Tag: california

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The reoccurring SNL skits called the Californians amuses because every conversation, even murder plots and infidelity, devolves into a conversation about the best way to navigate traffic. I have lived here for over 30 years and it is one of the most dependable topics of conversations I know. Other than the related conversation topic which is parking.

We talk about traffic constantly. It is as if we think someone will have the answer to cure our traffic ills. They don’t.

There is 1,000 miles of freeway and 17.5 million people in southern California. It is highly unlikely that one of these miles doesn’t have, at least, a fender bender. This seemingly small accident can throw the whole system out of wack.

GPS has made the situation a bit better — occasionally you can catch the traffic slowdown before you leave your house and take alternate routes. The problem with alternate routes is that everyone is using GPS. So while GPS might redirect you to a faster route, by the time you find out about the alternate route, every other driver has also have received exactly the same information. Now the alternate is jammed.

Which brings me back to the Californians. It is satire that is so close to reality that it hurts.

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The Texas Legislature is about to redraw the district boundaries for the US Congress in their state. Something, by the way, they just finished doing after the 2020 census. The problem is that the Republican majority in Congress is so small that Trump is trying to get Republican leaning states to gerrymander their district boundaries in order to gain more seats in 2024 election. All of this is perfectly legal and will probably happen.

California Democrats have threatened to redraw the congressional districts in their state if Texas follows through with their plan. Again all perfectly legal. In the meantime, real problems are being ignored in order to jerry rig Congress into something easier to control. Of course, this has to be done because the present political climate is so poisonous that achieving anything that resembles compromise is now impossible. Indeed, it is easier to redraw district boundaries than to work with one another for the good of their constituents.

Just one more distraction from all the real troubles of our country. Sadly it is both important and a colossal waste of time, money, and energy.

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The American West has so many National Parks that Bob and I decided to buy the National Park Senior Pass that gives you access to all them from coast to coast. Joshua Tree, located a short 2 hours drive away from San Diego, is one we have missed but that had come to us highly recommended, so, given we had a cat sitter, we decided to see what all the fuss was about.

It really is a just a bunch of Joshua Trees in the middle of some rock formations. Wait, I must correct myself there is also a lot of desert sand. A very monochromatic landscape. Endlessly. Or at least endlessly within the confines of the Joshua Tree National Park.

The Park was remarkably similar from entrance to exit. It was difficult to determine what we were supposed to be looking at. In most National Parks, you see a swarm of people looking in a direction, you turn to where they are looking and pretty quickly figure out what the attraction is. In Joshua Tree I would try to determine what people were looking at and I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what it was. It finally dawned on me that it was these fairly pedestrian rock formations and Joshua’s Trees. Oh, and I can’t forget the desert sand. Endlessly.

Let me tell you I am not an anti-rock formation kind of guy here either. I have been to Arches National Park in Utah and those rock formations were something to gaze at. The ones in Joshua Tree, on the other hand, are something you could easily see driving in eastern San Diego County.

I did have one important takeaway. I was reminded that I wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes on the wagon train west.