Category: Berkeley

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January

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What the drought looks like: clear sky, a touch of green on the hills, and bone-dry trails. This was at the top of the Seaview Trail in Tilden Park, in the hills above Berkeley, this afternoon. That’s Mount Diablo in the slightly dirty distance. Met dozens of people out walking — more than I ever recall seeing on the trail at once (one reason: it climbs a good 600 or 800 feet from the nearest parking areas, which are more than a mile from the top). We’ve had less than half an inch of rain this month, the month that’s usually the heart of the wet season.

Winter’s happening somewhere. Here and here and here. But not here where I am.

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Heat Wave

It was freakishly warm here today, meaning the warmest day on record for the date around most of the Bay Area. Temperatures in the 70s were common. A few places got into the 80s. I remember years where I’ve waited well into April before we’ve had our first 70-degree day.

Now, it’s nearly midnight. Still 65 degrees. The warm northeasterly is still blowing across the hills and down across the flatlands. Not like any January night I remember in these parts.

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Tannenbaum

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We’re just getting into that part of January where you start looking at the Christmas tree and thinking that it’s overstayed its welcome. No–that you’ve let it overstay its welcome. While all the more efficient and tidy households have long since bundled their trees out to the curb for recycling–I don’t think anyone has a municipal Xmas tree bonfire anymore like our Chicago suburb did–there’s our Noble fir, still lighting up our post-holiday nights. And our tree waits to see if we’ll challenge the Brekke family record for Christmas tree longevity, which was well into February as I recall.  

Well, this one will come down, the way they all have. It’ll lie out there by the curb and get tossed in the back of a compactor truck and driven away to be ground up with all the other discarded trees. I’m starting to get teary.

Auf wiedersehen, o tannenbaum!

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Don’t

Don’t go out for your first real bike ride in months and try to go hard. Just don’t do it.

But if you do, don’t let your heart rate go into the red zone. Red zone meaning you’re not sure whether you’re heart’s really supposed to beat that fast.

But if you do find yourself looking at that high heart rate, don’t engage in hijinks like trying to show the other guys how fast you can go — even for just a couple minutes, which is really all your atrophied legs have in them.

But if you do start showing off, don’t let anyone talk you into taking the hard climb back home when there’s an easier one you know you really should take.

But if you do let reason be overruled, don’t ride out ahead of the other guys, even if you’re telling them you’re just warming up for the hard part of the climb (note: it’s all hard).

But if you do go off the front a little, don’t lose track of where your friends are. They might take a turn you weren’t expecting.

But if you do get separated, don’t waste a lot of time looking for them, and don’t hesitate to take easy bail-out route back home you had in mind instead of trying to push yourself up the wall in front of you.

But if you do look for them, and if you do try the wall, don’t get off your bike, whatever you do.

But if the damned hill is just too hard for you in your broken-down state — OK, get off. And if you do, take a look around at all the stuff you’d miss if you were just grinding your way up the grade. When you get back on your bike, and finally hit the top of the hill, you’ll be amazed that you ever thought it was hard. Don’t tell anyone it was.

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Highly Sensitive

As I got on the BART car, she was sitting on one of the side-facing bench seats, reading a book. Her bike was blocking a second seat. I asked if she’d mind moving the bicycle so I could sit down. She gave me a blank stare and moved the bike about four inches so I could squeeze past. Another passenger eyed the seat next to me, which the bike still blocked. He didn’t say anything, just gave her a look. She answered with the blank stare and moved the bike a few inches so he could sit. When the train left the station, the bike slid back into my seatmate’s legs. Bike-woman didn’t notice–she was alternately reading her book and fumbling with a pack of Kleenex and blowing her nose and stowing the used snot-wipes in a little basket on the bike. Then she noticed her bike was gouging into her fellow passenger’s shins. She pulled it back toward her so that now it was partially blocking the door.

When she went back to her book, I saw the title: “The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You.”

(Oh, and it turns out the highly sensitive thing is a pop-psych franchise. Here’s a self-test if you’re wondering if you have what it takes to be a potential bicycle-toting BART blockhead: Are you highly highly sensitive?)

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Berkeley Frost

Oh, sure: You, wherever you are to the north or east of the San Francisco Bay shoreline, you have your cold snaps, your big old snowstorms, and your drifts. All that’s enough to make you forget how the cold season started some frosty morning a few months ago. Here on the Bay, frost happens every so often in the dead of winter, on some clear morning after a storm has passed. This morning was one of those frosty mornings for us to come out of our uninsulated bungalows and think that we’re in some kind of wintry solidarity with folks on the Columbia, near the East River, or on the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.

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News Omen

Does this happen where you live? You see or hear a helicopter in the distance. You watch for a few seconds and realize it’s not going anywhere. It’s just hovering. And then you know something like news is happening nearby. Much of the summer, the appearance of helicopters over the UC-Berkeley campus signaled some new hijinks related to a group of tree-sitters trying to stop a construction project at the football stadium. Last spring, a chopper appeared in the dawn skies just a few blocks east of us and just sat there. Turned out a local guy had committed suicide by ramming his car into a line of parked vehicles at 100 mph.

This morning’s case in point this morning: While walking The Dog, we spotted a helicopter just hanging up there to the west, near I-80, the Eastshore Freeway. Two possibilities: a horrific traffic jam, possibly involving major roadway carnage, or some other photogenic event. When we got back to the house, we turned on KCBS, the AM all-“news” channel. The first traffic report comes on. No, nothing about a backup on the freeway down there. What then? During the local news segment, there’s an item about a body discovered burning on the frontage road adjacent to the freeway. Police are investigating. Choppers are hovering.

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Luminaria Rainout

Our night-before-Xmas luminaria extravaganza has been going on since 1992. In the 16 Christmas Eves during that run, we had one almost-rainout, in 2003. Another year, the wind was blowing so hard that we doubted at first that we could get the candles lit. But both times we managed to set the lights out.

The forecast for the past week has been pointing to rain today and tonight. The only variation in the predictions has been just how much rain and wind and when the storm would peak. And sure enough, it spit down drizzle all day, just enough so that we decided to postpone our luminaria till next week, New Year’s Eve.

The drizzle almost quit completely just after dark, and many blocks around us put out their luminaria despite the sogginess. But the rain has been just heavy enough to turn all those bags into sodden little heaps and to put out most of the candles. And in the last hour, the hour we’d usually be placing all the bags and candles on our street and lighting them up, the showers increased.

It’s official — a rainout.

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Solstice Day

Solstice Day — the sun standing still and low in the sky, not that you can tell with the clouds. We had a dry interlude early this morning to take the dog out, grab a cup of to-go coffee, and walk up the abandoned Santa Fe right-of-way that runs through the middle of town. It started raining just after we got home, but not hard. So we ran out to the Delancey Street Foundation lot and bought a Christmas tree. By the time we got home, the drizzling onset of the storm had turned into a slow cold rain.

So that was our solstice weather. For the last couple of weeks, the climate here has behaved as if we’re not in a drought, acting like enough rain and snow may fall this season to give us a reprieve from water rationing and the accelerating sense that this piece of the world is going somehow irreversibly wrong.

That was our solstice weather, and it was mild compared to virtually everyplace I have friends and family. Chicago right now: one below, with blowing snow. It’s 2 in Springfield, Illinois. Portland, Oregon: After days of snow and ice, more snow tonight and more storms for days to come. New York: the wind is howling as a storm accelerates away out over the Atlantic; the temperature is supposed to be in the mid-teens tonight. The National Weather Service site for Fort Worth says it’s the coldest night of the season.

Stay warm, all, and watch for that sun to come back.