Category: Berkeley

Posted on

Cycling Forecast

I’ll stop later to consider why we really do this stuff — superficial analysis suggests it’s because it make great storytelling later — but the ride tomorrow is on (meaning: I’m riding; the event, with 75 riders signed up, would obviously go on without me).

In the meantime: No reprieve from the forecasters or their all powerful weather models. The probability of measurable precipitation in the area we’ll be riding in the morning is 90 percent. At some point, when those in charge of interpreting all the weather data realize their models are actually a reflection of reality, they seem to relax and shift their predictions from “chance of rain” or “rain likely” to “the hose will be on full force; don’t even think anything else can happen.” Besides the rain, which is an interesting element in which to ride, there will be wind. Maybe 30 or 40 mph gusts on the coast. Parts of the route, I know already, are going to be a slog.

Time to stop talking about it and go to bed so I can rest up a little for it.

Posted on

Brevet Weather

Saturday is the first brevet of the year on the Bay Area randonneuring calendar. “Brevet” and “randonneuring” are French words that mean — well, they mean something about riding your bike a long way (I covered that ground last year about this time). Anyway, first brevet of the year: From the Golden Gate Bridge, north into Marin County and through a string of small towns: Sausalito, Mill Valley, Larkspur, Ross, San Anselmo, Fairfax before riding up west into rolling country out to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, 50-some miles from the start. Then the route returns to the mainland and heads north for a piece, then doubles back, eventually, to the bridge. It’s a 200-kilometer route — the shortest regular brevet distance — about 125 miles. I’m signed up and mostly ready to go.

Just one thing: Here’s what the local National Weather Service forecaster has to say about Saturday:

“EXPECT RAIN TO DEVELOP BY SUNRISE ACROSS THE NORTH BAY AND THEN ENVELOP MOST OF THE BAY AREA BY LATE MORNING. RAINFALL SHOULD EVENTUALLY REACH AS FAR SOUTH AS MONTEREY. … THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE A MODERATE RAIN PRODUCER … WITH RAIN TOTALS IN EXCESS OF AN INCH ACROSS THE NORTH BAY. … SOMEWHAT BREEZY CONDITIONS ARE LIKELY AS WELL ACROSS THE NORTH BAY ON SATURDAY WITH THE MAIN FOCUS ALONG THE COAST AND IN THE HILLS.”

Well, the upside is that it’s only a bunch of supercomputerized mathematical weather models that say this is going to happen. They could always be wrong.

Technorati Tags:

Posted on

Berkeley Apostrophe Watch

Californiaapts

I love the old marquee entrance to this apartment building on University Avenue. I have a vague idea it goes back to the 1920s. I lived in a building a half-block away in 1978, and the manager — Doug, a Briton who said he was a retired race-car driver from way back — told me that it had been put up at the same time as this one, for the same owner, and he put it in that ’20s time-frame. Don’t know whether his report was accurate. Anyway, the APT’S sign survives.

Posted on

How to Win Friends and Monetize People

Just after New Year’s, I got an email from a former colleague. The subject line carried the sender’s name and said, “Do Not Delete.” I recognized the name — we’ll call him Stephen, since that’s his name — though it’s been years, I think, since I last saw him. His message asked for my home address so that he could mail me something. He was a little cryptic about what it might be, saying only that it wasn’t what his mother hoped he’d been sending. (What his mother hopes for, I’m guessing, is a wedding announcement.)

I let the email sit there for a day or two before replying. I sent him my home address, which is publicly available for anyone who wants to spend 10 seconds looking for it, along with a 23-word greeting. Why did I reply? What was I expecting?

I was curious. What was it my non-bosom-pal Stephen wanted to share with me? Maybe he was inviting some old acquaintances to a party of some kind; nothing extraordinary in that. Maybe he had just found out he was terminally ill and wanted to bid his friends goodbye (I’ve never shaken off the shock of getting a flyer in the mail announcing the memorial service for a friend I hadn’t seen for awhile and hadn’t known was dying). Maybe he’d won the lottery and would be showering those most dear to him (me?!) with surprise checks (that’s what I’d have done if I won — I’m sure of it). I didn’t think about it too hard, though, and by the time a big manila envelope from Stephen arrived in the mail last week, I had more or less forgotten about it.

Here’s what was inside:

A one-page letter from Stephen talking about how, after 15 years as a writer and editor, he had changed careers a couple of years ago and gone into real-estate sales. You can probably guess what came next: He talked about how rewarding and challenging his new line of work was. He cleared $6 million in sales last year. And now, he wanted to reach out to his wide circle of buddies and semi-buddies to spread the good news and ask for referrals, either directly from us or from anyone we know who might be contemplating a real-estate deal. For our convenience, he had enclosed his business card.

I’ve got to say this: The letter has as much class as any of its kind can have; which is to say, not much. It was well thought out. It was nicely crafted. It had a friendly tone (I’d quote it, but the message seems to have found its way into the recycling). But at its heart — the mysterious email, the group letter personalized with the salutation “Hi, Brekke!” scrawled at the bottom — the effort was still crass, right out of some playbook on how to “leverage” friends and family as part of creating a successful business enterprise: “I know and like you. You know and like me. I’m in a new business now. Won’t you let me sell you my service? It’ll help you as much as me.”

Don’t get me wrong. First, I’d feel different if I were dealing with someone I’m close to. With a real relationship in place, I certainly wouldn’t resent the suggestion that I might consider using a service, and chances are I’d try to figure out a way to help. Second, I don’t have anything against people who make their living in a tough, unforgiving profession. Sales is brutally direct in its feedback on your product and performance. To do well at it requires a combination of knowledge, preparation, endurance, optimism and perhaps charm with which I, for one, have not been abundantly blessed. Third, I don’t dismiss the advantages of engaging someone you know and trust to help with a daunting business transaction. I got an attorney who played on one of my old softball teams to help Kate and me when we bought our house in the late ’80s. And the last time I wanted to refinance the (same) house, I looked up a former colleague from my last news gig who has since become a mortgage broker.

Would I have gone to either guy if they had first let me know beforehand, the way Stephen did, that they viewed our acquaintance as a sales opportunity? I can’t say for sure, though it’s clear that I have a low tolerance for marketing. For me, the difference is that the only marketing either the lawyer or the mortgage banker did was to be themselves; and until I initiated a conversation about doing business, I never got the feeling either one of them saw me as a potential source of income or our relationship as a resource to be monetized.

Posted on

This Week’s Sky Highlights

Cimg5109

Last Saturday: North Berkeley and Albany from Vassar Avenue, just below Spruce Street, in the Berkeley Hills.

Cimg5132 1

Wednesday, looking east up Virginia Street from McGee Street. A pretty brisk late-afternoon shower opened up just as I walked home from downtown Berkeley.

Technorati Tags:

Posted on

Rat Saga III

The Honda rat is in the news again. The jumbo inflate-a-rodent was installed at a Berkeley street corner as a mascot by union mechanics thrown out of their jobs by the new owner of the local Honda dealership. Then, as recounted by Richard Brenneman, the Jack London of the Berkeley police beat — happy 130th birthday, by the way, Jack — the usually buoyant rat was slashed and deflated by an unknown assailant.

One of San Francisco TV stations, ABC 7, has gotten wind of the rat saga and did a news report on it earlier this week. In the station’s semi-intelligible Web version of the story, the dealership’s general manager complains that the rat stretches the legal tolerance for free speech a little too far: “They’re able to take what probably should be a temporary use permit and turned it into a perpetual opportunity,” he says.

Sure, it’s a nuisance when people you’ve fired don’t have the manners to thank you and leave without a fuss. But look on the rat’s good side: It keeps regular hours — 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., apparently. It’s not known to gnaw or scrabble where it’s not wanted. It’s totally plague-free and hypoallergenic. It’s seasonally festive if not abundantly tasteful. It presents no choking hazard to kids and won’t crawl up your leg. I’m sure the Honda guy will get to love it.

Posted on

Four Lanes

Fourlanes

Monday evening, just about to cross the last little pass on westbound Interstate 80 into the town of Vallejo. From the top of the pass — it’s a pass, though I don’t know its name — you catch your first glimpse of bay water. At the end of a 500-mile trip back from western Oregon, or a much shorter one into the Central Valley, the sight says you’re almost home.

It was about 5 o’clock as I drove up this long incline out of the westernmost edge of the valley. The sun, just the other side of that ridge to the right, shockingly brilliant. Just a hint of green coming out across the hills after our foot of rain. The traffic was backed up for miles and miles going the other way, partly because of rush hour, partly because of an accident of some sort down the hill to the east. The volume of traffic on I-80 is always impressive and has been for years and years. I wrote a short editorial for The Examiner in the summer of 1991 describing a Friday night drive from Berkeley up across Donner Pass. It felt like being carried along in the surge of a river, a flow so powerful it bore everyone up-country all the way to the top of the mountains and beyond.

So seeing masses of cars, especially at going-home time: Not a surprise, but always a reminder of how crowded this place has become and how we live amid all this beauty.

Posted on

I-5 Regular

Thom and I drove up to Eugene from Berkeley on Sunday (with his dorm-mate Sam, who rode up with us after getting stranded in the San Francisco airport on his way back to school from New York. A 500-mile trip, and a lot of the Oregon stretch that had been alien territory is becoming familiar: the four low summits between Grants Pass and Canyonville; the Seven Feathers Casino (free and not-too-awful coffee at the tribe-owned gas station and mini-mart), the two sharp mountainside turns at Myrtle Creek (they get your attention because the I-5 speed limit drops to 50 mph there). I’m starting to have a Eugene-trip routine: We drop Thom’s stuff off at his dorm, go to dinner, then I head back south. As when I made this trip in November, I got as far as Yreka (home of my favorite non-existent bakery) before my brain said, “Enough.” I got a room around midnight in the Best Western at the bottom of central Yreka exit ramp. A sign that I’m becoming an I-5 regular: The clerk recognized me.

Off again now to return to Berkeley. Stay tuned for pictures of 24-hour drive-thru coffee and the 70 mph dog.

Posted on

Ride

Out of the house this morning at 7:30 to lead a ride from Berkeley up to Davis, near the western edge of the Central Valley. It’s 60 miles away by car; 100 miles by my zig-zagging cycling route. The unknown this morning was whether more than one or two other people would show up to ride; the uncertainty was occasioned by a good rain last night that had been forecast to last into the morning. But the weather had cleared by dawn, and I went over to the meeting place hoping maybe three or four or five people might show. Instead, 14 riders appeared, including two pairs on tandems. The roads were wet but the sky was mostly clear and the winds mild all day. Compared to many of the longer rides in this area, which feature lots of hill climbing, this route is mostly rolling. But even the constant up and down of mini-climbs can wear you down, and I was pretty tired when we finally rode east from the last small hill on the route into the flats of the valley (it really is that abrupt). Our goal was to get to Davis in time to get something to eat, then get on a 4:25 p.m. train back to Berkeley. No problem — we ate at a place across the street from the station, rode over and got tickets, waited 10 minutes for the train, quickly loaded the bikes (a large section of one car was devoted to bike racks), and had a fun ride back home as the sun set. Hard to beat.