Look closely at this picture:

 

 

Yep, the local temp was 32° at 6:55 AM yesterday. The red exclamation point indicated that this area was under a Freeze Warning.

Many of those who don’t live here don’t understand the weather. They think it’s hot all year long and that the air is stagnant much of the time, both of which are not true. The average high temperature here at this time of the year is in the low-to-mid 60s and the average low is in the low 40s. A reading of 32° is not that unusual. (The record low for today’s date here, which is not Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, is 27°.) I called the post Freezing In The Desert just to grab attention.

What is true, though, is how much my system has changed just in the 14 months we have lived here. I have become even less tolerant of “cold” temperatures. The indoor temp is in the high 60s and I am cold. I try to turn on the space heater in my office at least 30 minutes before I know I am going to be in there for any length of time.

I know it’s common for people to become less tolerant of cold weather as they age. However, I think that process has been accelerated by moving to the desert.

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From this CNBC article:

 

“Horrific scenes seen in previous Covid-19 waves are “now history,” according to John Bell, a regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford and the U.K. government’s life sciences advisor.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday [December 28], Bell analyzed data from the U.K., where cases are breaking records and hospital admissions are at their highest since March. He said that the number of people in ICUs who are vaccinated remains “very, very low.” [emphasis mine]

“The incidence of severe disease and death from this disease [Covid] has basically not changed since we all got vaccinated and that’s really important to remember,” he told the BBC.”

 

Kudos to CNBC for not solely dealing in fear mongering, unlike most of the news media. The emphasis on number of cases is not relevant anymore, in my opinion. However, in the “great tradition” of negativity sells, we will be fed the worst possible spin on the situation.

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This Classic Cars piece is about reorganization of the RM Sotheby’s team that leads its auction operations. The reorganization was necessary because many key members of Sotheby’s team resigned in 2021 to start their own auction company, Broad Arrow Group.

If you go to the Broad Arrow website, right near the top is this sentence: “Car collectors and enthusiasts buy and sell an estimated $25 billion worth of collector cars each year.” More countries than you might think have an annual GDP of less than $25 billion, although some of them just have small populations and not all of them are poor countries. (If a country has a population of a half million–a very small population for a country–and a per capita GDP of $50,000, which would rank among the top 30 of all nations, its annual GDP would be $25 billion. US GDP is not that far from $25 trillion with a population of about 330 million.)

Anyway…I didn’t know the actual size of the collector car market until reading this. (Yes, it’s just an estimate.) It is true that the collector car market had a great year in 2021. For example, Mecum had two auctions (Kissimmee and Indianapolis) with total sales in excess of $100 million for the first time in its history.

Of course, much of that “boom” had to have been pent-up demand after the damn virus shutdowns of 2020. How the market will unfold in the next 5-10 years is anyone’s guess. I still hope to buy a collector car as a companion for my 2016 Z06. Where I would store the car is unknown at this time and is the great obstacle. I think it will come down to one of these two cars:

 

 

The top photo is a Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk and the bottom is a Cadillac Allante, both members of my Ultimate Garage 3.0. Once again from the movie Diner, “If you don’t have dreams you have nightmares.”

 

#FreezingInTheDesert

#BooOnTheNewsMedia

#CollectorCarMarket

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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