“What’s your favorite form of holiday precipitation?” asks a reader from Carthage, Mo.
Weather slows, but never stops, the essential work at Catch Basin. (John Garrity)
Unsure how to reply, I sent the question to the basement data center at Catch Basin, our Kansas City headquarters. Within the hour, the following ranking appeared on my first-generation (camera-less) iPad:
1) Freezing drizzle, freezing rain, freezing fog, surface condensation (tie), 10.31
2) Snow (fresh), 10.46
3) Snow (partially melted — i.e., slush), 9.28
4) Sleet, 9.10
5) Rain, 11.13
6) Hail, 8.19
On reflection, I think this ranking fairly captures my sentiments regarding the wet stuff. I favor “quiet” precipitation, for obvious reasons.*
*As a writer, I do my best work when there are no distractions, and the sound of car tires crunching through curbside slush certainly counts as a distraction. My avocation as a cocktail pianist also suffers from storms, particularly when hail starts clanging off the music-room skylights during one of my nine-hour practice sessions.
To be sure, the silent forms become an annoyance when vehicles start sliding off the frontage road and piling up at the bottom of the berm. But I own a fleet of radio-dispatched tow trucks, so even the “worst” weather has its compensations. (As I write this, a matte-finish glaze is silently accumulating on the surrounding pavements. For a few hours, at least, we needn’t worry about Jehovah’s Witnesses or band-candy grifters.)
Precipitation in any form is currently welcome, as I recently spent eight days in the Arizona desert — an ordeal that left me with cracked and bleeding lips and mismatched hands, one deeply tanned, the other jarringly pale. I will report on this five-course cactus banquet in my next post, which I have scheduled for Christmas Eve (for maximum impact).
TMGC runner-up Chuck Garbedian chronicles his own greatness on The Gallery’s 51st-ranked North Course, a John Fought/Tom Lehman design. (John Garrity)
Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but Chuck Garbedian, the Top 50’s morning-radio coordinator and Wisconsin station chief, scored an impressive second-place at the Tucson Media Golf Classic. Two-time TMC champ and TMC Hall of Famer Gary Van Sickle failed to place this year, but Sports Illustrated’s senior writer got high marks for his on-stage interview with former PGA Tour star and Golf Channel analyst Notah Begay, who was in Tucson for the grand opening of his Sewailo Golf Club, co-designed with Ty Butler. The new track, a desert-golf anomaly with wide fairways and a plethora of water features, debuts at No. 51.
The 17th hole at the new Sewailo Golf Club at Tucson’s Casino Del Sol Resort. (John Garrity)
John Garrity's Top 50 