California is so crazy beautiful.

It really, really is.

My driver said they rarely get tornados. “People see the tornado shelter signs in the airport, they think we get ’em all the time, but we don’t. Big thunderstorm coming though.”

It was big. People were lined up against the glass windows of Terminal B, looking south and east at the huge, slowly revolving storm cell. Its curtain clouds dropped fringed fingers towards the ground.

The tornado sirens started to go off.

I found a front row seat near the tornado shelter, next to an old man who determinedly read the paper through the whole event. The storm cell moved east across the prairie. Lightning lit it from the inside, giving it an eerie green glow.

It started to hail. The smell of ozone flooded into the terminal.

Compared to a good Sydney storm it was not all that. But it did spawn eight tornados and delay my flight by three hours. I was late to Salome’s birthday party.

Thought we might go hawking.

His name is Don Diego Alejandro Inigo Montoya del Gato.

We like him very much.