I fell in to a burning ring of fire....

Well, not quite a burning ring of fire, more a burning state, and the falling in is more flying in, but large parts of Southern California (or SoCal as they like to call it) are on fire. Santa Barbara county is the northern most county with wild fires, but they thankfully haven't come anywhere near me, although they've still affected me in strange ways.

On Saturday morning I looked out and saw beautiful blue sky's and a big pile of work and being an inventive person I combined the two by taking my work down to the beach. I quickly realised that it was v.windy, but being a stubborn person I continued on regardless, bravely holding my miniskirt down as I walked. By the time I got down to the beach my hair was everywhere, but I was mollified by the fact that the wind had created good surf for once and I was able to watch hot surfers whilst pretending to study. Oz soon joined me so I was able to check someone out even closer by.

I realised that the Channel Islands weren't very visible, and with them being only 40 miles away and mountainous they are usually visible. I wasn't shocked by this until at about 4 pm I looked up from my books (in between the perving some studying actually happened) and realised I couldn't see them at all, and the oil rig that is about a mile or so away wasn't particularly visible either. I assumed that the air was just dusty and that the dirt covering my shirt was just the dust that they call soil. When I got home I covered the bath with a thin layer of grime and forgot all about the dust.

On Sunday I awoke and cleaned of a fairly thick layer of dust off my bike seat, but I still failed to realise that what I thought was dust was in fact ash. Although the fires only started on Sunday the wind had swept up the ash from a previous fire and deposited it in the atmosphere. Very kind of it. This combined with the fires that were just starting and made my week very dirty.

UCSB have been so concerned about the fires that they sent everyone an email telling us to remain inside if at all possible along with a lot of other suggestions (for example, avoiding highways so the emergency services can use them) and everyday our student newspaper has printed more information.

There was so much ash in the atmosphere that I saw someone walking around campus wearing a dust mask, she was either trying to avoid getting dust in her lungs or trying to avoid the bad cold that was everywhere on campus and made the ash even more fun.

After a day of walking around in flip flops, which due to it being an overly warm week anyway (even by SoCal standards) were necessary, my feet were black, it was horrible, I had to wash not only my feet but also my flip flops. The ash was everywhere.

On the slightly positive side the weather was lovely and warm (not that we could leave the house unless necessary...) and on Wednesday night there was a beautiful orange moon as a result of the pollution.

It wasn't until yesterday evening that the ash began to lift and I could see the beautiful mountains that are only five miles away again.

The actuality of the fires hasn't really hit home, the news stations generally aren't very good and I've been too busy to watch TV anyway. It hasn't seemed real. I'm just glad that the fires came no closer to us.