"Where in North America?" --- Section III

[CalOldBlue]

No, I need to go play with that someday. Like many people who live in a tourist area, there are things I have in the category "I have to do that someday, but I have a lot of time....". E.g., I've never been to Alcatraz, despite living in the Bay Area for 6 decades.

As to fill and the 1989 quake... yeah, I did my term paper in a California Geography class I took at Cal on the 1906 quake; learned a lot about liquefaction, etc.

So when the 1989 hit, I found myself faced with a dilemma. I was in the basement of a modern, glass-facade building built on landfill at Sierra Point (first point that juts into the bay south of Candlestick point).

Amazing what can flash through your mind in a few seconds: do I stay in the garage and wait for a 5 story building to pancake on me, or do I try to run outside, possibly to be speared like a bug by a shard of glass exfoliating from the building?

Split the difference; ran to the garage entrance and waited to see which way things went: in my case, nowhere... building did fine.

Can't say the same for my commute home. Popped in my car and made it as far as the Bay Bridge entrance before getting shunted off onto the Embarcadero freeway (y'all may recall the Bay Bridge had a few problems that day and for months to follow).

Spent hours trying to get out of the city, watching the smoke rise from the Marina from the downtown area, trying to phone home, driving around trying to avoid gridlocked traffic. Low point was pulling over south of Market near the Federal courthouse to think things over, and buying a can of beer from a homeless person (he had a sixpack) for $5. He was happy, I was happier.... really needed that beer.

Eventually made it back to my parent's place in Millbrae for the night.

..... One final thought: I was never so prouder of the people of The City than that night. In spite of all the chaos, in spite of all the traffic, dead traffic lights, whatever: people were remaining calm and courteous. People took turns at 4-way stops, nobody honked their horns, folk waited patiently at payphones for others to make their calls. The City showed it's class that evening. ......

[Mark Sedenquist]

And quite possibly only a warm-up for the next big event in San Francisco. I used to be active in an urban rescue/evaluation team for the Red Cross and I've crawled around some red-tagged buildings in the aftermath of earthquakes in southern California. For awhile, I never went anywhere without having a drywall handsaw in close proximity. I think it's possible there's still one in my car...

With drywall saw, you can make doorways anywhere -- just like drawing a door in a wall in a cartoon. Doesn't work nearly as well in lathe and plaster or other construction types, but it's darn handy when the doorways are all above you and your crawling on what used to be the ceiling of a collapsed building. By the way, I don't recommend the practice -- collapsed buildings make all kinds of weird and very disturbing sounds....

Thanks for sharing your recollections of that day.

Mark

[Mark Sedenquist]

This place is extremely well known and photographed. Can you name the place and the name of this spot?

(Photo by Megan Edwards)
{Sorry that the horizon is tilted -- when I moved it horizontal -- it eliminated one of the visual clues -- and so I've posted it with the horizon slightly out of kilter....}

That water is very, very cold....

[Southwest Dave]

Old Priest Grade... on CA120 heading into Yosemite (my standard approach)?

A much more fun ride than the new Priest Grade, built for wimps. (Actually, CA120 is New Priest Grade these days, the road on the right side of the photo?)

Yep, the 120 is the new priest grade. Due to a blip in the mapping program directions [or the ability to read them] we ended up going down the Old one in a 30 ft RV and the woman had there eyes closed all the way down, and yes we were well over the weight restriction, oops!

[CalOldBlue]

...we ended up going down the Old one in a 30 ft RV and the woman had there eyes closed all the way down, and yes we were well over the weight restriction, oops!

Ow! For those who haven't done it, Old Priest Grade is narrow, steep, windy, and has a few sharp drop-offs. Icky enough in an SUV, but ugly in an RV. Worse downhill than up.

In a car with decent handling, you can make it from top to bottom in about half the time as the new road (traffic permitting), even without breaking the speed limit (much).

[Mark Sedenquist]

I did that in 32-foot, 7.5 ton vehicle back in 1994. I can agree that there are some very twisty places on that road. My truck was custom-built and I knew it's performance capabilities -- Doing that route in a rental RV -- my hat's off to Southwest Dave!

Mrk

[Twilight]

That water is very, very cold....

Thunder Hole in Acadia Nat. Park?

[Mark Sedenquist]

Thunder Hole in Acadia Nat. Park?

And the sign is one of the featured funny signs in this book and well as here.... Excellent work!

Mark

[Mark Sedenquist]

These two rock outcroppings have several names -- They are both historically significant. What are their most common names? Where are they? And what is the historical reference?

(Photo by Gerald Thurman)

[Mark Sedenquist]

These outcroppings are roughly at the same latitude as St. Louis and in the neighborhood of the longitude of Bismark....