Front Door Guardian

San Diego Driving Tips

While exchanging emails with a friend about possible activities in San Diego when visiting family over the holidays I passed along a few driving tips and I thought some of the rest of you might benefit as well.  If you’re visiting Southern California over the Holidays, or anytime for a mid-winter break, there are a few differences between driving here and driving in the Midwest that may surprise you and being aware of them might be enough to avoid something you'd rather didn't happen while on vacation.

First: treat driving in the rain like you would driving in the snow back in the midwest.  Most obviously, because the other cars on the road do.  But don't assume they're idiots and zip around them like a maniac.  There are several good reasons for their caution.

Since there can be up to nine months between rains here, the fluids that leak out of cars and trucks build up instead of getting washed away.  And when it does rain it's usually light, floating the oil residue up but not washing it off.  What's left on the road is something with the consistency of snot.  Not a good surface for high-performance driving.

Even after the main rain slows down or stops, 4 or more lanes of cars kick up a lot of spray.  It's like driving through a dense, low fog with the addition of side-rocker jets like car washes have.  You may be able to look up and see blue sky but not see the tail lights of the car in front of you.  Don't mind the jacked up 4x4 trucks with monster wheels zipping by you in the fast lane.  Their higher vantage point and rugged equipment gives them the advantage over your rental car.  Plus, guys that drive those things are compensating for something. 

Hydroplaning is a real possibility.  A couple years ago a friend completely lost control of her car on a patch of rain sitting on the highway.  Fortunately she didn't careen into anybody else or get seriously injured. Unfortunately her new car was totaled.

If you're approaching water or feel yourself losing steering control, ease off of the accelerator.  Don't jam on the breaks.  Make small controlled adjustments with the steering wheel. Do not over steer.

When changing lanes on a 3 or more lane freeway, look 2 lanes over to make sure no one is about to move into the same space you want.  It's not enough to make sure the lane next to you is clear. 

When driving on surface streets through a busy neighborhood make a point of looking for pedestrians.  There can be a lot of us and we have the right-of-way in cross-walks.  If you hit someone who's stepped out into the street in the middle of a block you may not get a ticket but your auto insurance will most likely end up paying out on a bodily injury claim.

San Diego County has 511 service.  You can call 511 for traffic updates, mass transit information, and roadside assistance.  I'm guessing it's also available in Orange County and LA County.

On a recent episode the Car Talk guys berated everyone for comprising safety for convenience and just pulling over to the shoulder of the freeway.  That's an extremely dangerous place to be.  Don't worry about saving tires or wheels; drive slowly with the flashers on as far to the right as possible until you get to the next exit.  After calling roadside assistance for help with a flat try not to be embarrassed when rescued by a guy in a Prius.  Just sayin'.

Update:  As Keith reminded me in his comment I should have mentioned that's it's legal, and common, for motorcycles to split lanes with cars in California.  If freeway traffic slows down motorcycles may come up from behind and pass between your car and the vehicle in the next lane.  It's also good to remind yourself to make a point of looking for motorcycles.  On surface streets also look for bicycles, skate boarders, rollerbladers, and pedestrians.  If you only look for cars, you'll only see cars.

Discipline

When I was 3 and 4 years old my mother would get so mad she would whip me with a belt; hard and for a long time.  I have no memory of what, if anything, I did to incite such wrath; probably just trying to get some kind of attention.  I remember trying to talk to her and she’d keep walking away.  At one point I said, “ Mom, I'm trying to talk to you.  Please stop walking away.”  She said I could talk to her but that I would have to follow her around; she had no time to stop.  The beatings were so bad that my father had to take a break from working late to make her stop.  Many years later I got a letter from him saying, “I didn’t think your mother would do that.”

At times both my brothers and both my parents would be yelling at me all at once about how awful, unreasonable, and irresponsible I was.  I’d have to tell them it was completely unfair for all of them to yell at me at once and that if they were going to yell at me they could only do it one at a time.  It was the only point I ever successfully got across.

I do remember wondering why suddenly the beatings stopped and things improved for me at home.  From then on I was more polite and forever more subdued.

Graham Street

We moved into a large, green shingle-sided house on Graham Street 2 blocks from a small Methodist university and 1/2 a block from Franklin Elementary School that had this awesome fire escape. It was an enclosed grey spiral slide down from the 2nd floor that the kids in the upper grades got to slide down during fire drills.  I got through Mrs. Cranberry’s ( Cranapple’s? ) Kindergarten class just in time for the school district to announce that they were closing the school to general education students.  The next year I started walking 9 blocks across town to Bent School.

Bent School is a very nice building that had been built as a high school and then was relegated to lower grades as newer high schools and junior highs were built.  I remember my father nearly yelling at a school board meeting over the closing of Franklin School, saying he'd moved his family to be close to the school they would be attending.  I was the youngest of three so his plan had nearly worked. For my part I was sorely disappointed I never got to go down that fire escape.

Hillary Clinton’s Human Rights Day Speech to the U.N.

I’m not a fan of speeches by politicians or government officials because they rarely have anything meaningful to say and usually talk down to the lowest common denominator in their audience.  However, this speech is full of ground-breaking content and uses straight-forward language that speaks to all of us.  Plus, her delivery is incredible.  There are a few “uh”s at the beginning, but those quickly disappear.

From Rex Wockner
 

Catherine Street

When I was born our family lived in a small house on Catherine Street across from the railroad yard.  I only remember one Christmas having a package in my hands with a toy airplane in it and asking if it was mine before  opening it.  I also remember peeking through the crack of a pair of locked doors to a garage at the car inside and being reprimanded for being where I knew I shouldn't.  We moved when I was three.  Later we would go back to visit the neighbors who I was supposed to remember as these great family friends, even though I wasn't old enough to remember much of anything when we lived there.

Quote

 “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.” 

                  -  Elie Wiesel

A Great Way to Start the Holidays

Thanks guys for a terrific concert.

Quote: Me

“Show up,

                  Pay attention,

                        Don’t be indifferent.”

Quote

“Sometimes you have to divorce your friends.

 Sometimes you have to divorce your family.”

           -  Oprah Winfrey

 

It’s not that they’re sleeping on my bed; it’s more that I’m crawling into their bed every night.

Quote: George Carlin

“Anyone driving slower than me is an idiot and anyone driving faster is a maniac.”

Quote: Douglas Adams

“I love deadlines.  I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

Amazing Gracing, 4th verse

11 months ago I was sitting in a waiting room when I saw an elderly lady in much worse shape than I was in.  She taught me that if I wrote down every blessing in my life I could be at it forever, and after all that time I wouldn't be any closer to being done than when I started. Since then the number of angels in my life has increased exponentially.  Since then I see something to be grateful for in everything.

“When we've been here ten thousand years
     Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
     Than when we'd first begun.”

Sluts

Recently my friend Keith did the Slutwalk in Seattle to reinforce that the cause of rape is the rapist and not women who might dress in a way some may disapprove.  It got me thinking about the word and the way we use it.

For a while I've thought ‘slut’ to be a worthless word.  It implies guilt and shame, which are worthless emotions.  And it's impossible to pin down exactly what it means.

Where's the line between virtue and sin?  

The Catholic Church considers anyone who's had sex with more than one person, ever, to be a slut.  That's most of us.

Most folks consider middle-age to be some indistinct number of years older than they are and they think sluts are people who've slept with more people than they have according to some obscure algorithm they've justified in their heads.

A co-worker once told me she was starting to get worried because she could no longer count the number of men she'd been with on one hand.  I refused to tell her how many I'd been with because I could tell from the look on her face and her tone of voice that she would judge my double-digit number negatively.  But compared to my friends that are well into triple digits, I'm a prude.

So does that mean that 5 is virtuous but 6 puts you on a slippery slope?  When I reach 8 that's kind of a lot, but when you reach 8 that really isn't all that many?  9 you're fine, but 10 is just too much?  99?  Well, ok, but 100 puts you in Madonna territory.  And is that bad?

The people I admire most are the ones that are super comfortable in their own skin, know themselves well, and proudly label themselves sluts; and they take away anyone else's power to hurt them.

I truly think that God doesn't count how many.  She knows, but is more concerned with how we treat ourselves and our partners.

If you think God is adding demerits as your list gets longer, then the opposite must also be true. I imagine that when I get to the Pearly Gates St. Peter is going to scowl down at me and say, “We sent you all these nice guys to bring joy to your life and you ran away from most of them.  Downstairs!”

Thought for the day:

Do not start to think of us as less than
     because we fail to live up to your expectations of more than.

We are.  Love us for that or get out of our way.

MCC: It Gets Better

Kitten Family Photo

Sweet Pea, 3rd cat from the left, went to his new home yesterday afternoon and Steve took Bubba, far left, this morning.  Jeff wanted a picture of all the kids before they scattered to the four corners of the earth San Diego.  We're giving Katie extra treats, but she still seems kind of depressed.  I suggested taking her to visit them all in a couple weeks.

Test Photos

How much are the kittens in the window?

They've grown SO MUCH!  They seem to get bigger by the hour.  They got their first shot and a clean bill of health from the vet this morning.  They still nurse a little but the vet said this is the perfect time for them to go to their new homes.  All of them are spoken for unless someone backs out at the last minute. Or you can try to sweet talk someone out of theirs.