I spent a long weekend at Desert Sun. There've been a continuing series of unclear policy changes, rumors and things I never saw before which may or may not be related. Hopefully there'll be more clarity by the time I'm there next month, so I'll hold off on discussing them.

The two most notable things about this trip were the weather and the limo, but there are two other things I'll mention first.

I promised to test the effectiveness of the new "cool decking" near the main pool on a hot day and there was a hot enough day, so I tried walking barefoot on it at the height of the day. It was certainly far better than non-treated pavement, so it does what it's supposed to do, but it's still too hot to walk on comfortably barefoot, so I'd recommend shoes at the hottest times of hot days.

There was also a discussion about servers working topless. At this point, there are two who almost always work that way. I think there's one more who also does from time to time, but I'm not sure.

The weather on my last trip was very atypical in that it was much cooler than usual. This time, there were more clouds but normal temperature. Weather systems in the US typically move from west to east. For Palm Springs, that means the weather needs to go past the mountains and that tends to dissipate all but the strongest systems, which are rare in southern California, especially in the summer. This is why it's almost always sunny in Palm Springs.

But there's what's called a "monsoonal flow", when systems come from Mexico, then through Arizona and up into the southern California area. That's pretty much up the valley, so there aren't mountains to influence them. This happened recently. I arrived Wednesday and it was pretty overcast. On Thursday, it was a mix (but mostly sunny). Friday and Saturday were more normal, but had some clouds, and by Sunday it was back to the normal "not a cloud in the sky" weather. When it was cloudy, it was also much more humid and it may have actually rained for a few seconds on Wednesday.

It was sunny along the beaches during the weekend and hot in the desert, which kept occupancy down, along with it being just after a major holiday weekend. But there were more people than I'd have expected under those conditions: it appeared that at least two condos were rented and I'd say hotel occupancy was in the 1/2 to 2/3 range. There were some people around other than the weekend, which didn't used to be the case.

I decided to try their limo in order to meet Jack. I don't know enough about cars to say what it was, but it was made into a fancy limo seating four people. They have a DVD player and a sound system. It's probably overkill for the short ride to the airport, but would be fun for a longer trip. They can do airport pickups.

As I mentioned, "Pirate Jack" is now their limo driver. I've heard it said you wouldn't recognize him if you passed him on the street. Not only is that true, but you couldn't pick him out of a lineup! He has short white hair and is cleanshaven with just a small white mustache and no jewerly. He looked and is dressed like any other limo driver in Palm Springs: it's quite amazing! We spoke a bit about how he's doing. He seems happy, which is the important thing. He does miss "going across the street", but has a very different life now.