The New York Times writes about our local Highway 1/Devil’s Slide closure.

Not that the problems, or the need to make do, are new. The highway has been closed dozens of times because of unstable geology, once in 1995 when a rock slide caused it to drop eight feet. In all, the roadway has fallen 46 feet since 1937, when the state first paved it.

It’s easy to feel abandoned out here on the coast with commute/road/traffic problems – many people in this area don’t know about the closure, don’t know what Devil’s Slide is, haven’t heard of Montara, etc. So some national coverage of our local woes at least offers a bit of validation.

We’ve lived in this area called The Coastside for two years now, and I’m amazed and appalled at the lack of infrastructure. I’m not talking about roads and plumbing (though I’m sure those are issues; I just don’t know enough to complain about them). We don’t have sidewalks and we don’t have home delivery of mail. That may be seen as charming; but it’s getting a bit old for me.

We have no cell coverage. I can’t imagine that will change at any point.

Our Comcast cable television is terrible: image quality is consistently bad (with over-the-air artifacts like ghosting common on some very low channels) and audio is low volume and filled with hiss on higher channels. Recently, channel 3 went out completely. Comcast told many residents who called that they wouldn’t regard it as a real issue until they had reached a minimum number of service complaints that resulted in a scheduled technician visit. In other words, if you called in and told them about the problem, they would treat it as a local-to-you problem that didn’t require any action on their part until someone came and looked at YOUR house and eliminated that as the specific cause. It takes several days to get someone to come out and so it took a few days for Comcast to even acknowledge that they had a problem and to take any action to fix it. We pay the same as everyone else (if not more) for cable, and we get lousy service (both the product itself and the customer service).

Our power goes out many times each winter. For an hour, or for 7 hours. You never know, of course. It’s dangerous, inconvenient, stressful. We aren’t supposed to use the water when the power is out. There’s obviously some non-redundant connection that is very vulnerable to wind, wet soil, trees, or whatever. But PG&E is not investing in any infrastructure to develop a robust solution, so we’re stuck with frequent outages that leave a big section of Montara without power. Our power bills in Montara are ridiculously higher than other places we’ve lived.

Our telephone service is sub-par. Caller-ID information is often not received. A year or so ago I found that I would get a busy signal when calling the voice mail number – and that my own callers would often not be able to leave voice mail; instead having it ring and ring. It took a great deal of effort to get someone at SBC to acknowledge and fix the problem (they were out of circuits or something arcane). Last week we encountered terrible static when calling to Montara from outside of Montara. Calls to either of our home numbers from a cell phone or land line located elsewhere would be at best scratchy and at worst, unlistenable. I have reported this to SBC as have many other local residents. As with the cable, it’s being treated like a problem local to our own service, despite the fact that it’s not, but of course, we can only report our own problem. I was informed by SBC that they’ve checked and everything is fine. It’s not fine; my phone service is only semi-usable (I have to shout at my callers that I’ll return their call), and SBC has decided not to act. Of course, we pay the same fees to SBC that everyone else does.

Can you tell I’m fed up?

This post is Not Safe For Work (or children). Please move on!

Just the other day we went for a walk with the dog in the flower fields near our house. I was fairly startled to see bits and pieces of an adult mag (i.e., nudie) strewn semi-artistically through the area.

Click on any of the pics to see ’em larger in flickr – you can even select All Sizes in flickr to see the picture in somewhat more full resolution. See these images on flickr here.

This had a Blair Witch aspect to it. A sculpture-like thing.

Close-up view of the pr0n-eating tree

Topless in the grass.

Punctures in this page suggest that it at one time had resided in some branches, but now lay sadly inverted in the leaves.

Budweiser? Perhaps this is a clue!

Impaled…on a branch.

It’s nature’s way.

What is on the agenda when you have an Alpaca Event?

A newly repainted house in Montara. Frighteningly bright. What were they thinking? Looks like we’ve got our own IKEA here on the coast now.

Update: turns out the homeowners are fans of UC Berkeley sports teams

I survive a violent assault

Forty-five minutes ago I was fortunate to survive a violent, deliberate attempt to cause me harm. I took the dog for a walk, and just around the corner – less than 3 minutes from our house, on foot – a man in a pickup truck drove directly at me.

There are no sidewalks in Montara. Pedestrians must walk on the road. The road in this case was more than wide enough for two vehicles. There was no car behind us. It was full daylight out, but not bright enough to be shining the driver’s eyes.

This was not a deserted area; in my walk I saw probably 15 other dogs (with many people), kids being dropped off, joggers, etc.

I was not invisible – I was wearing light jeans, a bright red shirt, white shoes.

There’s just no way to explain away the other person’s behavior except to identify it as vicious, deliberate, and hurtful.

The older white Mazda pickup came towards us at fairly high speed. He was driving close to the edge of the road (unusual when the whole road is open). I stopped walking and looked up at him, as if to make eye contact. He did not waver. I did the only thing I could do, I jumped off the road into the grass/ditch, at the last moment. He didn’t waver; I saw his fairly young face and sunglasses as he sped past.

In some ways, thank goodness the only choice I had was to get out of the way. Had I been holding a gun, or been ensonced in my own shell of steel and rubber, I might have given into the anger and indignation than this intent-to-harm engendered. As it is, I’m shocked and hurt, and helpless. But safe.

click to enlarge picture

Work on Devil’s Slide has officially begun and someone put up a banner adjacent to the Gray Whale Cove parking lot.

The house two doors down burned tonight. It took a long time for the fire trucks to arrive; people stood in the street watching the flames get higher and thicker, hearing windows break. It felt ghoulish to watch, but it felt irresponsible to go inside, as if standing on the street was somehow the right way to lend support, all the while thinking “Thank God it wasn’t us” (and maybe hating ourselves for thinking that). A neighbor took pictures – explaining apologetically that it was for his insurance. I thought of taking pictures – because it was something that was happening – but couldn’t make myself do it; but I felt terrible that somehow my neighbor had the impulse to explain himself to me.

The man with the camera case and SLR camera arrived, walking on our driveways to get a better vantage point. The local blogger arrived much later, striding officiously to the center of the scene, camera and notebook in hand. Wait, it’s our neighbor, this is our territory, get away!

Ironically, I actually now know something about the people that live there; their history, their family, their recent tragedies, their remodeling. What, if anything, can we do to help them now?

Brody (who is a dog) alerted us last night to a visitor in our backyard. Mere feet from our hot tub was this fairly large possum. I’ve never seen one before.

Just out on a walk with the dog. As we passed a house, with a somewhat inclined driveway, I hear a metallic creak. We paused and the noise came again. It sounded like it was coming from one of the cars parked in the driveway. A bit concerned, I watched, and the noise happened a third time, only this time the car inched backwards very slightly.

We went to the door (I did not want to do this, by the way) and knocked. Taking a dog up a strange walk to a strange front door is a bit nerve-wracking.

No answer. Even though there were two cars parked in the driveway.

I then looked across the street. There was a car parked there directly across from the creaking car. I went up to their door (I really did not want to do this, by the way) and rang the bell. No answer. There were two cars parked there. And shoes outside the door.

Do people in our little town just not answer the door to men with dogs? I have no idea.

Do cars just settle into their parking brake? Or do they only creak when, Hollywood-style, the cables are fraying? I have no idea.

What to do? How much effort and annoying of people does one do, based on a concern or suspicion?

We kept walking.