Category Archives: Los Angeles

March 27, 2015 · 22:41

Really Weird Cars

It’s been said (well, I say it a lot) that if you spend enough time on the Los Angeles freeways you’ll see just about anything.

I’m not talking about Teslas, for example. True, you’ll see more here in a day than you might see in a year in Dallas or Miami, or even New York City. In fact, just about every kind of exotic car you’ll see sooner or later.

That doesn’t even begin to talk about what you see people doing while they’re supposed to be driving. Texting is small potatoes around here. We’re talking about reading a newspaper or book or a script (I’ve seen lots of scripts being read at “maximum freeway speed”). Or having a laptop out & running while working on some document on it – while driving. Or the lady who was nursing while driving. As well as the activities that will lead to childbirth…

Even with that attitude, yesterday I saw something that caught my eye, something that really stood out.

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There was this guy…

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…and this one.

They were travelling together but obviously as a pair. I mean, honestly, if they weren’t together, what would the odds be that the only two cars on the planet painted like this were together right then?

That’s got to be the oddest paint job that I’ve ever seen. If camouflage was their goal it worked like a charm — they were hard to see.

While I refer to them as “the only two cars on the planet painted like this,” in thinking about it some more I’ve come to realize that there must be more. Someone might do something this elaborate as a one-off, but if they’re going to do two that look identical, there’s probably a process that’s repeatable. (Is it all an elaborate decal? Maybe?) Whatever, there sure can’t be that many.

Is there an intended purpose to this scheme, other than just trying to turn heads? Is it supposed to confuse police radar or make you hard to see from the police chase helicopters? It’s hard to see how that would have a reasonable chance to actually succeed.

One had what looked like Michigan plates, the other might have been carrying diplomatic plates. (Here you see more of the latter than the former.)

It was definitely eye catching!

(And for the record, I wasn’t doing anything particularly dangerous or stupid when I took these pictures. I was at a dead stop at the time and had been that way for a while. Traffic really sucked, these guys and I had been playing follow-me-follow-you for several miles at about a walking pace at best.)

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Filed under Distracted Driving, Los Angeles, Photography

March 16, 2015 · 22:21

Darwin Award Nominee

Today’s Darwin Award nominee comes to us from the 101 Freeway “northbound” (which is really due west, but that’s a different rant) at Kanan.

Traffic was light and moving at “maximum freeway speed,” which is a CHP euphemism for “everyone’s speeding & even the slow traffic is doing 70+ in a 65 zone.” There are four lanes at that point, plus a merging on/off lane that starts on at the previous onramp and is an exit-only lane when you get to Kanan.

The Kanan offramp was closed. There was one of those portable warning signs prior to the previous exit (Chesbro) so folks had plenty of advance notice and a chance to get off the freeway one exit early. Once past Chesbro, that merging on/off lane was gradually coned off to be blocked completely well before Kanan. The cones were accompanied by all of the usual fluorescent orange signs, again warning that the lane was closed, the ramp was closed, and pointing toward the detour route.

At Kanan, the offramp itself was clear, leading uphill toward the overpass and surrounding streets. The ramp closure was caused by four or five large trucks parked just a few feet short of the offramp, working on replacing some street lighting poles or poles for signs.

If you missed the multiple warning signs prior to Chesbro, the following exit (Reyes Adobe) is only a mile down the road. Whether you got off at Chesbro or Reyes Adobe, there are multiple major streets running parallel to the freeway on both sides, leaving a LOT of options to get to your destination without exiting at Kanan.

In addition, even if you’re unfamiliar with the area, doesn’t just about everyone have a map and GPS app on their phone? The worst case scenario here should be having to endure that smug and sanctimonious tone from the synthesized GPS voice while she drones “Recalculating” over and over.

Not for our candidate.

She was driving a large Urban Assault Vehicle, an Escalade or something like that. Black, of course. As soon as the merging on/off lane started, she pulled into it, obviously clueless and expecting to exit. As the cones started blocking the lane, she started slowing and inching back into traffic, nearly picking off someone in the process, because she’s of course now confused and thinking about the cones and the closed lane in front of her, not the traffic shooting by her at 65+ mph that she’s merging back into at 40 mph.

Back in traffic, faced with all of these orange warning signs, confused, she started slowing. And slowing. And slowing.

Meanwhile, traffic continues to zip past and around her at “maximum freeway speed,” and most dangerously, come up behind her that fast. Still, she keeps slowing to a crawl as she pulls up next to the work crews.

Then, presumably because she’s a freakin’ idiot and maybe thinks she’s got good ground clearance as well as a god-given right to drive wherever she damn well pleases, she does a sharp right turn to head across the landscaping (ice plant, I think) and up the embankment that makes up the side of the offramp. If she can just get up over the side and onto the offramp pavement behind the work crew, she’s home free!

I was over in the #2 lane coming up from well behind at first, so I got to see the whole show up to that point. I didn’t slow down or stop to see how it ended, but when I came back the other way an hour later the area wasn’t filled with tow trucks and ambulances, so her stupidity might have gone unpunished.

I’ll grant, if you’re stupid enough to pull this stunt, you’re probably too stupid to be able to use the GPS or a map. The converse is also true.

There are a lot of questions I wonder about after seeing this.

Why are morons like this are allowed on the roads in the first place? (I’m assuming that she has a driver’s license – that might be a bad assumption.)

Was her judgment impaired by something? Alcohol? Drugs, prescription or otherwise? Not that it would be any kind of an excuse at all, but possibly an explanation of sorts.

Was she surprised by the closure, missing all the signs and warnings, because she was texting or on the phone? I don’t know, I couldn’t see her at that point. Both texting and being on the phone without a hands-free device are  illegal in California – but so is exceeding 65 mph along that stretch of freeway. If there’s any enforcement of the texting/phone laws it’s the best kept secret in the state. (That also is a rant for another day.)

More importantly, given the vehicle and what they’re often used for, I have to wonder how many kids were in the car.

How would you react if it’s her day to drive car pool and she’s got her kids, plus yours, plus a couple others in there?

Maybe I wonder about that because I remember times as a kid when my mother (“Bless her little heart!” and in this case I mean it in the sweetly sarcastic way that women in the Deep South use it) did things almost as stupid and life-threatening with me and my siblings in the car.

Things like that stick with you, I guess.

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Filed under Distracted Driving, Freakin' Idiots!, Los Angeles

March 1, 2015 · 23:59

Islamic Leader Here For Celebration!

(In this article I might mess up some terminology or term regarding this religious event going on. If/when I do, it’s simple ignorance on my part, not any sort of derogatory comment or criticism of the religion or its practitioners. I’m trying to learn here, so if you see something I’ve messed up, please let me know so that I can do better next time.)

It’s amazing what you can have going on in your own neighborhood and not have a clue about it – until you get stuck in the huge traffic jam!

Three years ago, four maybe, a mosque was built just a mile or two away, across the street from the high school, on the same street where there are a dozen or more synagogues, the local Roman Catholic church, and within two or three miles of a church for just about every other denomination you can think of.

It’s a very diverse area, to say the least, and that’s one of the things that I really like about it, even if I don’t belong to a church myself or get to any kind of regular services.

What I could see of the mosque, mainly the minaret and a bit of the building through the trees, looked lovely. While not a church member, I love church architecture, and I’m always curious about different religions, cultures, customs, and so on.

Yesterday and today, surrounding the mosque for blocks was a huge traffic jam. Along the two major streets that intersect at the site, there were people parking (and double parking to pick up and drop off passengers) for at least three or four blocks in every direction. The large parking lot at the high school was filled. In addition, there were large crowds, hundreds at a time, going to and from the mosque. All of the men were dressed in white robes and headgear, while all of the women seemed to be in intricate and colorful robes and dresses of every color in the rainbow. There were people in their 80’s and families with strollers and small children. You name it, they were there. All day Saturday, and apparently all day today.

Something was going on…

Yesterday I actually spent an hour or so googling Islamic holidays (and finding nothing that matched) and trying to get information on that particular mosque. About all I found was that it was called the Mohammedi Center, but not much more. At the time I figured it was a holiday of some sort and I just wasn’t asking the right questions. Then I saw the big crowd today again and figured it might not be that simple. In addition, today there was a large, ornate horse-drawn carriage out on the street with white thoroughbred horses being unloaded to pull it. Again, not something one normally sees in the west San Fernando Valley every day.

When I was stuck in traffic with pedestrians all around, I asked one family what the event was. I missed the first part of the answer, but heard that it was a festival of some sort and would be going on for three weeks.

Spurred on by this new information, I just did another search and found an article in the Daily News. Questions answered, and it’s more interesting than I had thought!

The mosque was built by the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Shi’a Islam and finished three years ago. But the mosque had not yet been inaugurated (blessed? consecrated?) and couldn’t be used for prayer.

Today was the first visit to the United States by His Holiness Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the 53rd Dai al-Mutlaq. It seems he’s the equivalent of the Pope to the Shi’a sect from India, here to inaugurate this mosque, as well as two others in Orange County and in Bakersfield. (That could maybe explain the three weekends of celebrations mentioned when I inquired?)

In short, while there may be far fewer Shi’a in the world than Roman Catholics, it now makes perfect sense that the Dai al-Mutlaq’s visit would draw those kinds of crowds and that kind of excitement.

Cool!

Finally, and one of the things that really caught my attention while driving through the area, might be explained by the comment in the article about how inclusive the sect is. On the corner, waiting to cross the street to the mosque, was a group of bagpipers in kilts and full Scottish regalia.

Maybe they were here for this, maybe it was just a coincidence, but it sure was different!

 

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Filed under Los Angeles, Religion

January 24, 2015 · 23:20

Wind

The Santa Ana winds are blowing.

Anyone who has lived in Southern California know what that means. High pressure over Nevada, strong offshore winds, adiabatic heating, and the wind funneling through canyons and mountain passes speeds up as it’s squeezed through.

It was starting to kick up when I left for the CAF hanger this morning.

Out in Camarillo, near the ocean, near the edge of a large plain to the south of many of those aforementioned canyons and mountain passes, it was blowing a steady 20 to 30 knots, occasionally getting up to 35 knots steady, with gusts on and off to 50+ knots. Many of us there (most of us pilots) thought that might be a low value for some of the more severe gusts.

Planes have a tendency to blow about in such winds, but we made it through the day with just a couple of worrisome moments, no actual emergencies or damage. But it kept everyone hopping. The rides we had scheduled for the day got re-scheduled, obviously. Gusts of 20 to 25 knots are “exciting” in a small plane. Gusts of 40 to 50 knots can be downright dangerous. Let the business jets and commercial airliners have the skies today.

It also turns the huge hangers (like where I spend most of my days) into drums as the thin metal siding rattles and vibrates. Even more attention-getting, when you get a gust that REALLY howls past, some of the little holes in the structure (around doors, where wiring and pipes enter the building, etc) can act like wind instruments, giving off some truly ungodly howls.

Jessie loves it when it blows like this.

We suspect that it’s because there are so many new and interesting smells coming from far away. To us it just means allergies and sandpaper dry skin — to her it’s a cornucopia of sensations that we can’t even imagine. Her nose twitches a mile a minute, her head swivels to listen to the wind in the trees and catch the next exotic scent. For a few minutes, she’s a puppy again and the whole world is hers to explore.

The Santa Ana winds are blowing.

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Filed under CAF, Dogs, Los Angeles, Weather

December 30, 2014 · 22:16

The Approaching Cold Front

(Late editing note: OK, I was just going to post two really, really cool pictures I took today, but then I got into this whole THING, but if you just want the cool pictures, they’re still there at the bottom. Sorry. *not sorry*)

It does get cold cold here occasionally in La-La Land (not just that wussy cold) and the next couple of days fall into that category. It won’t be too bad down by the beaches (that whole huge body of water heat-sink thing) but here in the valleys it’s expected to get down into the low 30’s and upper 20’s. (I know, my New England friends and family, you go whole months of the year praying for that as your high for the day, but I said “cold cold,” not “HOLY CRAP cold.”)

The timing of this “cold snap” means that the usual New Year’s Day message from the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce (otherwise known as the Rose Parade) won’t be, “Look at how great it is in SoCal where it’s in the 80’s and we’re walking around in shorts and Hawaiian shirts!” Watch for it, there are going to be some very chilly folks in those sleeping bags along Colorado Boulevard come Thursday morning.

A bit further outside of SoCal, they’re expecting a couple of inches of snow in Las Vegas??!! Not only is that going to make New Year’s Eve celebrations there more “interesting” than normal, but the millions of people going and coming from Lost Wages either by air or by I-15 over the mountains will have a whole new adventure to remember. It’s going to be a world-class mess, so stay at home like we are, pull up a comfy chair, pop some popcorn, and watch the chaos.

For the record, the current, “New Year’s Eve Eve” conditions on that I-15 Cajon Pass traffic link look like this:

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That’s soooooooooo much red for sooooooooo many miles – I don’t even want to imagine.

While we almost always get some snow in the local mountains (which go up to 8,000 and 9,000 feet, thus the ski resorts just a two-hour drive from downtown LA) and on the I-5 “Grapevine” (which goes up to 4,160 feet) heading north to Sacramento and San Francisco, but it’s really rare to see snow down on the ground in the LA basin or any of the major valleys.

I’ve seen it once, when we were living in Granada Hills, at about 1,000 feet elevation, back in about 1988 or 1989. We got maybe a half-inch, I made a “snowman” in the front yard that was about the size of three marshmallows.

This storm probably won’t drop snow here (we’re now at about 770 feet) but it will bring snow down to about 2,000 feet, which means that the hills around the valleys will get a dusting.

Meanwhile, we’re also getting ferocious winds, currently 14 to 34 knots in the area, with gusts even higher. So I had better get this posted quickly, before the power goes out!

As Bill Cosby said, “I told you that story so that I could tell you this one.”

This cold front and storm was just coming down from the north as I was leaving the CAF hanger in Camarillo this afternoon and it looked really cool:

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(Remember to click to see the full-sized panorama.)

But as cool as that was out on the ramp, when I got out to the parking lot on the south side, I saw this, which may be one of the best pictures I’ve ever taken:

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And THAT’s why I’m not out looking for Comet Lovejoy tonight!

 

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Filed under Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography, Weather

December 21, 2014 · 19:29

2014 Winter Solstice Sunset

(Yeah, I know that I’m about the 1,499,372nd person today to use some variation on that title for their blog post, but that’s what it is, so sue me!)

Once again we find ourselves at one of the two primary points in our planet’s orbit we can use as a basis for our calendar, completely free of all of our arbitrary and random units of months, weeks, hours, and minutes. The solstice is so fundamental that it was noted and worshiped by almost every civilization, from the Druids to the Romans to the Chinese to the Egyptians to the American Indians to the Incas to the Mesopotamians…

It’s so fundamental that you don’t need to have invented clocks or telescopes or math or science. It’s so fundamental that if space-faring aliens landed tomorrow, this could be an observation-based  point in time every year that we could use as an anchor point for starting communications.

The day is clearly defined by the rotation of the planet, and the year is clearly defined by the length of time it takes the planet to orbit the sun. But without more advanced astronomy and math to figure out the perihelion and aphelion points (closest and furthest points from the sun in the planet’s elliptical orbit), the solstices can still be found through simple observation.

So, Happy Solstice!

On a completely unrelated note, while putting up yet more Christmas lights (one nice lady passing by with her dog loves the lights but couldn’t believe I was putting up more – she don’t know me very well, do she?), the Los Angeles sunset was spectacular! These pictures pretty accurately represent the colors as it started golden, got intense, changed to orange, to purple, to crimson, back to purple, and finally faded.

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Filed under Astronomy, Christmas Lights, Los Angeles, Photography

December 12, 2014 · 21:39

After The Storm

The Bay Area and Sierra Nevada up north got hit hard, lots of flooding and power outages, while down here in SoCal we had some mudslides, a couple houses destroyed, some street flooding, and an F-Zero tornado (apparently). So while we act like it’s “STORMWATCH 2014!!!”, the fact is that we’re doing fine and we really, REALLY need the water.

It went through quickly here, and then looked like this just before sunset:

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

November 30, 2014 · 17:37

Finally, An Actual Rain Storm!

It doesn’t rain that often in Southern California, but on the other hand, it’s not so rare that every shower is accompanied by the arrival of the Fremen riding sandworms.

The average annual rainfall over the last 100+ years is 14.98″. But we’re in the throes of a massive, three-year drought. The last three years we’ve gotten 8.69″, 5.85″, and 6.08″ of rain respectively. This has left reservoirs dangerously low and over 99% of the state in an extreme drought condition.

We’ve already started to experience water usage restrictions. For example, in LA we can only water our lawns for ten minutes a day, three days a week. If we get into a fourth year of drought, those restrictions will only get more draconian.

But it’s not just lawns and car washing that will suffer. Agriculture is a huge part of the state’s economy, and that’s a hit that we really can’t afford, seeing as how we’re still recovering from the last recession. Furthermore, if California’s farms suffer, so do food prices and availability across the country and beyond.

But the entertainment value in SoCal rain is in the way the media and the fine citizens react to even the smallest amount of rain. I wrote about it in November 2013, which may have been the last time we had any significant precipitation. And yes, that level of hype and overreaction really does happen here.

This storm is expected to last off and on through Thursday, bringing as much as 5″ of rain in some areas, 3″ or so just about everywhere. That won’t break the drought – it would take at least two exceptionally wet years in a row to refill the reservoirs.

But bet on folks all over the state immediately resetting their lawn sprinklers to run twenty minutes a day, seven days a week. And to run them even while it’s raining. While watching 24/7 coverage of “Storm Watch 2014!”

Because it’s Los Angeles.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

November 5, 2014 · 23:43

It’s A Bug’s Life Today

As in, life was the windshield, I was the bug.

Nothing terrible, just all of a sudden go SO stinkin’ busy with a bunch of “gotta happen yesterday!” stuff and all of a sudden it’s almost midnight…

Have I told you that we see the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory sometimes? (Man, I really hope that I haven’t already used that random picture at some point or the other…)

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

October 16, 2014 · 23:50

Flash Fiction: Calling Card

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge goes off on a completely new tangent. It’s harvest time in the “Pennsyltucky” area where Chuck Wendig lives and he has a thing for odd and unusual varieties of apples. I share his appreciation for apples other than the standard Red Delicious, although not his disdain for actual Red Delicious apples. I’ll try to get other varieties when they’re available — this fall I’ve had Jazz, Honeycrisp, Gala, Fuji, and the Cripps Pinks that are in the kitchen right now.

But I digress. As the picture on TerribleMinds shows, there were forty varieties available at a local farmer’s market in Chuck’s neighborhood. Most of the varieties have unusual names. Our task was to pick three and use them in some way in our story. They could be character names, places, whatever.

I used a random number generator, which gave me 19, 6, and 2. My three apple variety names are “Orleans Reinette,” “Davenport Russet,” and “Nutmeg.” Which sounded to me like one of these, a that, and a this, which fell together like this:

CALLING CARD

It was raining, raining as it only does in LA after one of those dry spells they said would last six months but instead pounded us for six years. It spit, it drizzled, it built up to a torrential mist, then when you were ready to give up on actually using your wipers, it would turn into a frog-drowner for five minutes. In the distance there was a low rumble that might have been thunder, but might have just been a 707 sliding down into LAX through they grey overcast.

I took refuge from the gloom in a place even gloomier. The C’est Pool had been come into the world as a dive. From there it had been all downhill, paralleling the collapse of civilization on the local neighborhood. Elections were coming, a councilman was on the warpath, and the local cops were on a mission to clean up the area. It must be working — no one had been knifed or shot in the Pool in over a month.

Teddy was behind the bar, with his nose in a book as usual. He was taking classes to learn how to be a “real” bartender, his head stuffed with fantasies of bartending gigs at the Playboy Mansion, making fru-fru cocktails for naked babes. He looked up as I came in and grinned.

“Hey, DJ! You wanna try something new? I’ve got just the thing for you.”

I knew better than to try one of Teddy’s experiments. “What’s this one called, Teddy?”

“They call it an ‘Orleans Reinette.’ Last night we practiced highball drinks, I thought this one had a nice taste. So I got all of the ingredients on my way in this morning. Let me make one for you!”

This was a bad idea trying to grow into a death wish. “What’s in it, Teddy?”

“It’s vodka, lemon, Aspen, and a dash of nutmeg.”

I suddenly regretted eating breakfast. “Aspen? What’s that?”

“It’s that new apple-flavored soda pop. The mixture of it with the nutmeg gives it a taste like Christmas while the vodka kicks you in the gut.”

Yep, there’s a sign from God. That sounded a lot like my usual Christmas. “Okay, do this. Make one for me, but hold the Aspen, the lemon, the nutmeg, and the vodka. Add in a cold beer.”

Teddy’s lips moved as he did the math, then his face fell as he figured it out. I just stared at him, so he sighed, reached into the fridge, and set the cold bottle in front of me. As I pried the top off, he snapped his fingers and turned back toward the cash register.

“Some guy was in here asking for you. He left his card, said it was important.” Teddy turned back to me, holding the card out.

I took it and gave a quick glance. “Davenport Russet – Attorney.”  In gold letters there was an address high up in one of the new skyscrapers in Century City. I already hated the guy. The card got crumpled up as my hand voluntarily spasmed. I hit the waste basket behind the bar with one shot. Not bad for this time of day.

There was a flash of flame in the waste basket. Suddenly Teddy was turning back to me, holding out a business card.

“Some guy was in here asking for you. He left his card, wrote a note on it, said it was important.”

I sat there staring at Teddy for several seconds, running through my memories of recent reality. When had Teddy turned away from me? Didn’t we just do this? If this was déjà vu, it was one hell of a case of it.

Teddy seemed to have noticed nothing. He just stood there, growing more puzzled by the second when I just sat there slack-jawed, staring at him. I decided to reach out and take the card.

“Davenport Russet – Attorney.” There was something written on the back. I could feel it, but I was not going to turn the card over and read it. Another quick crumple, another quick toss, another nothing but net.

Flash! “Some guy was in here asking for you. He left his card, wrote a note on it, said I had to make sure you read it, said it was important,” Teddy said innocently, turning back to me and holding out a card.

This time I didn’t stare, but I was very cautious when I took the card. It seemed to be ordinary paper, nothing unusual. It featured an embossed logo of some kind, nice engraved printing, an address, a phone number, and “Davenport Russet – Attorney.”

I slowly turned the card over and saw something scrawled in red ink. At least, I was praying it was red ink. “Drink the Orleans Reinette,” was barely legible, in a handwritten font that would have been at home in “The Exorcist.”

The hell with that.

I put the card down on the bar with the message side hidden. I stood up quickly, dropped a fiver on the bar for the beer, and sprinted for the door. Perhaps a walk in the rain would clear my head. A walk to San Francisco should do the trick.

Outside, we were back at the “mist” setting, which turned to “monsoon” before I got five steps from the door. I had the green light, so I headed across the street, only to watch the light turn straight to red while I was in the middle. A truck that hadn’t been there two seconds ago came barreling through from my right, nearly pulping me. I made it to the sidewalk, drenched and terrified.

Shivering in the freezing rain, I shoved my hands into my coat pockets for warmth. In the one pocket I could feel a business card. I would have sworn that pocket had been empty. Trembling from more than the cold, I pulled the card out.

“Davenport Russet – Attorney.”

A bolt of lightning struck somewhere very close, the accompanying peal of thunder rattling the windows and setting off car alarms up and down the street.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Science Fiction, Writing