Category: Bay Area

It never gets old

This weekend, The Good Man and I met some friends up in Sausalito for fun and merriment.

Getting to Sausalito means traversing the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge.

I believe this year makes twelve years for me living here in the Bay Area and driving across that big orange bridge is still as exciting as it was the first time I ever did it.

I have about a zillion photos I’ve taken of the Golden Gate Bridge, because no matter how many times I see it, I always find something more interesting I need to try to capture.

Then sometimes, like yesterday, I decide to come out from behind the camera and just watch as we drive by. The art deco uprights are still so endlessly fascinating to me, the way the light plays off of them, the subtle texturing. The stout cables that hold it all in place still look like dental floss in perspective of all the iron and steel and concrete that make up the bridge.

I wondered, as we drove across, if the men who finished the bridge back in 1937 could ever fathom what it this bridge would become. Could they have ever imagined the magnitude of traffic that rolls over it every day?

And how freaking cool that something built 72 years ago still stands tall and proud and virtually unrevised (but for some retrofitting and upgrading) since then.

I got to thinking, was there anything from my life in New Mexico that could even come close to this? Something that in driving by with some frequency, I still have the sense of awe and wonder every time I see it?

The closest I got was not a man made item. First thought in my head was Tijeras Canyon. Similar in that it is a roadway to transport people from one side of a great geological obstacle to another.

It still fills me with awe at the beauty and wonder at the too fast development growing in that gap between the Sandias and the Manzanos.

I tried to think if there was something like this, something man made and yet so enduring. Of course, the Indian ruins are far older than the Golden Gate, but not something that one drives by with frequency, as they tend to be back in the hills.

I suppose the most awe inspiring bit of human engineering and transportation in New Mexico is the Sandia Peak Tramway.

I don’t know, to my New Mexico friends, do you have any ideas? I’m sure I’m forgetting something…

Photo by Karen Fayeth

Near and Dear to my Heart

Sit back, I’m about to go on a bit of a rant, inspired by a story I read today in the SFGate.

About six or eight years ago, I was living in a small apartment in the South Bay, in a small eight unit building. The building dated back to at least the 1930’s, if not earlier, and featured this breathing dragon of a wall heater as its only source to take the chill of cold rainy evenings.

I had gone home to New Mexico for Christmas, and my mom, ever the practical one, had given me a carbon monoxide alarm as a gift.

Fine. Whatever. I took it back to California with me where it sat, unused, in the box for quite a while. A year or more, if truth be told.

One day, I was cleaning up the place when I found that thing and figured, “oh well”. I put in the batteries and hung it from my ceiling. Fine. Look at me. Miss Practical.

A couple months later, the damn thing started going off.

I was frustrated. Surely this was defective. Busted. Whatever.

I unscrewed it from the ceiling and moved it farther back.

And the damn thing kept going off.

Weird.

Fine. So after dealing with the piercing noise for, again, if I’m telling the truth here, several months, I finally called PG&E. I knew it would take them *forever* to fit me in, but whatever.

I told them that my carbon monoxide alarm kept going off and could I get an appointment for someone to come out check.

Anticipating at least 30 days before I got an appointment, I was surprised when, instead, the call dispatcher said, “someone will be there immediately” and further, “open all the doors and windows until someone arrives.”

Uh. Ok. Much ado about nothing, right? But at least I’d get quick attention.

Good for their word, a guy showed up within about ten minutes.

He took a reading in the center of the room and said, “I’m going to cap off your gas, you have fatal levels of carbon monoxide in here.”

Well blow me over.

Turns out there was a center tube of metal inside the heater that had slid down when the house settled or from age, and it left a crack about an inch wide that was venting the heater right into my apartment.

The next day, I absentmindedly told this story to a friend at work, and she started crying. One of her dearest friends had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Her life could have been saved with the simple installation of a carbon monoxide alarm, but it was, instead, lost.

When The Good Man moved into our place, I told him this story and said I will never live in a place that does not have a working carbon monoxide alarm.

I refuse.

I was reminded about all of this today when I saw the headline in the local paper say:

Two Bay Area families survive carbon monoxide poisoning

“The mother said the family started feeling sick around midnight…When their symptoms failed to improve in the morning, they headed for the emergency room.”

That woman’s good thinking saved her family, her kids, her own life.

It scares the crap out of me. Apartments are required to have a smoke alarm, but not a carbon monoxide alarm. They even make dual alarms these days, both fire and carbon monoxide. Easy peasy!

So please, anyone who is reading this, don’t hesitate, don’t call it “some remote possibility”. Don’t put it off.

Get thee to a Wal-Mart or a Target or a Home Depot and BUY a carbon monoxide alarm and install it where you will spend most of your time.

Buy two, one for the living room and one for your bedroom. Just do it, okay?

Thanks. Your life matters to me.

Please have snow, and mistletoe

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Ok, so yesterday and today I have been listening to big time holiday music.

This morning as I drove in to work, singing along, I sang about snow while noticing the raging rainstorm pelting my windshield.

You know what…given where and how I was raised, and even where I live now, most of these traditional holiday songs are truly meaningless to me.

Rarely was there snow on the ground at Christmas in Albuquerque. If there was (once, I think) it was melted before the day was out.

No where in the collection of holiday songs is the singer lamenting for Christmas of their youth were it was 65 and sunny.

Or having tamales to eat on Christmas Eve.

Or plucking a piñon tannenbaum out of the pile for 15 bucks a piece at the flea market.

Or filling paper bags with sand.

No, the “east coast bias” that applies to sports seems to infiltrate the holiday as well.

Heck, in my new digs, Christmas is about rain. And crab (tis crab season, yum!).

Where’s the song for that?

Doesn’t exist!

I *could* feel bad that the east coasters get snow and fabulous Macy’s windows filled with displays and thus they get to understand the true meaning of the old standards.

But I don’t. I wouldn’t trade my own memories for all the Fa La La La La in the world.

What’s in a name?

The Good Man, being the very good man that he is, agreed to run my car into the shop today. So as such, he drove me to work this morning.

As we careened down the Bay Area highways, we were cut off by a Mercury Mountaineer.

I said to TGM, “The Mountaineer…that was never really a big hit, was it?”

TGM said, “No, it’s essentially a Ford Explorer anyway.”

Then I replied, “I always thought Mountaineer was a stupid car name anyway.”

Which tipped off a whole conversation about absurd car names…TGM was on a ROLL. I laughed my head off and in the middle of his rant, I said, “I foresee a blog entry.”

So here it is. The content below is mostly stolen from the brilliant mind of TGM.

Without further ado, my top five most absurd names of cars you’ll see rolling on the roads today:

5. Nissan Armada. “What, is the main feature that it sinks off the coast of England?” said TGM (A comment that had me laughing so hard I got a stitch in my side.)

4. Dodge Durango. What a wimpy SUV name. Have these people ever actually BEEN to Durango. I have. And what is it about the sleepy Colorado town that the car should evoke? Am I supposed to think snow? And mountains? No, I think tourist trap. Look at me in my rolling tourist trap.

3. Chevy Avalanche. “Now that name is appropriate, it is a disaster rolling down a hill.” (TGM was on fire this morning.)

2. Toyota Echo. “It’s bears a faint resemblance to a car, but isn’t actually a car.”

1. The winner and still the King: Ford Probe. “I sure as hell don’t want something made by Ford up in space,” said TGM. To which I replied “or up my butt”.

Yes, childish as I am…the Ford Probe makes me think of something more…medical. I don’t want to think of uncomfortable medical situations while driving to work every morning.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyhow…there were plenty more, but I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t make notes.

Special thanks to TGM for both his brilliance and for making the ride to work more fun.

If you drive any of the above automobiles, I’m sure it’s a *fine* car…just has a dorkish name! :)