California Trip-1: Sanity on the Roads

This post has a mostly quick history lesson about highways in California added on at the end to spice it up. The lesson is one I learned after trying to figure some things out about the roads we drove on.

I commented earlier about being happy to have been able to have skipped Interstate-5 (most commonly, and hereafter, referred to as I-5) in favor of the slower, denser, and older north-south arteries of 99 and 101 (for readers unfamiliar with the nomenclature, "99" refers to specifically "CA Route 99" and "101" refers to "US HWY 101"). If one is on a long drive from the southern latitudes of the US, is entering California, and has a terminus of Sacramento, I-5 is the best choice if quickness is the desire. I-5 runs along at the base where the Great Central Valley butts up to the Coastal Range, the mountains that separate the Valley from the Pacific Ocean. There are no towns between Los Angeles and Stockton (basically), every thirty or so miles a little oasis of gas stations and fast food joints pop-up, and the only vehicles on the road are high-speed travelers and semis. Almost every trip I made from Sacramento to San Luis Obispo I drove the long north-south distance along I-5.

Having driven across this country more than once, in both directions, I can say that 1) many places in this country viewable by road are spectacular; 2) the scenery along I-5 is anything but spectacular.

Our last trip to California was for my good friends Norm and Holly's wedding, and was taken about six weeks after our own wedding when we were lower than broke. We couldn't afford a rental car, had to fly in and out of the LA area to get the best prices, and had to take a week off to maintain those cheap prices (just to fly on the right days). We spent more time in the car than with friends and family, and since we had awesome friends who picked us up, we were still kind of at their mercy, and spent more time with some people--very cool people of course--than we would have if we'd had our own wheels. This trip we wanted the control of our own car (we got it), and we wanted to drive through all the little towns along the Central Valley and see where the people of California live when not in one of the two major triangles of population density (we did), and we wanted to break up our driving to keep the hours in the car down to reasonable numbers (accomplished).

The first day arriving in San Jose, we spent the evening there and eventually drove along I-280 South for a quick minute until it turns into I-680, which turns north and heads up the east side of the Bay all the way up to I-80, where we turned east and headed for Sac. We got to Sacramento quickly, slightly longer than two hours (the rental was faster than our '93 Saturn).

From Sac we headed south along 99 instead of I-5, and drove through all the tiny towns you see names and arrows for along the interstate, and arrived in Fresno in just over three hours.

From Fresno we went along 41 (as in CA Route 41) all the way to when it hits 46, stayed on 46 after they split, made it to Paso Robles and picked up 101 there, heading south into San Luis Obispo, in just under three hours.

The longest stretch of any driving we did was from SLO north to San Mateo, on the peninsula, at around three-and-a-half hours, along 101.

US Highway 101 is the last main north south arterial highway designated before the interstate system was developed in the fifties. I always had wondered why I-5 is on the west coast and I-95 is on the east coast, and why I-90 is the most northern east-west route and I-10 is the most southernly. The major north-south arterial Interstate highways ascend as one progresses east, and the east-west routes ascend as one travels north precisely to go against the numbering scheme of the US Highways. US HWY 1 is the major US highway along the east coast, US 11 runs through Tennessee, US 21 runs through Cleveland to New Orleans...I've read that US 101 is not a three digit US higway, as those were designated as spurs or loops (just like three digit interstate highways); US 101 is considered "10-1", where the first "digit" of the numbering scheme is 10. Okay... The US highways also descended as one traveled north...the idea was not to confuse residents too much with the new freeways.

In California I was curious how CA Rt 99 came to be named that, and learned that it had been US 99, and similarly to the east coast's US 9, which travels right across the Hudson from US 1, I realized that the main north-south routes ended in either 1 or 9. Besides the development of the Interstate system, a near fatal blow the old US highway system was perpetrated by California in 1964, when they commenced a major re-numbering project. US 99 became CA 99, and literally dozens of other US highways were turned into state routes, many with no connection to the US route number. 99 had gone from Mexico to Canada...in 1964 in California the bulk of the route was changed to I-5 north of Sac, CA 65 from Roseville to Marysville is all that's left of the 99-W (the western loop of 99, from Stockton to Davis, and up to Chico, where it used to meet up with 99-E). US 40 changed into I-80. Notice that 80 is north of US 50, which, besides having it's western terminus changed from San Francisco to Sacramento, has remained virtually unchanged.

The story behind the nostalgia of 101, and why an effort was raised to make sure it stays well maintained is traced to US 66. Route 66, the old famous highway of legend, from the older auto touring days, the route from Chicago to LA, in 1964 in California became a combination of CA 2, US 101, CA 110, CA 248, CA 66, CA 210, I-215, I-40, and then onto I-15, and that was just getting out of Los Angeles. Try making a nostalgic song about that cluster. The people were in general going along with the renumbering until Rt 66 got so screwed up, and it was deemed too late to fix it beyond putting up a historical marker every few dozen miles, so they made sure that 101 was maintained at the level that the interstates are mandated to attain.

I'm asking my readers who're in the next generation up (older than me) if my characterization of the renumbering, which I've developed from reading the internet, is accurate. My mom was in grade school, so...Let me know if there are any memories or anecdotes. Thanks.

Some New Guys at Work

At my night job we have some new gentleman who've been hired to work in the dish-pit. This is a good and necessary thing, as many similar places I've worked are usually staffed with workers of Latino descent, but with the tight standards that this corporate establishment follows, we're unable to make similar hires. Up to now we've been running with hipsters, kids of general affluence or of considerable weed-smoking habits, any of which make them rather lame in the dish-pit.

Now we've discovered a pipeline to more possible workers whose papers will all be in order. We have three at night and one in the morning. They are excellent at the work, which I'd imagine is insulting and easy for them, but they happily slog through it like masters. They usually finish before my line guys and stand around staring quizzically, saying with their eyes, "What's taking you children of privilege so long?"

Sometimes I worry about their families, and hope they're all right. Once, one of them came to me, (all three I work with regularly are all very humble and nice) and told me with a big smile in passable English, "We like you, because, you are nice to us." They've even shared their food with me during Ramadan.

They're Iraqi refugees.

The gentleman from the morning brought in a magazine with a picture of himself in fatigues and battle gear working alongside a infantryman from Louisiana. His papers had come through, luckily, when so many others face long odds. That is one of the many sad consequences of this exercise of choice out in the desert--Iraqi refugees apply by the hundreds-of-thousands for asylum here in the States, as well as the UK and other EU nations, and are routinely turned down. That practice has been happening for many years, even before March of 2003, but the fact that it's still and/or currently difficult?

Of my night guys from Bagdad, one was a professor, one worked as a cook or chef, but mainly, it sounds like, in Istanbul or Ankara, and the other, the joker, hasn't really talked about it.

I guess hiring a bunch of folks like me--overqualified--will make any business run smoothly.

I Found "The" Round Rock

I've mentioned before the community, nowadays it exists as a proper city, of Round Rock, and it's proximity to Austin. I stumbled upon it's namesake a while back on a photo expedition, and I can say it was entirely accidental.

My morning job has moved across Round Rock to a new location, and coupled with our move to a new apartment, my morning commute time has shrunk to ten minutes, but before the move, the place was on a small street parallel to I-35 called Chisolm Trail. One day I went on a ride with my boss for a work related excursion, we travelled down Chisolm Trail past any point I'd been before (which was in fact very close to our base of operations), and I spotted what looked like an old-town-square-type collection of buildings. It had a marker our front that I read as we sped by that said "Old Town Square". How 'bout them apples, I thought.

I decided to go check it out when I had a chance and take pictures. I was informed that it was not actually as old as I might have thought; that it was in fact built quite recently, and that it was made to look old in order to trick possible consumers into checking it out in the same fashion as it had done to me. That prospect, that it was all modern marketing, was almost more intriguing to me and speaks to the whole purpose of this blog site.

The newness of that medical, accounting services, and retail center proved to be true, the fakery of the Old Town Square had lived up to my expectations. As I was leaving I walked through the center, taking pictures as lawyers looked at me with confused looks, and that's when I saw two informative plaques. One had information about the Chisolm Trail, the other had information about the round rock that gave the name to the area and that happened to be right down the street, actually, right around the corner.

Jesse Chisolm was the first of the large Texas ranchers who drove his cattle north to Kansas where they ould be shipped by train east to the slaughterhouses. At that time there were more cattle in the Lone Star state than people, and soon everyone used Jesse's trail. That stretch that I worked on was part of that original route; it meandered but had been paved, and obviously retains the name.

This round rock that people (and signs) speak of was used as a landmark for both the native Craddo and the later white settlers as they came west by wagon along Brushy Creek and headed north up Chisolm's trail. Seriously, the rock is right off the road (Chisolm Trail Rd) and in the creek, like a limestone pedestal you could park a VW Beetle on top of. The limestone that formed the creek bed is especially stubborn in the area that is the Round Rock, since it's persisted during the millennia of erosion. I guess it's been mostly visible, and let's crossers know how deep the water is.

The Brushy Creek community postmaster suggested that the fledgling community change their name to "Round Rock" because then people would know exactly where the place was. They did, and currently there is no (close-by) town called Brushy Creek.

Here's a shot of the fakery of the Old Town Square:



Here's a shot of the round rock. Large enough for a VW Beetle, no joke.



Here is is again, off in the distance, next to the bridge on Chisolm Trail Rd.



I love these wagon ruts the settlers left. Enough settlers passed through here to leave these ruts in solid stone.



This waterfall is only a few hundred yards up Brushy Creek from the Rock. I like waterfalls.

Odds and Ends Since Returning from the Trip

All is well in the school. My authority as Principal is unquestioned and--(muffled wresting of a microphone)
Teachers! We're on strike!

Sorry, for some reason "All is well" was how I thought I should open up this weak and tiny post about not writing about our trip out west (back home in some regards, like my blog's title), and then it just wrote itself.

The trip to see everyone, Dan and Lupita, Norm and Holly, Robbie and Jess, Ryan and Jules, Joe and Kelly, Sam and Aurie, Jimmy and Christine, Ken and Christine, both Donny's, and even Rich and Lara was a refreshing success. Trying to train my weary body to get used to working doubles--and about 15-17 hours a day--again has been rough. I'll be posting a few posts about our new apartment, the cool Iraqis I work with, and our trip probably on Monday, since I won't be working the night job. We'll see.

One nice thing about the trip: We didn't drive on I-5 at all. San Jose to Sac on 680, Sac to Fresno on 99, Fresno to SLO on 41, SLO to San Mateo on 101. Tiny towns all along the way and no trip broke four hours, most barely topped three (mainly because of the way I leadfooted that rental Mazda).

Odds and Ends Before a Trip

We still currently have no Internet access in our new apartment (I'm using a compy in the lobby of our new complex), so posting will be light probably until we get to California, but still, you know...

Thanks to my cousin Mike Sherwood, who posted a more accurate portrayal of my math epiphany in my last post. It was an epiphany for me, but something that had been expounded upon hundreds of years ago (most certainly). The exciting part for me was finding out that my cousin Mike is a "math person" or knows "math people".

Pictures of some cool places and things coming soon.

For My Math People

I got off work this evening from my second job and perused an old notebook as I sipped an Anchor Steam, waiting for the moment when I would shuffle off to sleep and wake up in a few hours and move across town, when my brain started racing after looking at some notes I'd made waiting in an airport in May of 2009.

After an hour and a half that simply rushed by, I'd come up with an iff math theorem about square numbers, and the easy half of the proof. Don't be confused, "iff" is not a typo, it stands for "if, and only if" and is the strongest type of theorem. Theorems are statements like "if P, then Q", but that doesn't necessarily imply that "if Q, then P". Take squares..."If A is a square, then A has four sides" is true (in normal Euclidean space, etc), but it doesn't necessarily hold that "if A has four sides, then A is a square". Rectangles and trapezoids and parallelograms all have four sides but don't have to be squares.

An "iff" theorem is one that is super strong and implies that "if P, then Q", as well as "if Q, then P". I was messing around, and I need to get to bed, but I'll share the gist of it: a and b are consecutive triangular numbers if, and only if, their sum, c, is a square number.

What this means is, if you take two consecutive triangular numbers and add them up you get a square number, and, on the other hand, any square number can be expressed as a sum of consecutive triangular numbers.

Crazy night...we move in a few hours!