Winding Roads

SUMMARY: You think you know where you are going, and suddenly--

First posted in a Facebook Group Oct 23, 2021

In my area--southwest to west of San Jose, CA, if you start at the southern end of Highway 9 in Los Gatos, its name is Los Gatos-Saratoga Road. (Or "highway 9," depending on your inclination.)

As it continues northwesterly, when entering Saratoga at the intersection of Saratoga Ave. it becomes Saratoga-Sunnyvale Rd AKA "Old Highway 9" (because the new one veers away and is a different road entirely). At this point, you are going north.

When you enter Cupertino, it becomes DeAnza Blvd (This was Cupertino's bright idea so that we didn't have TWO local names for the same road (Saratoga-Sunnyvale and Sunnyvale-Saratoga). Now we have THREE names for that section), also aka Old Highway 9.

When you enter Sunnyvale, it becomes Sunnyvale-Saratoga Rd. Still going north.

At some point, it splits; if you turn right onto its old path, it becomes N. Sunnyvale Ave and then peters out. But if you follow its main flow, it becomes S. Mathilda Ave. for a few blocks, then N. Mathilda Ave. for about 2 miles.

It curves right smoothly about 90 degrees east at that point and becomes Caribbean Dr for a few more blocks going more or less east, then curves gently until it becomes Lawrence Expressway, going due south. (Aka state (? or county) highway 82, but no one calls it that).

And if you follow that for 8 miles, it turns into Quito Road where it crosses Saratoga Ave. (see above).

If you keep going south on Quito, eventually it ends at Los Gatos-Saratoga road, less than a mile northwest of where you started your trip.

(If you want to go around the circle again, sorry, you have to make an obvious right turn at a stoplight, and where's the fun in that?)

(This map shows you the west side of the loop with scale of miles at the bottom; Lawrence Expressway/Quito Rd is fairly obvious for the east side. Also here: Google maps: all that route mostly)

Looking Back -- Population and Freeways

SUMMARY: Silicon Valley then and now

From a FB discussion on my post about Spokane vs Coeur d'Alene, and about avoiding big cities. June 30 2020.

Likely gibberish to folks who haven't lived here, or maybe not.

I said:

My current big city [San Jose aka Silicon Valley aka Santa Clara County aka South Bay Area--overlapping multiple city and county boundaries] grew up around me. I know that there have been traffic issues always, but they build more freeways and more lanes and that just encourages more cars and more people. When I moved here (with family), the county held about a million people. About 1.2 million when I moved out on my own and joined the work world. Now it holds about 2 million. It's overwhelming at times. Not just the traffic, but the smog--which got much better for a while--is getting worse again. Construction is infilling everything, and usually higher (no more 1-story office buildings).

I've actually been threatening to move elsewhere since 1976 or so. Colorado was on my radar at the time. [Note: But that was more because I wanted to move around like we always had as a family. We can see how well that worked out.]

Friend who recently moved to Victoria BC said:

when my parents brought me to Sunnyvale in 1962 there were still orchards everywhere, I-280 didn't exist, US-101 was still the Bayshore Freeway, and CA-237 was still a 2-lane country road.

As you know, we decided to bail out for someplace less metropolitan. It helps being retired because I don't have to care about finding a well-paying job

Then I responded:

Yeah, the job thing for sure. 

I think that things weren't too different in 1968. Going to friends' houses, I'd bike past orchards in our neighborhood. Horse riders very occasionally came down our street from the stables 2 blocks away. Friends in high school cut apricots nearby for summer jobs. I-280 between San Jose and CA-85 wasn't completed until some time after we moved here, and the section going north to SF still went along Cañada Road (I remember the awful traffic on the annual high school honor society bus trip up and back). 

CA-237, yes, when we'd drive north on this 2-lane road for whatever reason (probably off to go camping), during the winter it was very clear that it ran through wetlands: water and ponds along both sides of the road in the fields. And plenty of time to look when stopped at all the stoplights. All hint of that is long gone. A real detriment to the Pacific Flyway. [Now almost all commercial.]

For many years, I made an annual trip from Campbell to Visalia, which meant north on CA-17 to I-280 to US-101 south where it was still Monterey Road aka Blood Alley for several miles, talk about traffic... Then eventually that section of US-101 was finished, and it shortened our trip by at least half an hour; then 85 went in from Cupertino to south San Jose, which shortened it by at least another half hour but increased the traffic noise at our house by a lot. Somewhere in there also CA-152 past Casa de Fruta was upgraded to a 4-lane freeway, which took care of the traffic jam there, so even a shorter trip. 

OK, this is fun. Really have things I need to do.
"When I was a kid, we really had it hard..."

NOTES:

• Wikipedia discusses US-101's history going back even further than its fame as El Camino Real with the Spanish missions built starting in the last 1600s.
  
• I love Casa de Fruta. My photos of one visit. ... And of another visit. (See captions: Hover cursor over image viewed smaller or larger.)
  
• Map of expected Santa Clara County land use from this Army Corps of Engineers document written in 1959 (page D-3):

• 

  I haven't compared to current reality of industrial vs residential and commercial
  (I've tried for an hour to find a current land-use map; this old one shows more the Santa Clara city area--
  CA-237 angling up to the right, US-101 angling down to the right),
  but the former is now likely much lower than the latter.
  You can see that the SF Bay has vanished by their 2020 vision (even then some of the wetlands and/or the bay had been converted to salt ponds).
  True story.

• CA-152: One of the few major routes out of the south bay. Once you're on it, you're stuck for about 25 miles. So if there's a major accident, you're stuck big time. On one trip, a semi caught fire. We were stopped, then slowly crept, for maybe an hour. Everyone herded past it on the very slanted center divide--watching semis drive on that was scary!

• Construction ev-ry-where 24/7/365. I don't think it has stopped in 10 years. (in early 2000s, with the dot com bust, it slowed for a while). Often replacing "older" buildings of only one story.

• Traffic. Not always 24/7/365, but sometimes seems that way.  This section always has brake lights and stopped traffic during commute hours and often just any daylight hours.

• Looking down on my family's neighborhood, 1969. Almost everything in view built within the previous 1-10 years I'd say. One orchard off to the right (winter so trees are bare); chunks of empty green on the lower left (flat). None of that there now. And the smog, OMG THE SMOG! Many days you couldn't see those mountains at all!

• From the same hilltop 40 years later. Can't see anything for all the trees (not complaining about trees...).  Above the bush in the previous photo is a yellowish-green field with 2-story buildings to its  upper left. That's the high school.  Here it's zoomed in 40 years later--above the shrub on the right side of the photo. You can see the buildings but barely see the field. (Smog is much better. After it has rained, it is often even clearer.)

• And in the 1969 photo, above the people, there's another (closer) green rectangle; that's the junior high.  Here it's zoomed in from the same hill -- you can barely see the field (center right, with a line of evergreens along its far side). The arrow is our house.

Downtown San Jose Early One Evening: A Little Arty Stuff

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday -- OR -- caption Wednesday (hover cursor over image)

>>  Visit the Wordless Wednesday site; lots of blogs. <<

Downtown San Jose Early One Evening: A Little Arty Stuff

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday -- OR -- caption Wednesday (hover cursor over image)

>>  Visit the Wordless Wednesday site; lots of blogs. <<

A Few Pix in Downtown San Jose

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday

>>  Visit the Wordless Wednesday site; lots of blogs. <<

tap--tap--Is This Thing On?

SUMMARY: I dunno, guess I've been busy with stuff other than agility lately.

Feels somewhat as if I'm working towards easing out of dog agility. I don't have much lately to say that's related to dog agility, and the whole purpose of this blog was to capture my training work, my competition experiences, my failures and successes and dogs dogs dogs. So somehow it feels odd to just ramble on about unrelated things or post photos of random topics.

Random topics around downtown San Jose

And, in case those weren't random enough--

I couldn't actually bear to wait two months between trials, so at the last minute, I entered both dogs in *one* day of a CPE trial out in Turlock. I had two goals:

• Practice just RUNNING with Boost, not stopping, not going back for stuff that we missed or trying to Q.
• Run Tika in a couple of classes at 16" and see how she looks and whether she likes it.

Mixed success on the first count--once, I forgot my goal and as usual stopped when she ran by a jump; on a couple of occasions, she ended up in front of me facing me, so it's hard to keep running full-speed in that case. She actually had a lovely Full House run, high scoring, but she knocked the wrong bar in my plan and I forgot to go back and take a critical obstacle, so tons of points but no Q.

For Full House with Tika, I just picked a course that didn't have tight turns, weaves, or the dogwalk in it, didn't bother counting points, just wanted to run and have a good time. Turns out that we accidentally had just enough points to Q, which was our collective only Q of the entire day-- 1 out of 7 runs. That has got to be my lowest-Qing CPE trial Ev-Er but since that wasn't my goal, I didn't mind so much.

Tika indeed ran nicely--obvious still that she doesn't hear me clearly or trust to get ahead of me where she can't see what I'm doing (turns back to check), but her eyes were bright and she was fast and she grabbed my feet at the end, which is a sure sign of Tika pleasure.

So I've started running her in class a couple of runs a night at 16" after 3 months of no runs.

And I've entered her in one class at day in Veterans 16" at the next USDAA trial.

So funny to have my big girl who used to jump 26" jumping only 16",  but I think it's much better for her than the 20-22" she's been jumping for the last 3 1/2 years, and she has looked like she wanted to participate when I've run Boost, so now she can. She sure looked comfortable and natural doing it.

Photo by Carlene Chandler

Her stamina is low, but then, so is mine--I'm just not getting out much or doing much. Sometimes I'm really tired. The counter to that is that I've got a contract that I'm really enjoying for work, but with one thing and another, it's taking more of my time and attention.  Have done 6-mile hikes in the hills the last 2 weekends, but with so little keeping in shape, they were quite hard for me. And for Tika, too, I think.

Hiking at Almaden Quicksilver

Hounds Tongue (seems appropriate)

 Foundations of the old pump house for the mines

Hiking at Santa Teresa

A peek at San Jose over the edge of the hill--
there were deer, too, but they didn't stick around for 5 dogs.

 Mount Umunhum with Cold War radar tower in the distance

Photo by Lisa Williams

 Coyote Valley section of San Jose, with Santa Teresa Golf Course below us

 California poppies and California gilia

We've walked over to the park to do frisbee on occasion, but less often than we had been for a little while.
Boost waits for us to catch up.

At the park.

Rambling on.  Not sure that I even have solid goals now in agility. I'd really still like to eventually get Boost's two Snooker Super-Qs for her ADCH, but except for occasional spurts of enthusiasm, I mostly have gotten to where I don't feel that I care that much any more. Mostly in the yard we play *around* the agility equipment, although I keep making Boost do jumps to get the toy instead of running around them all the time.


So--on I go, doing whatever it is that I do, and the dogs are bored a lot. Poor suffering dogs.

Bored-est Collie Boost's artistic output using cardboard and pinecones.

Ahhhh, retirement.