"The canyon segment of Route 178 scores a unheard of 257 on the state's safety index; this means that the canyon portion of Route 178 gets 257% more accidents then would be expected on a mythical state highway with similar average daily traffic." Huh, it never occurred to me that there are freeway geeks, but here we have it.
Archive for the 'Bodfish' Category
Look, look, a vacation! I haven't actually had one of these in so long... Here are my plans:
- Finish Metal Gear Solid so I can play Metal Gear Solid 2. I'm currently about 1/4 through.
- Finish Rogue Leader, which I'm currently about 4/5 through.
- Finish Luigi's Mansion, which I haven't started, but which I've been told is short, easy, and fun.
- On the train ride home, play lots of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons on my Game Boy. I meant to play it on the ride down, too, but I kind of got distracted by writing thousands upon thousands of words.
Of course, since I'm so awesome, let's check what I've forgotten:
- My extra cube controller, so now I've got to make a trip by the crazy store on Friday so I can play my brother some two-player wave race. Of course, I was planning to buy some extra controllers anyway once Smash Brothers comes out, but I don't like having the issue forced.
- My mom's green afghan, which she had my brother remind me to bring via IM about 3 minutes before I left, so I'm just a moron.
Speaking of unique signs, I can't go very long without mentioning a certain sign in the canyon. (I might talk a lot about Bakersfield, but my parents actually live in Wofford Heights, near Lake Isabella, which is some 45 miles from Bakersfield. Highway 178 connects the two, and runs through the canyon, which has been carved out over the years by the Kern River (Famous for it's motto "Stay out, stay alive," or alternately, "Bakersfield: A riverbed runs through it"))
Highway 178 is a curvy, two-lane road, with a cliff along one side, and a drop to the river on the other. Persuaded by gravity, rocks have been known to fall onto the road. To make things more interesting, the canyon is free range land, and it's not entirely out of the question to come around a sharp corner only to found a cow (or a hell of a lot of cows) in the middle of the road. And occasionally, cattle can be seen standing at impossible angles on the cliffs above the highway, mindlessly grazing.
To account for these interesting features, there are warning signs. A yellow sign with a black cow on it. A picture of a car tipping on it's side. A picture of a car with rocks falling towards it. Among others.
And some clever fellow modified one of the falling rock signs to include a black, bovine shaped blob, falling towards a black, car shaped blob.
I'll see about getting a picture next time I'm down that way (or my mom might already have a picture).
Oh, and a bit of friendly advice: If you ever hit a cow on highway 178, don't report that you did it. Yes, report that there's a dead cow on the road, so that they can clean it up, but do not report that you hit it. It's free range land, so the cows are kind of allowed to be there. Your insurance probably won't pay for the damages, and the farmer certainly won't pay for them. In fact, he'll probably want you to pay for the cow, and cows are expensive.
I had one plan for my weekend of surgery recovery, but it's gone nothing according to plan, leaving me recovering in a completely different, but equally acceptable way.
Here's what I planned:
Completely on the recommendation of a reader, I ordered Fishing With John. And completely of my own free will, I ordered Gran Turismo 3. I was going to lug my PlayStation 2 home with me, watch Fishing With John, and play Gran Turismo 3.
This did not happen, because I apparently haven't learned my lesson about ordering things before trips yet. I placed both orders on the morning of Thursday, July 12th. I ordered GT3 from EB Games, while I ordered Fishing With John from Amazon.com. I was more concerned with getting GT3, since I knew my brother really wanted to play it (and he doesn't have a PS2), but I didn't think there would be a problem, because EB's default shipping was called "second day air." I did the math, and figured there would be all kinds of time for my package to get there before I left on Wednesday the 18th. It was the DVD from amazon that I was concerned about getting on time. But I didn't want to pay for extra shipping, and I knew I could cope if I didn't get to watch the DVD this weekend, so I just left it at that.
Here's what happened:
Well, of course GT3 didn't come in, but Fishing With John came in without a problem. And as is always the case with my shipping woes, GT3 arrived Wednesday morning, when I was on the way to catch my train. But without GT3, there was no way I was going to lug my PS2 home. And yet, I brought the Fishing With John DVD anyway... So I got stuck here with a DVD without a player to watch it with. Oops.
So I knew Tuesday night that my GT3 plans had fallen through, so I quickly tossed together alternative weekend plans -- Reading! I've had a couple of books in my queue for awhile that I hadn't gotten around to reading, because I tend to get so caught up in books that it really disrupts my sleep schedule. What better time to disrupt my sleep schedule then when I'm already going to be knocked out off and on because of pain killers?
So I've already finished The Science of Discworld, and I'm well into American Gods. And I have GT3 waiting for me when I get back to Berkeley. It wasn't what I had planned, but it's certainly not a bad way to spend a restful weekend . More in depth reviews of all of the above are coming later. Right now, I need to get back to Shadow's tale.
I might bitch a lot about doing dishes, because I don't have a dishwasher and I have to do them by hand and everything. But being home this weekend has made me realize what a crappy job a dishwasher does if you just put the dishes into the dishwasher without scrubbing them a little, first. A dishwasher can't scrub butter off of a knife, for example -- that has to be done by hand no matter which way you slice it.
And doing all of my dishes by hand has shown me that lots of things don't even have to be run through the dishwasher, saving all kinds of electricity and water. Which just means that once I do have a dishwasher some day, I'll just use it sparingly, and not rely on it to actually clean everything magically for me. The commercials might like to lead you to believe that that's how it works, but it actually just leaves ugly dirty dishes.
In about 28 hours, I'll be (hopefully be unconscious and not feeling any pain) having my wisdom teeth out. All four of them, as I've previously mentioned. Apparently my insurance is all kosher, and I'm good to go, et cetera.
But before any of that can happen, I have to get to Bakersfield. My train leaves at 10:20 in the morning, and it's currently 5:00am, and I'm awake. Why? Because I haven't slept yet. There's been a ton I've been trying to get done before I'm gone for a long tall weekend filled with pain reliever fun (though hopefully I'll be better enough by Sunday to perhaps play with the Jet Skis again). So updates have been scarce because of work, and they're going to be scarce because I'll hopefully be in one form of unconsciousness or another for awhile.
I know noramlly I'd write a lot on the train, but this perfectly good train ride will be wasted because I've got to make up the sleep I'm missing right now. But think, if I were asleep right now, you wouldn't be reading this completely useless, waste of space post! Imagine what you'd be missing out on!
Uhhh...
But I had things to do! Packing, reviewing my new lease, coding, et cetera. And in an hour (6am pst, 9am est) I plan to watch Steve Jobs Keynote speech from Mac World New York, to see what neat new things he Apple announces.
I wish I could just go to sleep, because I'm clearly not being overly productive. And when I stood on my bed earlier this evening to reaffix my falling PowerBook G4 to the wall, the feel of the sheets on my feet left my whole body desiring more. But I can't go to sleep now, because I'll miss the Apple announcements. And more importantly, I'd likely sleep through my train, rather than sleep on the train.
Yesterday, I went to Bakersfield for a doctor appointment (and I apparently look and sound fine, and I'm not dead yet, but blood-tests might indicate otherwise). After the appointment, I went and saw Shrek again, because I figured I should take advantage of cheap Bakersfield movie prices while I had the opportunity -- but about half-way through the movie, I got a call from my dad, telling me that the canyon road (Hwy 178, for those playing along at home) between Bakersfield and my Parent's house was closed due to fires and falling rocks. Since my dad works in Bakersfield and commutes, he was in Bakersfield with me. He suggested we leave one of the cars in town, and take an alternate, much trickier route home. In my foolish optimism (and desire to see the end of Shrek), I declined, figuring that it couldn't possibly take them that long to clear the canyon.
Well, the movie ended, and I called my mom, and got some information numbers to call, and she called one of the reporters from the paper she works for, and I found out two things: 1. The recordings CalTrans offers up (via 1-800-427-7623) are useful for spatial, but not temporal information. In other words, I found out that it was closed, but not when it closed or how long it'd be closed. 2. The highway patrol expected to have it open by 5am.
So, to review the situation: it was about 9:30pm. My train was leaving for Berkeley in twelve hours, but all of my stuff was in Wofford Heights, because I was just going to a doctor appointment -- why would I take my luggage and laptop, etc, with me to the doctor? I couldn't take the direct, easy, well known 1 hour route home due to fire, etc. Two alternate routes exist: A complicated path I've never driven, and on which my dad got lost and ended up back in Bakersfield and took more than two hours to get home, or going around the problem to Tehachapi to Ridgecrest, which is at least a two and a half hour drive.
"Bugger that," I decided, and once I got ahold of my friends, I went and slept at Mike's house again. And used Mike's computer. And sat in Mike's chair, and used Mike's cable modem, and watched one of Mike's movies on Mike's TV and DVD player.
The issue of my stuff and the train still remained, though. So I called my mom and told where about the house I'd scattered my things: A book in the trailer out back by the bed. Showery stuff in the bathroom. Laptop + accessories on the bar. Yack Yack Yack.
She did a dandy job. I just forgot to mention my headphones. So now I'm sitting on the train, distinctly not listening to the mix of 500 some-odd mp3's I lug around. It's going to be a long six hours without any music and having to listen to the too-loud music of other people, and it's all my fault, because I decided not to go home with my dad, and forgot to tell my mom about the headphones. No one to blame but me!
Later on the same train ride: Here I am, sitting on the train about 3 minutes from Martinez -- And I've been sitting here for more than an hour. Ironically, we're stranded here because some grass fires north of here affected the train tracks, and the scheduling of all the trains in the area have been impacted. It seems I'm just bad luck with grass fires these days.
After the train ride: My mom mailed me in response to the above, and informed me that I should have spent less time being bored and more time looking through all my things, because she had definitely packed my headphones. So I unpacked and there, in my suitcase, I found my headphones. It wasn't even in the realm of possibility that she would have put my headphones in my suitcase, considering that my backpack wasn't even full. But it's still my fault for not looking through my luggage, or calling my mom and checking with her. Ah well, nothing that can be done about it now that the trip is more than a day passed.
My family recently bought a couple of used jet-skis, and today we hauled them the half a mile down to the lake (yes, my parents live about half a mile from a lake) and took them out for the first time.
There are two, but one is significantly more powerful than the other. Naturally, the red one is more powerful one, because "red goes faster." Unfortunately, the powerful one seems to have a bad habit where it's engine dies if you let go of the throttle -- so it made it really hard to idle out of the dock area. The less powerful one is yellow and idles beautifully, and in general is more responsive on the throttle because there's less of a range of speeds to deal with.
Rmmm BrmmmmmmmMMM wap wap wape wake hopping splashing slow and turn turn turning splashing into the wind, hair blowing back and 55! the water stings my face and my cheeks are filled with wind wap wap smack! smack stop.
It was very exhilarating, to say the least. With it's extra power, the red one handled better with the wind and wakes, so it was easy to get up on top of the water. The yellow one could get going as well, but it just wasn't quite the same. For taking tight turns, the yellow one was much nicer, because you could let the throttle completely off for a second without the engine dying. With the red one, I had to take wider turns for two reasons -- I was going faster in the straightaway, and with no breaks, I can't actually decelerate, so I had to take an easier turn. And I couldn't just idle the engine in a turn with the red one, forcing me to keep at least a little gas going.
The yellow one doesn't have a speedometer, but I got the red one up to 55 mph -- I was hanging on for dear life, because it felt like if I let go, I would fly off and hit the water and die. And if I let go, I certainly would fly off, and it would probably hurt like hell when I hit the water, but hopefully I wouldn't be permanently injured... Thankfully, I didn't actually fall off, and for sanity, I kept it between 30 and 40 most of the time. It's a heck of lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to going out again later this summer.
Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'm heading down to Bakersfield for my first break since Spring Break (which, of course, wasn't exactly much of a break). I'm returning to Berkeley on Tuesday, just in time for another meeting. I have a lot of meetings these days. I had four meetings today, for example. But that's why I make the big bucks, right?.
Anyway, Bakersfield. And by extension, the Kern Valley, because my parents don't actually live in Bakersfield anymore -- I just say they do. It's easier that way. It's difficult enough telling people where Bakersfield is, let alone trying to explain where somewhere is by having to give directions relative to Bakersfield.
"Yeah, I've been to Bakersfield. Well, I've been through Bakersfield."
I don't particularly have an agenda -- I just hope to take a break. To not think for awhile. I've been thinking non-stop for months, it seems. Right after finals ended, I started working full time. I've got a Dentist appointment. That's fine. All I have to do is go. I don't know what I'll be doing, and that's nice, because right now, I already know everything I'm going to be doing once I get back from my break, in excruciating detail. So it's a vacation, with no real plans. I'll go and spend time with all of my friends in Bakersfield, and go with the flow.
My sister is apparently getting married on August 18th. This isn't that surprising, it's just irritating. The when, not the what.
You see, the very first thing I said when August was initially suggested months before now was "Not August. Anything but August. August is my busiest month."
Did they listen? No. Of course not. So let's check my schedule, shall we? On August 17th I'll be training new employees, which means I'll have to leave on a train for Bakersfield at 6 pm and get there at about midnight. And then, on August 19th, students move into the dorms, and I have to be there to monitor the network and make sure everything goes according to plan, which means I get to get on a train as early as possible on the 19th and go straight to work as soon as I get to Berkeley.
Yucky.
I turned 21 during spring break, which I spent visiting my family. My mom urgently wanted to see the look on the face of the waitress when I ordered a drink, but I wasn't in the mood to order a drink. So she wanted me to order her drink... If she was that desperate to see me order a drink, there was no way I was going to do it. So the incident passed and I returned to Berkeley.
When I went grocery shopping last week (for the first time since turning 21), I figured I might as well taunt my mom by letting her know that I bought something explicitely for the sake of having not bought it in her presence.
Not only did I go that far, but the cashier didn't bat an eye, and didn't check my id. Gee, I guess Berkeley supermarkets are used to the college crowd, while a grocery store in the Kern Valley would probably be a little more suspicious...
After being home for a couple of hours, I was feeling really tight chested. I blamed it on allergies, and the lack of ocean air to keep the pollen moving (away from me). So, being pretty much totally unable to breath, I took my laptop and sat on the hammock swing on the porch. A gentle breeze is blowing. It's so dark I can see the stars clearly. And I can breath again.
It must have just been all the cat and dog fur inside the house that was giving me hell.