Of Delta Breezes And Exploding Milk

Seemingly unrelated tales, brought to mind by a fellow Linkster. Unrelated except that they happened to me.

There's a phenomenon up around the Oakland/Sacramento area known as the "Delta Breeze". It's a cold on-shore wind that blows almost steadily. The local joke is that if the wind ever stopped, everyone would fall over (from leaning into the wind). Even the trees grow at an angle.

One evening, I was trying to walk back from Solano Mall to Travis AFB (~5 miles; there was no bus service at that hour). I was walking backwards, with the wind in my face, trying to hitch a ride. I think I made it about three miles before a car actually picked me up.

When I finally got back to my room and changed into my sweats for bed, I noticed that my skin was cold all over -- even that line around the waist covered by my belt. I had already noticed the early signs of hypothermia while I was walking, but didn't really realize just how close I had come. Scary stuff.

When I was working in our headquarters office in Germany in the early '70s, we had a small kitchenette in the basement. One morning, I decided to make some cream of wheat, which calls for hot milk. I poured the milk into a pressure cooker and -- not wanting to wait forever for the milk to heat up -- I put the lid on. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a very close eye on it. Next thing I knew, there was milk steaming out of the pressure relief valve.

I ran over and -- in an effort to quickly relieve the pressure -- simply twisted the lid to the unlocked position. Hot milk went everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. Including all over me. No real damage done, except that I smelled like sour milk until lunchtime, when I got to go back to the apartment and change clothes.

Ever since then, I've referred to that as The Morning The Milk Blew Up.