider the climate. The winter in Bend is cold, it's wet, it's snowy, it's icy, it's gray, it's dreary -- and it's seven and a half months long.

We old farts do not like cold, wet, snowy, icy, gray, dreary winters that go on for seven and a half months. We do not like shoveling snow, scraping ice off windshields and slipping on the ice, falling on our ass and ending up in the hospital with a broken hip.

We like places that are warm and sunny. We like to put on our pastel Bermuda shorts and our white patent leather shoes with matching white patent leather belt and play golf or shuffleboard or croquet or (if we're Italians) bocce.

Or just sit in the sun and bask like lizards.

Then let's consider what to do for fun. In Bend, unless you go balls-out into all the outdoor recreation stuff -- and let's face it, despite all the propaganda, very few folks in their 70s and 80s are that gung ho for snowboarding, alpine skiing, mountain biking, rock climbing and running up and down mountains -- there isn't much.

Well, there's golf. There are plenty of golf courses around here, and people who play golf (I don't) tell me many of them are very good. But because of the suckitudinous nature of the climate, the golf season is only about four months long. (The boosters sometimes claim Bend offers "year-round golf," but that lie is almost as magnificent, towering and grandiose as "300 days of sunshine.")

We do have movie theaters, bowling alleys and bars, but you can find those anywhere.

Buying a retirement home in Bend or Central Oregon makes sense for only two classes of people:

First, those who are too poor to afford one in a warm, sunny place. (Bend really is a cheaper place to retire than many other locales, now that the real estate market has collapsed.)

Second, those who are rich enough to afford a second home in Palm Springs or some other warm, sunny place to flee to during Bend's seven and a half months of winter.

Since old Blackdog isn't in either of those categories, when he and Mrs. Blackdog finally retire (oh Lord, hasten the day!) we will be saying hasta la vista to Bend and all its suckiness.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention all the many ways in which living in Bend is unhealthy for old (and even not so old) geezers.

Because of the abundance and variety of vegetation -- especially the notorious junipers -- Bend records some of the highest pollen counts in the world during the spring and summer. It's hell for anybody with pollen allergies, or allergy-triggered asthma.

The dry air is brutal for anybody who has sinus problems. You''ll need to install a humidification system in your home.

The cold temperatures and continual wide swings in temperature and barometric pressure are torture for people with arthritis or fibromyalgia.

And finally, the short days in the winter and the general grayness and cloudiness that prevails most of the time except for the three and a half months of summer makes Bend a terrible environment for people with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

How does Bend suck as a place to retire? Truly, it is difficult to count all the ways.

The Mucky, Yucky, Sucky Cyclocross Nationals Are in Bend Again

2010-12-08T12:11:00.001-08:00

Some of the fast-paced action in last year's Cyclocross Nationals

All the jock-sniffers in Bend (which has a higher concentration of jock-sniffers, per capita, than any other town in America) are in a continuous near-orgasmic state of arousal this week because the Cyclocross National Championships are being held here.

The five-day event begins today, and this is the second consecutive year that Bend has played host to the Cyclocross Nationals. For those not familiar with this "sport," cyclocross involves people riding bicycles (rather slowly) and often carrying bicycles (even more slowly) over a muddy, slushy, snowy, mucky course. (Here's some video from last year's event to give you an idea.)

I believe the powers that decide such things would do well to make this burg the permanent location for the nationals. That's because cyclocross has all four ingredients that make a "sport" perfect for Bend:

1. It's boring, dumb and pointless.

2. It involves no skill or grace -- just brute endurance.

3. It requires the use of expensive equipment and the wearing of brightly colored, tight-fighting Spandex.

4. It's physically unpleasant for both the participants and the spectators.

No wonder the local jock worshipers are all a-twitter. As for me, I'm saving my excitement for the Oregon Ducks vs. the Auburn Tigers in the BCS championship on Jan. 10.

As the Days Dwindle Down to a Sucky Few

2010-12-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

No doubt about it now: The full-on, all-out, depression-inducing, freeze-your-balls-off Sucky Season has arrived in Bend.

November was the first month since May to log more days of suck (16) than sun (14). Not only that, but the longest stretch of consecutive sunshine was only three days -- the first three days of the month. Then there were three sunny intervals of two days each and five single-day sun episodes scattered over the rest of the month. There have been only four sunny days in the last two weeks.

And some of the days recorded as "sunny" were marginal, at best, with a pallid, sickly sun glowing weakly in semi-overcast skies. I could easily have scored only 10 or 11 sunny days in November. But I try to give Bend the benefit of the doubt whenever I can.

Adding to the overall suckiness, an "Arctic blast" roared down from the Gulf of Alaska just before Thanksgiving, dropping about five inches of snow and driving temperatures down into the single digits.

November Totals

Days of Sun: 14
Days of Suck: 16

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 193
Days of Suck: 141

The Finter-Winter-Sprinter-Wummer Sucky Season

2010-11-22T12:36:00.000-08:00

BendBroadband, our local cable TV and Internet provider, is running some cute commercials referring to the distinctive Central Oregon season of "Finter." That's the time when according to the calendar it's fall, but it feels like Winter.

Finter definitely describes the situation in Bend today -- it's still two days before Thanksgiving and almost a month before the Winter Solstice and some of the trees still have a few leaves on them, but the temperature is in the upper 20s and up to eight inches of snow is forecast for today and tomorrow.

After Finter, of course, comes the actual official Winter, followed by the Spring-That-Feels-Like-Winter, which might be dubbed "Sprinter."

And then comes the period of eight weeks or so we call "Summer," although even in Summer we experience some days so chilly that the label of "Wummer" might be applied.

Call it Finter, Winter, Sprinter or Wummer -- it all sucks.

The Big Chill: Dining Out in Bend

2010-11-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

A group of friends prepares to embark for dinner in a Bend restaurant.

Not long after moving to Bend, I noticed something peculiar about the local restaurants: Most of them didn't provide any place for you to hang your coat and hat.

After living here a few months and going out to dine a few times in Bend restaurants, I figured out the reason: The restaurants are so cold in winter that you'll need to keep your coat and hat on.

Most of the restaurant owners in Bend seem to think that 45 to 50 degrees is a nice, cozy temperature at which to dine.

And then we have the common phenomenon of Bendites who love to stand in the doorway of a restaurant for 20 minutes at a time blabbing with their friends with the door wide open, letting gusts of 10-degree air blow in over the shivering patrons.

Jack Elliott, my friend and comrade in bloggery, has suggested that the restaurant temperatures are kept low for the greater comfort of the kitchen staff. With all due respect to Mr. Elliott, that seems implausible. If I owned a restaurant I'd worry more about the comfort of my customers than my kitchen staff.

I think the more likely explanation is that Bend restaurant owners are just too damn cheap to turn the heat up.

I'll say one thing for this policy: If you're having champagne with dinner, you won't have to worry about it getting too warm. Won't need any ice bucket to chill it, either.

Getting frostbite in restaurants -- just one more reason why Bend really, truly, deeply and profoundly sucks.

Bulletin Confirms: Bend Climate Sucks

2010-11-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

Bend's local daily newspaper, The Bulletin, is not the place to look for dynamic, hard-hitting journalism. The shadow of controversy rarely darkens its pages. Instead its "news" coverage tends toward the bland and fluffy, with stories along the lines of "Prineville Boy Nurses Ailing Squirrel Back to Health."

One time the paper devoted the bulk of its front page for two consecutive days to an account of a cat that had to be rescued from a tree in LaPine. (Yes, really.)

The Bulletin also is an indefatigable booster of all things Bend, never tiring of reminding everybody about the (supposed) delights of our climate (including our mythical "300 days of sunshine") and our glorious "outdoor lifestyle."

Every once in a while, though, the truth slips through.

A couple of days ago, Julie Johnson, a Bulletin columnist, wrote a piece headlined: "Bend all atwitter over snow." (Yes, really.)

That in itself was no problem; even The Bulletin admits that it sometimes snows in Bend, and even I admit that snow can be pretty, and even kinda fun.

But at the end of the column, Julie recklessly ventured onto thin ice.

"I’m going to take this old-fashioned (non-Facebook) opportunity to explain why so many of us complain about the first snowfall in Bend: It’s because we mourn the other seasons," she wrote.

"In Central Oregon, spring is a no-show, summer is just passing through on its way to somewhere else, and autumn is cut short in its prime. We mourn those seasons we barely got to know.

"But winter, we know. Winter lasts until June. Winter returns before its time. Winter overstays its welcome, and so each year when it comes back, I offer a moment of silence for the softer seasons it usurped."

There it is: Official confirmation from Bend's Newspaper of Record that (a) winter in Bend does, indeed, really suck, and (b) it goes on for seven miserable months.

Julie Johnson sounds like a nice person. I really hope she hasn't just written her way out of a job.

Bend Goes on DST (Dismal Sucky Time)

2010-11-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, Bend, like the rest of America, went off Daylight Saving Time and back onto standard time. This means that the evening darkness, already arriving ridiculously early, began arriving an hour earlier.

Of course it also means that the sun rises an hour earlier, but who the hell wants to get up to see the sun rise?

Bend's suckiness -- the climatic aspects of it, anyway -- is largely the product of two attributes: its altitude (3,623 feet above sea level) and its latitude (43 degrees, 3 minutes and 23 seconds north of the Equator -- nearly halfway to the North Pole, and just one degree south of Bangor, Maine). These two attributes mean that it's cold more or less year-round, and cold and dark in the winter.

Bend's relatively high latitude compounds the misery of its dreary, cloudy winters: Not only is the sun behind clouds most of the time, but there's precious little time for it to shine during the brief intervals when the clouds aren't there.

There's a slick little gadget on the Web called the Daylight Hours Explorer that lets you determine how many hours of daylight a place at any given latitude receives on any given day of the year. The Daylight Hours Explorer tells us that on Nov. 9, a place at latitude 43N -- like Bend -- gets 9.8 hours of daylight. By Dec. 21, the winter solstice, it will be down to 8.8 hours.

On the other hand, San Diego, California (latitude approximately 33N) gets 10.5 hours of daylight on Nov. 9 and 9.8 hours on Dec. 21, the shortest day of the year.

On the third hand, Nome, Alaska (latitude 64N) gets only 6.8 hours of daylight on Nov. 9 and 3.6 hours on Dec. 21. But who the fuck would voluntarily live in Nome, Alaska?

Of course, every place on the planet, from Nome to Bend to San Diego to Tierra del Fuego, averages 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness per day over the course of the whole year. Places like Bend that get relatively short days in the winter make up for it by getting relatively long days in the summer.

The catch is that the long summer days don't really "make up for it." The human organism can't store up sunlight during the summer and release it during the dark, dismal days of winter, when it needs it. That's why people in northern latitudes are prone to such afflictions as rickets and Seasonal Affective Disorder.

So if you find yourself in Bend during Dismal Sucky Time, your choices basically boil down to two: 1) buy a light therapy device and lots of cod liver oil, or 2) move.

And Now, the REAL Sucky Season Starts

2010-11-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

All in all, October wasn't too sucktacular in Bend. We had more days of sun (20) than suck (11), and even a few days of genuinely pleasant, semi-warm, Indian summer weather.

Since Oct. 22, however, it's been pretty much solid suck all the way, and based on Blackdog's 25 years of experience we can expect more or less continuously sucky conditions to prevail from now until late June.

The Bend climate is truly suckalicious not only because the weather is cold and gray more days than not, but also because the sunny, tolerably warm days are crowded into a pathetically brief period -- two or three months, mostly.

Of the first 10 months of 2010, five (June, July, August, September and October) have had more days of sun than days of suck -- 118 to 35. That's almost an 80/20 sun-to-suck ratio -- pretty nice. Half of the sunny days (59) came in July and August.

On the other hand, the entire five-month period from January through May had only 61 days of sun. That works out to a nearly 60/40 suck-to-sun ratio.

Now that November's here, don't expect the sunny day total to rise significantly. Sunshine is going to be a very scarce commodity in Bend for the rest of the current year.

I'm expecting the final, total annual suck-to-sun ratio to be roughly 60/40, maybe a bit worse. Stay tuned.

October Totals

Days of Sun: 20
Days of Suck: 11

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 179
Days of Suck: 125

Postscript: In compliance with the terms of my bet that Bend would not record 160 days of sunshine in 2010, which I lost, Jack Elliott presented me with The Shirt of Shame this month, and I wore it in public, once. MORAL: You Don't Bet Jack.

Goodbye Indian Summer, Hello Sucky Season

2010-10-26T14:28:00.001-07:00

Indispensable equipment for Bend motorists

It was nice while it lasted, but Indian summer is no more. It was killed last weekend by an icy blast that blew in from the Pacific, bringing cold, rain and -- last night -- snow.

Not enough snow to make things very pretty -- or, fortunately, to break tree limbs, like last year's Oct. 4 snowstorm did -- but enough to make driving treacherous for Bendites who have not yet gotten their studded tires on, and to create a pain in the ass for those who had to scrape an inch-thick layer of snow and ice off their windshields this morning.

Normally, as Blackdog has previously noted, Indian summer hangs on until Halloween, and then winter comes in like a howling banshee. We got cheated out of a week of nice weather this year. Anyway, at least we HAD an Indian summer, unlike last year.

But the Sucky Season is now in full swing. It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be wet, it's gonna be gray, it's gonna be dreary, and it's gonna be eight months long.

The Suckily Mysterious and Deadly Bend Parking Garage

2010-10-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Original Architect's Sketch
for the Bend Parking Garage

Today we’re going to explore the mystery of the Bend Parking Garage.

There’s not much to designing and building a parking garage, one would think. It’s a plain and functional structure. Basically you’ve got a lot of parking spaces and some ramps for cars to go up and down and some elevators and stairs for people to go up and down. We’re not talking about St. Peter’s Basilica here.

But somehow, Bend managed to fuck it up.

I have used parking garages all over this country and have never encountered one that comes close to Bend’s for being bewildering, confusing, inconvenient, and just generally all-around sucky.

All the other parking garages I’ve seen have big signs telling you what level you’ve parked your car on. Not Bend’s.

Other parking garages have exits that are clearly marked and easy to find. Not Bend’s.

Enter the Bend Parking Garage and you enter a dark, catacomb-like maze of ramps and passageways that seem to go up and down and around and around without any discernible logical pattern.

People have been known to enter the Bend Parking Garage and vanish without a trace. Sometimes their bodies are found years later, mummified by the dry High Desert air, lying in corners where they collapsed from cold, hunger and exhaustion after trying in vain to locate their vehicles.

There should be a quote from Dante posted prominently over each entrance to the structure: "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate."

I try to avoid the Bend Parking Garage as much as possible. So do all other experienced Bend citizens. We know better.

But I’m publishing this in case you, the reader, are a visitor or a newcomer and might be tempted to venture into Bend’s uniquely suckitudinous parking garage.

Take a word of advice from your old friend Blackdog: Don’t.

Note of Apology: I screwed up (I'm still not sure how) and inadvertently removed a bunch of the recent comments. My sincere apologies for the loss of your fine literary labors.

The Sucky "Colors" of Fall

2010-10-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

Top: Sucky Bend "Fall Color"
Bottom: Real Fall Color

The first autumn that Mrs. Blackdog and I spent in Bend, everybody we knew kept giving us glowing descriptions of the glorious "fall color" in Oregon.

"You really gotta drive over the Santiam Pass and see the fall color," they'd advise us. "It's spectacular."

Both Mrs. Blackdog and I had grown up on the East Coast and had loved the truly spectacular displays of color that the trees put on every autumn in New England, upstate New York, and even the less urban parts of New Jersey. (See photo above.)

We had missed seeing the fall color during our years in California. In California, "fall color" refers to the dry brown hills turning green after the first rains arrive. So we were quite excited about driving over the Santiam Pass through the mountains and feasting our eyes on vast expanses of forest gorgeously painted in brilliant reds and golds.

What a letdown THAT turned out to be.

There was, I have to admit, a certain amount of "fall color." There was the occasional maple or aspen or grape ivy bush tinted with red or gold. Or sometimes with one or two leaves tinted with red or gold. (See photo at top.)

But Oregon's forests are predominantly made up of pine and fir and spruce, so their predominant color in the fall (and every other season) is green. There just aren't enough deciduous trees to create a real fall color show.

We should have figured this out before we went on the drive, but we were taken in by the enthusiasm of Oregonians. (It would not be the last time this would happen.)

It was a pleasant enough trip; the weather was sunny and warm, and we stopped for lunch at the historic and quaint Log Cabin Inn in McKenzie Bridge. (It has since burned down.)

But as a fall color experience ... well, it pretty much totally sucked.

Try to Remember a Kind of Semi-Sucky September

2010-10-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

Ol' Blackdog declared at the end of August that the summer had ended prematurely and we would experience no Indian summer because of the dreaded Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Just goes to show you that the Bend weather can fool even as experienced a weather-watcher as ol' Blackdog.

September turned out to be a mixed bag -- days of sun, days of suck, chilly days, warm days and a couple of almost hot days.

The month started off with six days of sun, which was followed by three days of suck, which was followed by five days of sun, which was followed by a truly sucktacular seven-day stretch of cold, gray, drizzly, dismal, winter-like weather.

But then -- wonder of wonders! -- the high-pressure area over the Northwest that gives us our pleasant summers and (when we're lucky) Indian summers re-established itself, and the days have been sunny, warm and delightful ever since. (Well, with the exception of one weird warm but overcast day on Sept. 26.)

How much longer will our luck hold? The forecast calls for drizzly and cool weather Monday, but aside from that it's supposed to be sunny and in the 60s and 70s through Oct. 10.

Mark ol' Blackdog's words, however: Indian summer will exit at the latest on Nov. 1, after which we will experience at least seven and a half months of steady suck. And with the climate geeks predicting an extraordinarily powerful La Nina effect this winter, the suck promises to be not only steady but truly sucktacular.

September Totals:

Days of Sun: 19
Days of Suck: 11

YTD Totals:

Days of Sun: 159
Days of Suck: 114

Some Things About Bend That Don't Suck Too Hard

2010-09-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

People are always coming up to me on the street, in Costco, in bars and other places and saying, "Blackdog, what's the matter with you? You're always writing about how much Bend sucks. Can't you find anything good to say about Bend?"

After a while I realized their question was valid. There must be some good things about living in Bend, and in the interest of fairness and open-mindedness I should give them some recognition.

So I sat down and pondered for seven or eight hours and came up with five good things to say about Bend:

1. Do you have a large collection of sweaters and love to wear them? In Bend, you can wear one almost every day. Likewise for sweatshirts, parkas and mackinaws.

2. Do you love to spend the evening in front of a crackling blaze in the fireplace? In Bend, you can do it year-round.

3. Do you aspire to pass as an intellectual? In Bend, if your IQ is higher than that of the average cantaloupe you'll be considered a genius.

4. Do you like being unemployed? Bend's the place for you.

5. You won't have to spend money on sunscreen and air conditioners.

That about does it for me, but maybe my readers can come up with more good things to say about Bend. If so, you're welcome to do it.

The Suckerrific Suckatudal Suckillation

2010-09-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

Satellite image shows vast area of suckitudinaciousness (blue) lurking off Pacific Coast of the United States

I, Blackdog, hereby proclaim it as indisputable fact: Not only does Bend's climate suck, but it is getting increasingly sucky each year.

Bend boosters love to brag about our beautiful "Indian summers." Last year our "Indian summer" ended with a heavy snowfall on Oct. 4 -- almost a month ahead of schedule.

This year "Indian summer" never arrived at all. The cold, gray, dreary, drizzly weather started in early September.

As I write this it is 50 degrees and raining hard in Bend. For early September, this weather is WAAAAaaaaay beyond sucky. It is suckercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Why is Bend's sucky winter weather dragging on longer and starting sooner? The answer could be the PDO.

About 13 years agot the climatological gurus discovered a phenomenon called "the Pacific Decadal Oscillation." This is a cyclical weather pattern that affects the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Coast of the United States.

During the PDO's cool phase, ocean and air temperatures are below average and precipitation is above average. During the warm phase, the converse is true. Each phase lasts from 10 to 30 years.

The cool phase is good news for irrigators (because there's plenty of winter rain and snow) and fishermen (because fish populations in the northeastern Pacific increase) but, weatherwise, it sucks big-time.

The climatological gurus have declared that the PDO entered a cool phase in 2008, which jibes pretty well with when Blackdog and others began observing an increasing degree of suckiness in Bend's weather.

If we have in fact entered a cool phase of the PDO, we can expect Bend's climate to be not merely sucky, but SUPER-SUCKY for anywhere from eight to 28 years.

Of course, the climatologists could be wrong and we could just be experiencing a couple of unusually cool and wet years. But even under the best of circumstances Bend's climate sucks, and I'm not going to stick around to see how much suckier it can get.

Addendum: It's 10:26 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 19. 52 degrees and raining hard in Bend, Oregon's sunshine paradise. The "Fall Festival" was held yesterday and today. Must be a pretty dismal scene downtown.

One infuriating thing about Bend is that you can never, never, NEVER count on good weather. You might luck out and get it once in a while, but you can't plan on it, even in the middle of what passes for "summer" here.

For that reason I've made it a policy never, never, NEVER to buy tickets in advance for an outdoor event in Bend.

Good Clean Sucky "Fun"

2010-09-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

Years ago, a natural gas company hereabouts used to run a TV commercial showing kids playing soccer in the pouring rain.

"This is the Pacific Northwest, where life doesn't stop for the weather," the voiceover said.

"Yeah," I would say to myself, "because the people are too dumb to come in out of the rain."

In all fairness, I don't think the people in Bend are THAT stupid -- but they sure as hell have a weird idea of what "fun" is.

To a real hard-core Bendite, virtually everything is "fun."

Cutting firewood in knee-deep snow and sub-zero temperatures? "It was fun!"

Driving to work through snow and ice? "It's fun!"

I really, truly believe that if you put a Bendite in a Nazi concentration camp for six months and then asked him what it was like, he'd say: "It was FUN! I lost 30 pounds! And I met some really interesting people! That Dr. Mengele is quite a character!"

Thus, when a cold front moved through Central Oregon on Aug. 30 and SNOW actually fell in locations to the south of us and in higher elevations to the west of us, one of the local TV news stations posted the headline on its Web site: "August Snow Brings Fun Taste of Winter."

Dude. When it snows on Aug. 30, that is not "fun." That is HORRIBLE. That SUCKS to the max.

Anyway ...

Although there were two suckerrific weekends in the latter part of August, with occasional rain and highs reaching barely into the 60s, the summer weather pattern basically continued through the month. Only two days legitimately earned a sucky rating, though several others were marginal.

August Totals

Days of Sun: 29
Days of Suck: 2

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 140
Days of Suck: 103

Is Bend Getting Suckier? Weather Data Aren't Clear

2010-08-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

There's a widespread perception among old-timers that Bend's climate has been getting suckier in the past few years -- that the winters hang on later, the summer comes later, and the so-called "spring" is chillier and grayer than it used to be.

Is there any empirical support for this perception? Jack Elliott has come up with a link to a national weather service site that offers a lot of data, but no conclusive answer.

From the site Elliott found I followed another link to a site that has, among other things, data for average monthly high temperatures in Bend going all the way back to 1901. (That's even older than any of the old-timers here who currently are bitching about the climate.) The daily average highs for the spring months during the period from 1901 to 2010 are:

April: 58.3 degrees F
May: 65.8
June: 72.9

Not too sucky, I'd say. Here are the corresponding numbers for 2009:

April: 56.2
May: 67.1
June: 72.5

So the April average high was 2.1 degrees below the long-term average, the May average high was about 2 degrees ABOVE the long-term average, and the June average was a mere 0.4 degrees below the long-term average -- pretty much a wash.

But now we come to the numbers for April, May and June of the current year:

April: 53.0
May: 59.7
June: 69.4

Brrrr! Those months were about 5 to 7 degrees colder than the long-term average -- I'd call that significantly suckier. But one year does not make a trend, and we can hope that this miserable excuse for a spring (and summer) was an aberration.

Long-term data on average monthly precipitation in Bend show this:

April: 0.70 inches
May: 0.90
June: 0.75

Last year we had a notoriously soggy and sucky June -- more than 4 inches of rainfall -- following a slightly drier than average April (0.56) and May (0.73). This year April's rainfall was considerably above average (1.23 inches), May's was considerably below average (0.39) and June's was a bit above average (1.0).

Unfortunately the data don't tell us anything about sunniness, which, as those of us who have lived any length of time in Bend know, is not the same thing as absence of precipitation.

Summer and Smoke and Suck*

2010-08-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

(NOTE: Totals have been revised, thanks to an alert reader who pointed out that there were 212 total days in the first seven months of the year. Duh.)

Summer has finally arrived in full force in Bend, with sunny skies and high temperatures. Every day of July except one (July 2) was sunny.

The downside of the arrival of warm summer weather, though, is that it produces thunderstorms. Thunderstorms produce lightning, which starts forest fires, which fill the air in and around Bend with smoke for much of July and August.

Right now the Rooster Rock fire near Sisters has been almost contained (that means the firefighters have cleared a line around it to keep it from expanding further) but not before it burned more than 6,000 acres of woodland and filled the Central Oregon air with a pungent reddish-brown haze.

A couple of days ago the visibility was so bad that if you didn't know better you'd swear you were in Los Angeles. It was truly suckitudinous.

Thanks to July's impressive performance, the total number of sunny days so far this year has finally surpassed the total number of sucky days. But don't worry -- in two months, give or take, the Sucky Season will return.

July Totals

Days of Sun: 30
Days of Suck: 1

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 111
Days of Suck: 101

*Apologies to Tennessee Williams

The Cumulonimbusuckulus Season

2010-07-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

Snow in Bend on July 26? Nope -- although that's not outside the realm of possibility.

That white substance on the ground is hail. The photo was taken during a rip-roaring, roof-rattling, toad-strangler of a thunderstorm that ripped through my side of town starting around 2:15.

I'd estimate that three-quarters to an inch of rain fell, and the temperature dropped 20 degrees in 15 minutes. (That's not a guess, it's what my thermometer recorded.) As I write this the rain and hail have subsided, but the sky is still as dark as the ass of a black cow at midnight and the thunder is still rumbling.

One thing you've gotta admit about Bend weather: It's often very dramatic. Usually dramatically bad.

We're in a typical Bend summer weather pattern now: hot days (in the 90s) that generate severe thunderstorms in the afternoon. The cumulonimbus clouds start piling up over the mountains to the west and south around 10 or 11 a.m., and by 1 or 2 p.m. they're letting loose.

As he has said before, ol' Blackdog enjoys an occasional good thunderstorm, but having thunderstorms all afternoon, every afternoon kind of interferes with the enjoyment of that glorious "outdoor recreation paradise" we all supposedly moved here for.

A Summer of Suctackularly Bad Driving

2010-07-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

The seasonal high-pressure ridge that normally gives Bend warm, sunny summers finally has established itself over the Northwest, and even I can't find anything to bitch about in this month's weather.

So I'll bitch about Bend drivers. DAMN, they suck!

People in Bend like to complain about California drivers, and it's true that California drivers often are aggressive. On the plus side, though, they're also usually skillful.

Bend drivers appear to have gotten their licenses out of a bubble gum machine. And they normally drive with their thumbs up their asses ... unless they've got their heads stuck in there instead.

After moving here I discovered that Bend has the longest traffic lights in the world. I mean, you wait FOREVER for the damn things to change.

I soon figured out why Bend has the longest traffic lights in the world: It's because Bend has the pokiest drivers in the world, and they need about 40 minutes to drive through an intersection.

When the light turns green, the Bend driver does not interpret it as a signal to proceed through the intersection. He/she interprets it as a signal to look left, then right, then left again, then right again, then to take a sip of coffee, and then -- maybe -- to THINK about proceeding through the intersection.

And when Bend drivers finally make the momentous decision to proceed, they accelerate as if they were holding a raw egg between their foot and the gas pedal.

This is why, if you have three Bend drivers ahead of you at a traffic light, you can count on waiting through three signal changes before you can get across.

Bend drivers are hyper-courteous, which often makes them hyper-dangerous. They will STOP in the middle of a roundabout to let other drivers enter. I have even seen them STOP in the middle of the firggin' Bend Parkway to let other cars enter.

Of course when they're actually supposed to stop -- such as when they come to a STOP sign -- they often get confused and behave as if it was a YIELD sign.

Conversely, when they come to a YIELD sign they often act as if it was a STOP sign. The distinction between YIELD and STOP evidently is too subtle for many of them to grasp.

Now that summer is here there are even more displays of sucktacularly bad driving on our local streets and roads, because all the old farts who are too timid to drive in icy or snowy conditions have decided to fire up the '85 Oldsmobile and cruise around.

It's almost enough to make me wish winter would get here again ... but not quite.

ADDENDUM: On the Bend Parkway, a short stretch north of the Powers Road intersection, there is an UNSIGNALIZED PEDESTRIAN CROSSWALK going across all four lanes of the road. It is Oregon law that drivers MUST stop for pedestrians entering a crosswalk -- which means that cars and trucks and semis barreling along the parkway at 45, 50 or 55 miles per hour are supposed to STOP if somebody decides to saunter across the roadway.

This, my friends, is a 20-car pileup just waiting to happen.

An unsignalized pedestrian crosswalk in the middle of a limited-access, four-lane, 45-mile-an-hour parkway.

Only in fucking Oregon.

Apres May, Le Deluge

2010-07-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Winter II finally exited Bend on June 21, the first day of summer -- but not before dumping record amounts of rain, especially on Portland and the Willamette Valley. (We had a bit less rain here, but made up for it with chilly temperatures.)

The skies cleared and things started to warm up on June 21, and in fact every day since then has been sunny -- a string of 10 consecutive days of sunshine. Yippee.

Incidentally, June was the first month of 2010 to record more sunshiny days than sucky days.

But it looks like The Big Chill isn't over yet: The high today (July 1) is supposed to be only 70, and tomorrow the mercury is expected to ascend to -- get ready for it -- a balmy 63.

That's a HIGH of 63 degrees on July 2. In most places in the temperate zone, 63 would be a normal LOW on July 2.

"Paradise" my frozen ass.

June Totals

Days of Sun: 20
Days of Suck: 10

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 56
Days of Suck: 82

Finally, Some Topless Weather

2010-06-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

This is NOT Blackdog's convertible.

Just when it seemed that the cold, gray, drizzly, grisly Winter II weather would never leave, summer checked in right on schedule on Monday, June 21. Temperatures have been in the 70s since then, and today is supposed to break 80 for the first time this year.

Monday also was the first day I went topless -- meaning not that I shed my upper garments and regaled Bend with the sight of my splendid abs and pecs, but that I got my convertible out of the garage, took the hard top off and drove around town.

I love to drive around in a convertible, feeling the breeze rippling through my thick, luxuriant, golden hair. But alas, topless days in Bend -- i.e., days in which it is comfortable to drive with the top down without wearing a coat, sweater or sou'wester -- are mighty few. I'd estimate there are maybe 40 or 50 of them per year.

Maybe next year I'll start a count. Meanwhile, I plan to enjoy the Bend summer -- described some years ago on another blog as "six weeks of sunshine and thunderstorms." (When we're lucky we get eight weeks.)

How to Have a Sucktacular Garden in Bend

2010-06-20T10:02:00.001-07:00

Newcomers to Bend often ask me, as a 25-year resident of The Suckiest Little Town in the West, for suggestions on how to landscape their yards. Ol' Blackdog is always happy to oblige, because landscaping in Bend is ridiculously simple. Thanks to the cold, the dryness, and the incredibly short growing season, there are only three landscape elements that survive and thrive here: rocks, bark chips and juniper.

The top image shows a rock. (This one is a "lava rock," which is kind of cool.) An almost infinite variety of sizes, colors, styles and types of rocks is available to the Bend landscaper, which partly explains why rocks are such a popular element in local gardens. The other thing they've got going for them is that the Bend climate won't kill 'em

The second image depicts bark chips. Like rocks, bark chips are not, strictly speaking, a plant, although they are derived from plants -- specifically lodgepole pine, Ponderosa pine or hemlock trees, typically. Like juniper, bark has the advantage that the suckerrifically horrible climate of Bend can't kill it.

And last but certainly not least we have a picture of juniper, which is far and away the most popular landscaping plant in bend. Juniper is an ugly, gnarled, scrawny, scraggly, straggly, prickly, aggressive, hostile, vicious shrub/tree that bears no visible flowers and no significant fruit, except for small berries that sometimes ferment and are eaten by robins, with the result that your yard is littered with drunken birds making a disgusting spectacle of themselves. The only other thing juniper has to recommend it is that it is virtually impossible to kill. Even the non-stop suckiness of the Bend climate can't kill it.

So there you have your basic Bend landscaping tool kit. Just get somebody to deliver several hundred cubic yards of bark chips, spread it around, find a few rocks (you won't have to look far, and you won't have to pay for them) and scatter them here and there in the bark, then stick three or four scrawny juniper bushes in the ground and -- voila! Your Bend landscaping job is done! Enjoy.

When Lilacs Last in Sucky Bend Bloom'd

2010-06-07T13:47:00.000-07:00

Walt Whitman's great elegy for Abraham Lincoln begins with the phrase: "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd ..."

Whitman chose the lilac as a symbol because Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, and in the areas of America with a normal climate -- i.e., those that have spring instead of Winter Phase II* -- the lilacs bloom in April.

While on a walk a couple of days ago I spotted a lilac bush that was just opening its blossoms. It is approaching mid-June here.

The lilacs are a good indicator of how the arrival of warm, sunny weather is always about two months behind in Bend. April here is like February in most other places. May is like March. June is like April. July is like May. And August is often like May again, which is kind of nice.

What's not so nice is that January and February are like January and February.

Postscript: The Washington state climatologist predicts that we should see warm, sunny weather by MID-JULY. Now ain't that just peachy keen.

*See preceding post

Now Playing in Bend: "Winter II -- The Sequel"

2010-06-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

A man and his son enjoy a Memorial Day weekend camping trip near Bend

I've decided I am no longer going to use the word "spring" in association with Bend weather or climate.

"Spring" does not happen in Bend. A lot of people who migrate here from California say they "enjoy having four seasons," but Bend doesn't have four seasons. It has three seasons -- well, actually only two and a half: Winter, Winter Phase II (or Winter II for short) and Summer.

Winter can begin anytime between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1, but typically begins on Nov. 1. It continues until the start of April and then segues into Winter II, which runs to mid-June or sometimes later.

The weather during Winter II is pretty much like the weather during Winter, only a tiny bit warmer and with less snow (but often more rain.)

May is right smack in the middle of Winter II, and the weather has been appropriate to the season -- cloudy, gray and drizzly, with the thermometer struggling to push up into the 60s most days.

May Totals

Days of Sun: 13
Days of Suck: 18

YTD Totals:

Days of Sun: 49
Days of Suck: 90

Couch Potatoes in Sucky "Paradise"

2010-05-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

Many, many years ago, when ol' Blackdog was just a newbie in Bend, the local daily newspaper ran a front-page story under the headline: "Couch potatoes in paradise."

The story described how somebody had done a nationwide survey and discovered that Bend was Number One in America in per-capita video rentals. (They were VHS tapes in those days.)

I don't know what the current stats on DVD rentals look like, but I'd wager Bend is still right up there at the top, or near it.

Why? Because (Chamber of Commerce and tourist promotion propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding) there really isn't much else to do here.

The local media are always hyping Bend's "healthy outdoor lifestyle," but if I had to bet, I'd bet that no more than 40% of Bend residents engage in outdoor recreation on a frequent (i.e., once a week or more) basis.

In the first place, the weather is too shitty about three-quarters of the time for enjoyable outdoor recreating.

In the second place, downhill skiing and golf have gotten insanely expensive, and even pursuits like mountain biking, cross-country skiing and fly-fishing require a pretty heavy initial capital outlay. And (again, propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding) most people in Bend are not rich.

In the third place, most people in Bend are too busy working multiple jobs to try to pay the mortgages on their overpriced houses to have much spare time for playing outdoors.

Based on what I've observed, the favorite "outdoor recreation" for most Bendites seems to be getting in their SUVs on weekends and driving around from one shopping mall to another.

So what's available here in the way of indoor recreation? Not much.

There are no good museums, no good galleries, no good live theater, very little good live music. If you want to enjoy that stuff, the nearest city of any size is a three-hour drive away. (Longer when the mountain passes are snowed in.)

That pretty much narrows your indoor recreation choices down to five: movies, TV, DVDs, bowling and drinking.

And hey, if that's your preferred lifestyle, that's fine with me. But please don't try to tell me what a "recreation paradise" Bend is. Because when it comes to recreation, like just about everything else ...

BEND SUX.

Fake Surprise and Real Suck

2010-05-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

It is May 20 in Bend, Oregon. The temperature is in the low 40s, with intermittent light snow flurries. (For comparison, it currently is 77 degrees in Minneapolis.)

And everywhere I go in town, people are talking about the "weird" weather.

"Did you see that snow this morning?" says one.

"I know!" replies another. "Isn't this the craziest weather you've ever seen?"

Of course, there is nothing weird or crazy or unusual or even noteworthy about this weather. It is perfectly normal weather for Bend at this time of year, or almost any time of year -- i.e., it sucks.

Having suffered through 26 miserable, depressing, gray, cold, rainy, snowy "springs" in Bend, I am no longer surprised when the weather sucks. I am not surprised by anything the weather does here. (Well, except for those rare intervals when it doesn't suck.) I would not be surprised to see ice floes in the Deschutes and flocks of penguins waddling along Wall Street on the Fourth of July.

But other people in Bend -- many of whom I personally know have lived here for quite a few years, some even longer than I have -- still profess astonishment when the weather sucks in May.

What's the reason? These people are not imbeciles; at least, they give no other outward indication of being imbeciles.

The only plausible explanation I can think of is that longtime Bend residents are masters of denial (they have to be or they wouldn't live here) and pretending that horrible weather in May is "weird" and "crazy" is one of their well-developed denial mechanisms.

I'm cool with that. Hey man, whatever floats your boat, y'know?

But if you're thinking about moving to Bend -- maybe you're here looking for a house to buy -- and you ask about the suckerrific weather and the locals tell you that "this is really unusual" ... DON'T BUY IT. It's as big a lie as the "300 days of sunshine" claim.

April Showers Bring May Suckiness

2010-05-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

It was a more or less routinely sucky April in Bend, with 12 days of sunshine and 18 days of suckiness recorded. Adding to the overall suckitude, the month was cooler than normal -- about 3 degrees below the average. Bend experienced only 16 days during April on which the temperature climbed above 50.

The big milestone of the month was the recording of the 66th sucky day of the year so far on April 16, meaning it is already mathematically impossible for Bend to attain the mythical "300 days of sunshine" that it supposedly enjoys per year.

As I post this it's relatively unsucky in Bend -- sunny and breezy, with temperatures in the mid-50s. Things will rapidly revert to the sucky spring norm, however: The forecast calls for another storm to hit Monday, bringing rain and dropping the thermometer into the 20s overnight, much to the chagrin of the foolish newbies who set out their petunias and hanging fuchsia baskets this week.

April Totals

Days of sun: 12
Days of suck: 18

YTD Totals

Days of sun: 36
Days of suck: 72

Toto, I've Got a Feeling We're Not in Bend Anymore

2010-04-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Blackdog and I returned yesterday from a much-too-brief vacation in Cabo San Lucas and, let me tell you, it isn't easy to make the transition from The Land of Perpetual Summer to The Land of (Almost) Perpetual Winter. One day we were relaxing on the beach under cloudless blue skies with temperatures in the mid-80s; the next we were in chilly, drizzly Portland, and the next we were back in even chillier, drizzly, grisly Bend.

It's just as well that we left when we did, however. If we had stayed a week longer we might have lost the fish-belly-white coloration so admired here in the "Oregon Sunbelt."

We Made It! 66 Days of Suck!

2010-04-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

Just as old Blackdog predicted, the Bend "springtime" weather reverted to its usual sucky pattern in April. To date I have logged a total of 12 sucky days this month, which brings the year-to-date sucky total to 66, which means ...

(Drum roll, please ...)

... it is now MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for Bend to have "300 days of sunshine" in 2010.

Fortunately for Jack Elliott, who bet that the 66-days-of-suck total would not be reached before April 16, yesterday was brilliantly sunny and he won his bet by the slimmest of margins. (I already have paid off.)

We've already demolished the "300 days of sunshine" claim, and the year isn't one-quarter over yet. Based on my long and painful experience I anticipate that the weather will stay sucky through April, through May and through the first half of June, which is when Bend finally begins to get consistently pleasant, sunny weather. In fact I will go out on a limb and predict that Bend will not log more than 160 legitimate days of sunshine all year.

Elliott, are you game?

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, But Suckiness Goes Clear Down to the Bone

2010-04-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've pretty much concentrated on the suckiness of the Bend climate, which is unfortunate because there are SO many, many other ways in which Bend truly, deeply and profoundly sucks. So today I'm going to focus on one of them: Bend's ugliness.

I know, I know -- all the tourist brochures and the Chamber of Commerce Web site brag about how beautiful it is. But take it from ol' Blackdog: The tales of Bend's beauty are almost as full of horsepuckey as the myth of "300 days of sunshine."

There's a lot of natural beauty in the mountains and the high desert around Bend, true. And there are a few pretty residential neighborhoods in town, such as the one near Mirror Pond, which is the place you always see pictured in the ads and brochures. (Incidentally, Mirror Pond is filling up with silt so fast that in a couple of years they'll have to rename it "Mirror Mud Flats," and the city doesn't have money to get it dredged.)

But much of the man-made environment in and around Bend, let's face it, is just plain butt-ugly. In fact, I can't remember another place I've seen that combines so much natural beauty with so much human-made ugliness.

Take 3rd Street, an unbroken string of strip malls, lube shops and franchise fast-food joints running right smack through the middle of Bend from its southern edge to its northern border.

Or take "the Costco District," a concentration of big-box retail stores and hideously ugly apartment buildings on Bend's northeast side.

Or take pretty much all of the east side of town, which offers scenic vistas of corrugated metal industrial buildings, car dealerships and rental storage places.

Or for that matter, as far as I'm concerned you can take all of Bend. Damn, it really sucks.

In Like a Lamb, Out Like a T-Rex

2010-04-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

March in Bend got off to a deceptively non-sucky start, with bright sunny days and temperatures in the upper 50s. Blackdog recorded 14 days of sunshine, most of them in the first half of the month, including one stretch from March 13 through 20 when seven out of eight days were sunny.

Inevitably, however, the weather pattern resumed its normal suckiness at the end of March and the beginning of April, as storms blowing in off the Pacific brought high winds, heavy rain and snow and sub-freezing temperatures.

We can expect the suck to stick around for eight to 10 more weeks, if Bend runs true to its sucktacular form. One thing Blackdog has learned from 25 years of living amid Bend's suckiness is that if we don't get enough winter in January, February and March we'll make up for it in April, May and June.

March Totals

Days of Sun: 14
Days of Suck: 17

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 36
Days of Suck: 54

(NOTE: I need to record only 12 more days of suck to demolish Bend's absurd "300 Days of Sunshine" claim. I'm betting I'll do it by mid-April.)

The Sucky Floods of Spring (and Fall, and Summer, and Winter)

2010-03-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a sucky spring day in Bend -- 45 degrees and pouring rain. Which in itself isn't remarkable or even worthy of comment, except that it reminds me of another reason why Bend truly, deeply and profoundly sucks: the floods.

I'm not talking about the Deschutes River going on a rampage. In bygone days it used to do that from time to time, but it was tamed by dams many decades ago.

No, I'm talking about the flooding of Bend streets that happens every time we get any appreciable amount of rainfall. Hell, the streets here flood any time we get much more than a heavy dew.

The reason is that the people of Bend are either too cheap or too fookin' STUPID (or maybe a combination of both) to install an adequate, functioning storm drain system. We have a few grates in the streets, yes, but they're basically just holes in the ground. There's no system of pipes to carry the excess water away, so it just backs up and creates a lake wherever there's a low spot in the road.

That's my Bend -- a town of vast ambitions and half-vast thinking.

False Spring and Real Suck

2010-03-10T11:38:00.000-08:00

Last month old Blackdog had occasion to spend a few days in Portland and the area around Salem. The weather was generally sucky (it poured rain almost the whole time) but it was SPRING over there. The grass was green, the trees and bushes were putting forth buds, the daffodils and crocuses (croci?) were blooming. It sucked big-time to come back to Bend and know we still had three and a half months of winter to endure.

Bend typically experiences a false spring in late January or February, and this year the false spring was springier than usual; we enjoyed a succession of sunny days with temperatures pushing up toward 60. Predictably, the newbies mistook the phony spring for the real thing and started planting primroses and violas. We old-timers know better: In Bend you don't put your tender annuals out until Memorial Day weekend -- and even then you'd better check the weather forecast every day and be prepared to cover the plants if frost threatens.

In March, the weather in Bend promptly returned to its normal suckerrific mode. As I wrote this yesterday it was 38 degrees and snowing lightly. Overnight, the temperature went down into the teens.

Today Mrs. Blackdog made a trip to Salem on business. She just phoned to tell me the cherry trees are in bloom over there. Damn.

A Surprisingly Un-Sucky February

2010-03-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

In a surprising and welcome development, February turned out to be a far less sucky month in sucky Bend than January. Blackdog actually recorded more days of sunshine (15) than days of suckiness (13).

There even was a stretch of eight sunny days in a row, from Feb. 15 through Feb. 22. Temperatures also were unusually balmy, with highs in the mid- to upper 50s during that spell. (The weather for the Olympics in Vancouver, BC was much the same, which meant a dearth of snow and cross-country skiers splashing through slush.)

Unfortunately, but inevitably, the high pressure ridge that kept the clouds and rain away for much of the month has moved off, and the forecast is calling for typically cloudy, drizzly, sucky Bend weather this week. That's the one predictable thing about the Bend climate: If we don't get enough suckiness in February, we'll make up for it in March, April and May.

February Totals

Days of Sun: 15
Days of Suck: 13

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 22
Days of Suck: 37

Deep in Denial About The Suck

2010-02-14T17:32:00.000-08:00

One of the suckiest things about living in Bend is the dumb-ass way the locals delude themselves about how hard Bend sucks.

Case in point: Yesterday the local daily newspaper, in a front-page story about solar power, made the rather astonishing claim that Bend has "more sun than Florida."

Say what?

After picking my jaw up off the floor I decided that, in the interests of scientific accuracy and fair and honest blogging, I shouldn't simply assume the assertion was full of shit; I should make some effort to check it out.

So I went to the city-data.com Web site (an invaluable repository of all sorts of economic, demographic and climatic information about thousands of cities) and looked at the sunshine chart for Bend, just to refresh my memory.

Then I looked at the sunshine charts for Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tallahassee and St. Petersburg.

The chart for every one of those five Florida cities shows sunshine substantially ABOVE the national average for most of the year. The Bend chart shows sunshine substantially BELOW the national average for almost all of of the year, except for a period of about six weeks in midsummer.

In fact, the curve showing Bend's sunshine is almost exactly the same as the sunshine curve for Portland, which is notorious for its gray, rainy climate.

The newspaper story didn't explain the basis for the "more sun than Florida" claim. Perhaps, in some obscure technical way, it's legitimate. For example, there might be more sun in an open field in Bend on a typical summer day than there is inside a sealed crypt in Florida on a typical summer day. Or there might be more sun outdoors in Bend on a sunny day than there is 40 feet underwater in Florida on a cloudy day. I can't be sure.

But my strong suspicion is that "more sun than Florida" is just one more load of Chamber of Commerce bullshit which the paper passed on without question, and which -- like "300 days of sunshine" -- will be added to the local folklore and help Bendites continue to live in denial of the fact that this town truly, deeply and profoundly sucks.

ADDENDUM: At the top of the post is a chart that Jack Elliot obtained from Dr. Vignola at the U of O. Evidently Central Oregon gets more solar energy than Florida by some arcane measurement process. I'm still not persuaded that Bend truly gets "more sun than Florida" by any reasonable human standard.

Groundhog Forecasts 18 More Weeks of Suckiness for Bend

2010-02-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

According to German folklore, if a hibernating groundhog pops out of his burrow on Feb. 2 and sees his shadow, he'll go back inside his burrow and winter will last six more weeks. If he doesn't see his shadow, there will be an early spring.

We in Bend always get a laugh out of the Groundhog Day tradition, because no matter what the frickin' groundhog does on Feb. 2 we KNOW the weather here is going to stay sucky until the middle of June.

Nevertheless, for the record, let it be stated that Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, PA this morning and saw his shadow, meaning the rest of the Northern Hemisphere will have six more weeks of winter.

Seven Days of Sunshine, 24 Days of Suck

2010-02-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

The Sunshine Count for the first month of 2010 is in. By Blackdog's unscientific, but fair, reckoning, there were seven days of sunshine -- i.e., days on which the sun shone most of the time -- in January. On the other 24 days, Bend was its usual gray, gloomy, dreary, dismal, drizzly self.

The first and last days of January were nearly cloudless. In between were scattered five days that I considered sunny enough to count as "days of sunshine." I was being generous on two or three of them.

Bend needs to rack up a total of only 66 non-sunny days to give the lie to the absurd "300 days of sunshine" claim, and it's more than a third of the way there already. I'm betting it will hit the mark by the end of March.

January Totals:

Days of Sun: 7
Days of Suckiness: 24

YTD Totals:

Days of Sun: 7
Days of Suckiness: 24

The Ballad of Sucky Bend

2010-01-30T08:16:00.000-08:00

Just about twenty-five years ago

I set out on the road

Thought I’d found a paradise

At least that’s what I was told.

Things got bad, things got worse,

I guess you know the tune.

Oh Lord, fog-fucked in Bend again.

Rode in on Highway 97

I didn’t have a clue

Just how hard this place could suck

My hopes and dreams fell through

Ran out of time and money

This never was my plan

Oh Lord, fog-fucked in Bend again.

If I had a dollar

For every sucky day

I’d buy a ticket outta here

And give my house away.

You know I’d catch the next plane

To someplace where it don’t rain

Oh Lord, fog-fucked in Bend again.

-- with apologies to Creedence

Is Bend Getting Suckier?

2010-01-12T08:35:00.001-08:00

Maybe it's global climate change or maybe it's just that I'm becoming an old fart, but it seems to me that Bend's climate is getting suckier as the years go by.

I remember the winters when I moved here more than 20 years ago being much colder and snowier, but also a lot sunnier. A storm would blow in, dump a foot or two of snow and move out, leaving a sparkling landscape of pristine white under dazzling blue skies.

No more. The pattern we seem to get these days is week after week of gray, dismal weather, interspersed with those sucktacular INVERSIONS (four already this winter, by my count).

If this is the way it's gonna be I might as well move to Portland. At least it's warmer there, they don't get fog-fucked, and spring arrives in March -- not late June.

Fog-Fucked in Sucky Bend Again

2010-01-06T14:48:00.000-08:00

Bend is socked in with yet another episode of freezing fog -- the fourth this year, by my count, and winter has barely begun.

This morning I was commiserating with a young local musician about the Bend freezing fog phenomenon. He told me he had his own special descriptive term for it.

"Let me see if I can guess," I said. "It's a four-letter word that begins with S and it isn't 'soup.'"

"Nope," he said. "I call it 'being fog-fucked.'"

Fog-fucked. I like it. Kind of sums up life in freezing, foggy, sucky, fucked-up Bend.