Heading south for Christmas

Christmas is a time to travel to see friends and family… so early (or not that early) Saturday, Christmas Eve, the dogs and I hit the road southbound, heading for Tucson Arizona…

We had run the last of the Pajama Trains the evening before… and of course the locomotive broke down as the second and last train was to leave… we fired up a back up locomotive, and made the run, only a little late… Note to self; We know what the first project will be on Tuesday when I return to work… 

It was a cold damp cloudy morning, threatening rain… not the quick violent flash flood inducing rain that is common in desert summers, but instead a continual all day rain…  The kind of rain common in Northern California, but thanks to the Sierra, rarely found in Southern Nevada.  Tradition suggest I might call it a dark and stormy day… 

Heading out of town, I grabbed a coffee at McDonalds in Boulder City…  across the street from the railroad, but didn’t stop...  A few minutes and only 10 miles later, a bit before 9:00, and only 21 miles from home I crossed the Tillman bridge and the Colorado River into Arizona…  The clouds were low, and there was snow on the mountains, mostly lost in the clouds…  As soon after crossing the border I started to see Joshua trees… I was no longer in the Las Vegas Valley, but in a different desert…  The road, Hwy 93…  was in poor condition… there were potholes, and no shoulder…  It felt like a minor secondary road, but there was too much traffic…   Soon it started to rain.  At first a mist, but eventually just rain… with wind… 

North of Kingman I passed the sad remains of Santa’s Land… a one time road side amusement park, now abandoned…  Little remained beyond a couple of buildings and a sign… A sad sight indeed on Christmas Eve.   I stopped and took a couple of pictures… I needed a jacket and a hat.  It was cold and wet… 

By Kingman the rain was heavy, and the roads in town were flooded…  I didn’t take any time to wander, but instead hopped on I-40 eastbound, climbing towards Flagstaff.  Lighted freeway signs were warning of an accident ahead and heavy snow…  It continued to rain…  

Just before the Hwy 93 turnoff the rain changed… as the signs had promised it was snowing… not yet sticking, but snowing…  Just in time I took Hwy 93 south, towards a lower elevation…  A sign on the highway proclaimed “Future I-11 Corridor”  as I dodged potholes…  I saw my first Saguaro catus of the trip… still a different kind of desert, then soon after a sign saying that this was the “Joshua Tree Parkway”...  Along the Joshua Tree Parkway, in Wikieup Arizona I paused at a unique sculpture… Snoopy and his desert wandering brother Spike riding a rocket Slim Pickens style… Because nothing says this is an interesting place like a comic book dog on a rocket… 

The rain continued, and by now the normally dry desert washer were carrying water, in most cases a trickle, but in some a mini maelstrom of muddy angry water…  As the elevation dropped, and the land flattened the desert was awash in standing water…  

Driving through Phoenix was slow… Hwy 93 is just a city street with traffic signals and cross traffic…  You pass by the gated and safe Sun City, then though industrial areas with auto body shops, auto auctions and likely if not Christmas Eve, good taco trucks.

Finally onto I-10, in the rain, with crazy drivers trying to go too fast, and the visitors trying to figure out where they are, driving too slow and suddenly changing lanes as they figure out they are in the wrong place… It was a challenging mess to navigate.  

Now south of Phoenix, on what is normally a fast drive… but it is still raining, now raining harder, with high winds and the road is now awash, and everyone’s tires are throwing water in the air, creating a near whiteout.  The big trucks are particularly bad… their sprays of water hit with the force of a fire hose,  scaring drivers and seemingly pushing you sideways towards the shoulder.  It was a slow drive.

The storm finally breaks as I reach Tucson… just ahead the line of clouds end, and there is sunlight peaking under… but it was a tease, for the storm was moving south, and it soon caught up when I stopped… 

I found my hotel, then went in search of some supplies… I was out of dog poop bags… I found the needed bags, then picked up some other goodies in time to check in and make it to Jay’s house…  Of course I had forgotten the time change at the Arizona border… so instead of early I was just on time to go to dinner… at least its an hour I will get back tomorrow when north bound… 

Now, its time for family, and a deep breath…

Fun with Google maps… and finding home

I moved into my new house a couple of weeks ago.  A brand new house… just finished…  I am the second finished home on the block, and I suspect those others are living mostly in California, only visiting on weekends…  Its not lonely, there is a park across the street, where other neighbors walk their dogs, and children come to play… and the there are the construction workers… building the other houses on the block… framers, drywall guys, painters, electricians and stucco crews…

A new house is a wonderful thing… all is fresh and clean, except when the wind blows in the construction debris from the continuing work… but even that is not that bad…

There is one problem… a challenge…  The house is hard to find… not in the conventional sense of "take Lake Meade Parkway north from Boulder Highway then turn left on Sunset."  If you know where it is it is easy to find,  but if you don’t know where it is and if you try to use Google maps or Bing pr similar GPS systems like delivery people and the local garbage service, there are issues… 

Bing (brought to you by your friends at Microsoft) does not know my neighborhood (yet?) exists, including the park across the street which has been there for two years… according to Microsoft I live in the middle of a blank spot in the desert…   If you force the issue it will send you to a different, disconnected portion of East Sunset Rd… about a mile away.

Similarly, Google via an address search (1056 E. Sunset Road) will take you the same older but disconnected portion of Sunset but 2 blocks closer to the my house than Bing, but still a mile off… but then the fun begins… If you choose to try to force Google to the correct location, it knows about my portion of E Sunset road, and the park, and the presence of homes nearby (but satellite view shows a vacant lot…  they will update that image eventually)… and if you ask Google “what is here” it will identify the spot as 1084 E Sunset…  (which is about 6 houses off… not bad Google…) and if you search for 1084 E Sunset I will give you pretty good directions…   but if instead you try 1086 E. Sunset (the next house beyond) we are back at Sunset and Pabco…   Clearly Google only knows one or two addressed on upper East Sunset.   Mapquest gets it right… but is clunky… and doesn’t want to show me where my house is but instead where local businesses are…   Mapquest Satellite view is at least two years old, and doesn’t even show the lake…

So when Best Buy tries to deliver my new washer and dryer, they go to the wrong place, and call, confused, lost…  The same with West Elm…  and the garbage service… who has missed my trash pick-up three times now… then I call (and call and call) and it gets picked up three days later. 

I think I know why… Google (and presumably Bing) populates its maps via a “Geographic Information Service” (GIS) who build their databases on City and County databases which are primarily built on tax information and similar government filings…   and my neighbor at 1084 was the first resident of the street, and has been there long enough for the closing documents and property transfer to make it into the various databases, and a recent Google map update…   My house is too new so hasn’t appeared on the tax rolls and databases…  This of course does not explain the difference between Google and Bing… but of course no one can explain Bing…

So for now, I have to tell delivery people to enter a false address into their GPS, then find my house from there…   Isn’t modern technology wonderful…

Life in the desert…

Its about 104 degrees… at 9:00 pm… the eastern sky is dark, black… Earlier, the National Weather Service was putting out warnings about thunder storms, high winds, lightning strikes… the warnings you hear on the radio proceeded by unworldly warning bleats… with warnings following about lightning and flash floods and staying indoors it sturdy buildings… a few hours ago those warnings were for far eastern Clark County… Clark County includes Las Vegas as well as Henderson where I live, and runs east to the Colorado River…  and the south eastern shore of Lake Meade… 

It appears that the monsoon has arrived… 

Here in the Mojave (Mohave) and Sonora desert the monsoon has several meanings…

On one level it is the moisture, flowing in from the south, which with daytime heating rises, and so forms clouds, which late in the day turn into thunder storms…  for 30 minutes or so… then subsides… 

Here it is also the specific remains of Pacific Ocean tropical storms, channeled north via the Gulf of California, rising when hitting the mountains, to some extent the southern reach of the Rocky Mountains… but in any event the plateaus of Utah… and as they rise, forming clouds, and thunder heads and thunder showers…  resulting in nasty localize flash flooding… 

 So now, at 9:00 pm, in Henderson, at ground level, it is still  dry, low humidity… but above the weather gods are playing…  Generally the nasty weather should stay to the east, but I have spotted a couple of lightning flashes… 

Welcome to the desert…

Life 2.0 The reboot… and a ground hog or Tortoise and wild flowers…

My Life has been disrupted, and as a result I have been distracted and have ignored the blog…

Since last July I have only blogged once… since that July blog post, my wife (of 35 years) and I have divorced, I have taken a new job as the Director of the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Boulder City Nevada (between Las Vegas and Hoover Dam) and I now live in Henderson Nevada…  

I may blog about that eventually, but for now I want to blog about a desert ground hog… Not quite a ground hog… but our local equivalent… (local now being the northern edge of the greater Mohave desert…. )

In much of the US we look to a burrowing beast, a ground hog, named Punxsutawney Phil to predict the end of winter and the coming of spring (noting that ending winter without starting spring would be bad… )  

Traditionally, if when Punxsutawney Phil  emerges from his hole in the ground on Febuary 2^nd, he casts a shadow, we will have 6 more weeks of winter… if no shadow winter will end sooner…  Logical minds might suspect that the only thing that his shadow would suggest it the state of the cloud cover on February 2^nd… 

Here, near Las Vegas in the Mohave we have a different animal and a different system… we have Mohave Max… a desert tortoise, and as locally believed when Max emerges from his burrow after his winter brumate (the reptilian form of hibernation)  Winter is over…  

Max has his own website…. http://mojavemax.com/   He has a facebook page too….   https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mojave-Max/517602118291193

Two days ago, on March 8^th at 1:20 pm Max emerged… so winter is over…  He quickly returned to his burrow, so maybe its not quite over… but mostly its over…

Today, as I pulled into the driveway at 5:00 after a day at work, the Jeep said it was 82 degrees… 
supporting Max and his (officially sanctioned) decision to call an end to Winter… 

With spring, come wild flowers… this was a wet fall and the wild flowers in Death Valley are especially spectacular this year…  a Super Bloom… a once in a life time bloom of color in the desert…  tomorrow the girls and I will head west to Death Valley… to explore a bit and see the flowers… The National park web site on the bloom is found at http://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/wildflowers.htm

Reports to follow….

Winter is coming

With out apology for not blogging for some time...

It’s a dark and wet night… not quite dark and stormy… but our first winter storm in a year here in the land of drought…  It is really damp, not yet wet.

It is fire season…  not politically correct… but warming…  We had a fire last night… and the night before… but not tonight…  

Others are in bed... the dishes are done or at least the dishwasher is loaded and running... 

A few minutes ago, the old dog wanted out… I let her out… went outside with her… sitting in a plastic adirondack chair.. the old dog wandered a bit then forgot why she wanted out and laded down… 

We headed indoors… our outside errands addressed if not completed.

Good Night…

Summer in San Mateo

A neighbor, across the street, recently staged their house for sale... The real estate stager set up chairs in front... On what might have been charitably been called a porch... But might have been better been called a entry walk...

They sold their house for what might be described as an obscene amount of money…

We have a similar entry space... With a bricked area in front of the house, near the driveway...  Mimicking the staged entry, we have added cheap resin adirondack chairs a table, a candle lamp and a few flower pots...  it might be staging, but it is also a nice place to sit with a glass of wine, to talk, or alternately to sit with a computer to pad... with music… tonight Brandi Carlie…

Our yard is granite paths and raised beds, with pots... Drought friendly... For we are in the grip of a great drought.... multi year... Limited water... The second great drought of my life... Such is a lifetime in the west. So the plants and pots are all the more special.

So now I sit outside, in the dark, in a plastic adirondack chair…

Tonight’s moon is full and bright, but late to rise… clouds make for a more dramatic sky…  It is warm, a bit humid by our dry heat standards… some clouds, some marine fog… 

Sitting outside with the dogs…  hiding from the new kitten… music on…Brandi...

There are fireworks tonight.   In theory they are illegal... Both the safe and sane and the explosive and aireal... The bombs bursting in air... but they continue, and will continue tomorrow…  It bothers Peaches, the young dog...  Ely, the old dog isn't bothered as much... She is sitting outside with me… for it is summer… a time of celebration and outdoor living…

At home

Sitting outside... Sunset or a bit beyond... A full moon rising... A fire in the cast iron chimenesa .... I am hiding from the ladies, they inside, watching TV... Zoo, the latest horror tv series...

Beyond, out of sight, the train horns are sounding Caltrain and UP... base on the sound... The tracks a bit over a mile away...  big jet airplanes are going by, on final approach to SFO... A mile the other way...

There is the occasional bang of fire works... Our Nations' birthday only a few days away... And neighbors are practicing... Or more likely, like children in Christmas eve, are getting a head start on the holiday...

The sky is full of clouds, out of season...  The evening cool but comfortable... The neighbors are missing, few porch lights lit... for ours is a suburban neighborhood... You walk your dog, or home from school or occasionally work, but not for recreation, or just to walk about...

To prove me wrong, a couple walks by, across the street, with their daughter on a bike with training wheels...  They wave... Is the daughter the metaphorical dog, needing a walk, or instead a sign of a new kind of community forming...

Randy