Date:         Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:54:02 -0800
Reply-To:     Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Subject:      Re: How not to explore the back roads of Death Valley
Comments: To: Jeff <vw.doka@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <4b241892.8502be0a.16dc.ffffa63b@mx.google.com>
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--snip--
Personally, I know quite a few "rare modern, educated Germans (not university though), wealthy enough to travel" who do not read English, and do not speak it fluently.
--snip--

I dunno that reading the language has anything to do with it. Some years ago I was supervising a crew of developmentally disabled adults at the Coso Junction rest area south of Lone Pine; it was one of those summer days where the breeze felt like somebody was holding a hair dryer up to your face, and here comes this blue-under-beige dust-armored rental car, wheezing in with heat waves coming off of it. This English couple in their sixties (I'd guess) stumbled out, flushed and angry, and looking for all the world like somebody that'd just narrowly escaped with their lives from some disaster. I asked what had happened and the lady went into a tirade (the gent just went into the bathroom) about how they'd gone to Death Valley because some friend of theirs had told them how beautiful the flowers had been when they'd visited there. Of course the flowers there bloom in the very early spring; this was August.
She went on and on about the heat, the price of everything, the lack of flowers, the lack of everything else except the dirt and the heat. I let her wind down for a bit and then I asked her if they'd ever stopped to wonder why they called it 'Death' valley. She was not amused. I wasn't particularly either; apparently they'd gotten out somewhere to walk around, and like most folks that have never been exposed to those temps they wound up turning back to the car just about the same time they figured out that they were suffering- and then of course the car was hot as hell from sitting in that sun.
You'd have thought from her attitude that she thought it was a gross lack of judgment on somebody else's part to leave a death trap like that laying out there in the desert for people to stumble into. She was really pissed, but not at herself, as if she had been tricked. I got the vibe from the old guy that he was just beginning to absorb how lucky they were to not have seriously hurt themselves.

Cya,
Robert