Michael Rawdon's webjournal
Places I’ve lives, places I’ve been
Since the summer of ’76, Ron Leung thought his stolen 1956 Ford Thunderbird was “like the Roman Empire – history.” That is, until he got a call from Palo Alto police Thursday, almost 31 years to the day after it disappeared.
Now he’s eager to get the car to Palo Alto from Southern California, where it was recovered, reportedly in good shape.
Stories of mysteries solved years or decades after they occurred fascinate me.
It’s the weather, really. Well, okay, the jobs are nice, too, but the climate is the reason the Bay Area is so attractive to so many people. Sure, people come and go depending on the economy, but over time there are just so many people who want to live in a place with nice weather almost year-round, rather than deal with snow or six months or rain or tornadoes or humidity or mosquitoes or whatever.
Subrata called it the “eternal summer” the first year I moved here: Sunny days from April through October. The usual morning forecast is “cloudy in the morning, burning off around midday, high around seventy-something.” No, really: I hear this on the radio around 200 days a year. (Most of the rest of the days differ in that they’re either “high in the eighties”, or “chance of showers”.)
(In San Francisco itself, adjust for more fog and lower temperatures, except in September and October when it’s usually warmer.)
Last night I walked out of my building at work. It was still warm (we’re at the trailing end of a heat wave), but the smell in the air and the cooling breeze made me think that I need to get biking to work again.
This morning after breakfast I took Blackjack out on the back patio. I watched him carefully so he wouldn’t spot a squirrel and take off up a tree, but mostly he just wanted to sniff plants.
Several times this month I’ve remarked around 8 pm what a perfect evening it was. I’m sure we’ll have many more.
I don’t take full advantage of the weather the way some of my more outdoorsy friends do, but it’s relaxing just to experience it.
Until September, when I’m sick of it and ready for it to rain.
But even then, it beats humidity and mosquitoes.
Some useful links (well for those of us in the area):
The big news around here is the tanker truck which destroyed a ramp connector in the Macarthur Maze Sunday morning. Amazingly, no one was killed (although the driver was badly hurt). But the accident caused part of a ramp to collapse onto another connector, which is snarling traffic in the east bay (in the Oakland/Berkeley area). It sounds like traffic hasn’t been as bad as people had feared, but it may be only a matter of time.
Here’s a nifty PDF showing the vicinity of the ramp collapse.
Mom, Debbi and I drove along the lower ramp (from I-80 to I-880) last weekend when we went up to Berkeley – an unusually close experience, since I only go to Berkeley a few times per year. And of course Scalzi was up there on his book tour last week (I’m pretty sure he’s innocent, though).
I’m glad I don’t have to commute over any of the bridges. Modern bridges are a boon compared to the olden days (when ferries were the main way to cross the bay to and from San Francisco), but there are so many people in the area that the traffic grid is getting more and more bogged down. And there’s very little redundancy to deal with even partial outages like this one.
We need to do something, but what can we do?
And what happens when the next major earthquake hits?
When talking about the shaky housing market these days, people in the Bay Area are naturally wondering how the market will shake out here. But we do have an intrinsic advantage that goes beyond the employment and cultural opportunities here: On a Saturday in the middle of March you can go over to the ocean and walk along the beach wearing just a light jacket.
My friend Karen has been visiting this week, staying with us but mostly here for business. She finished up the bulk of her work on Thursday, so Friday we went out and gorged ourselves on food, and then Saturday we headed over the hills to Half Moon Bay. We had brunch at one of my favorite breakfast places, the Main Street Grill downtown. We were initially surprised because we went by their storefront and it was empty – cleaned out down to the booths and stools! But it turns out they just moved a block down the street into a large venue which had been the home of the competing diner. Whew! The people and food are just the same, so overall I’d say it’s a win, and they’re still busy enough that a few people who came in after us had to wait for seats.
We spent over an hour shopping downtown; for whatever reason Karen happens to have great success finding things in the little shops and bookstores in downtown. In particular we spent quite a while in the Moon News Bookstore, which is one of those rare independent bookstores which pulls out all the stops in presentation and recommendation of the books it carries – a quantity over quality approach.
Downtown is actually experiencing a lot of turnover: Other than the second diner that went under, a travel clothing store is moving out-of-state, and several boutiques have turned over since our last visit (which must have been late last year). Some turnover is a good thing for consumers I think, but of course it’s a good thing only up until one of your favorites stores goes out of business. But at least new stores keep springing up, which means that Half Moon Bay isn’t moribund and is still in some demand.
After that we drove over to the beaches south of Pillar Point Harbor where we walked along the beach for a while. I was chilly and overcast, but not really so bad if you had a jacket on. Try that in New England this month, people! We walked north towards the harbor before turning around to walk along the trail which runs above the beaches to head back to the car. (I had thought there used to be a bookstore in that vicinity, but either I was mistaken or else it’s gone under. Ah, well!)
So after a view of the ocean, of the various coastside plants that are flowering at this time of year, and a brief encounter with a kitty-cat, we piled back into the car, picked up some coffee, and drove back home.
A great outing. I don’t know why we don’t do this more often.
I was sitting at the computer tonight when I felt like I was bouncing around a little. Nothing else in the room was moving, but I still wondered, “Huh, are we having an earthquake?”
Yep, we were. A 4.2 magnitude quake based on the other side of the bay. People out that way felt it pretty strongly. Ceej and Bill felt it too. A lot of people did, actually.
Although not as strong, the first earthquake I felt was more memorable. But Jon Miller on the Giants broadcast will do that.
An unusual way to mark my 8th anniversary working at Apple.
We’ve been having a shortage of rain this winter – not quite a drought, but enough that the papers have started writing about it.
Well, after showers yesterday, it rained in earnest last night. Which is pretty much how I think of California: Nice during the day, rain at night. At least, that was the pattern back when I first moved here: The rain was tailing off when my alarm went off, and it was sunny by noon.
Hopefully we’ll get plenty of rain in February and March. It will help stave off the cold temperatures, if nothing else!
Brrr… damn it’s cold! Apparently the Bay Area has had an Alaskan cold front sitting over it for the last week, which has meant overnight lows around freezing, conditions we usually don’t see except for a few days in late January. It’s totally killed my enthusiasm for going on morning bike rides, after five consecutive days of exercise in relatively balmy weather during my time off last week.
Despite this, Subrata and I decided to go play ultimate frisbee last night, even though it’s our team’s bye week. Turnout was better than I’d expected given the conditions – usually we field 4 teams a night, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had fewer than the 28 people necessary for that. But we 35-40 people showed up during the night.
We joined another team scheduled to play that night, but more people from our regular team kept trickling in, either to play pickup, or because they didn’t realize it was our bye week and figure since we didn’t play Tuesday we must play Thursday! Eventually we had 6 of our regular team show up, and I think we outnumbered the team we joined!
One good thing about the cold weather is that my endurance – always pretty crappy – is much better when the temperature goes below about 55. I can run longer, and I recover faster. So that made the evening more enjoyable. I managed to score a couple of points, and get involved in a few other good points. We ended up staying for the whole session – we’d thought beforehand that we’d probably only stay for half of it – and had a lot of fun.
I wouldn’t mind it being a little warmer for the next few weeks, though.
At Felicitas Publica, some articles about changes to the MBTA subway system in Boston over the last 40 years:
The New England Transportation Site has some historical system maps, as well. And the Wikipedia entry on the T looks jam-packed with information as well.
The Images of America series of books (which I enjoy a lot) has a couple of volumes on urban rail lines in Boston: Boston in Motion (I think I might own this one), Trolleys Under the Hub and Boston’s Blue Line.
Today we drove down to Monterey and Pacific Grove for the day. Originally we were going to spend the night and then Debbi was going to walk the Big Sur Half Marathon tomorrow morning, but she’s been having problems with blisters on her feet and was concerned she might not be able to finish in the time alotted, so she decided to punt this time. But she still wanted to pick up her registration packet – including the nifty shirt – so we drove down anyway.
I don’t quite go to Monterey often enough to be able to find my way around without a map, but at least I have a better idea of how long it takes to get there than I once did. Actually, we got there in pretty good time, and found the registration site without any trouble. Then we walked through downtown Monterey (which is smaller than I’d remembered, which probably means we didn’t walk the whole thing) and had lunch there.
We then drove over near Cannery Row and visited some book stores over there. It turns out there’s a branch of Bookbuyers on Lighthouse Ave.
After that we did a drive along the coast in Pacific Grove, which is truly one of the most beautiful coasts I’ve ever driven along. We stopped for a walk at one point, and I took a few pictures:
On the way back into town we stopped at the Monarch Grove Sanctuary, and it’s early in the season where monarch butterflies overwinter in Monterey. Just when we arrived we were fortunate to see a swarm of hundreds of butterflies near the observation area – apparently not a common occurrence! Sadly I didn’t have my camera ready, but I did later snap one decent photo of a lone flier:
We may need to go back closer to the height of the season.
We did some window-shopping on Cannery Row and even got ice cream at a Ghirardelli shop there (which I hadn’t known existed). We decided not to go to the aquarium this time around, instead just seeing the rest of Monterey. (Besides which, the aquarium seems to have gotten awfully expensive – over $20 per person!)
It was surprisingly warm and sunny down there, which made for a nice day of walking. A fun time!
