Here alive and well in Anaheim!

Beautiful day today. 75 degrees and sunny. See some of you in a few days!

Dan

I may be getting in trouble here.....but I leased a car for the week and I have room for ONE more passenger. So if I'm going in your direction I may be able give you a lift a few times. TAXI CABS charge $45 to get from LAX to the Convention Center, so leasing a car was a no-brainer.

Dan

Welcome to sunny SoCal, Dan!

We ordered some 3/4 -- make that 4/5 -- blue skies just for you.

If you get a chance, make sure you get out to a coastal road so you can take a look at Catalina:

Of course... not every Catalina vista is as sexy as this one overlooking an industrial section of the harbor...

Ten years ago we used to get a lot more clean views of Catalina from around here but the huge increase in ship traffic into LA/LB harbor allows huge, smog spewing pollution factories (cargo ships) to sit for days* in the harbor pumping nasty particulate matter into what was once the cleanest air in SoCal (per the Southern California Air Quality Management Board) -- with seemingly utter impunity. Every time the city tries to do something to curtail the horrid pollution, the federal government steps in to tell us that cheap goods from China are more important than the health of our children...

[*It's "too expensive" to turn off the filthy ship's engines while they're parked offshore waiting for their space in the ever expanding container port -- which continues to expand into what was once a beautiful bay, dumping more and more landfill into what was at one time a beautiful bathing beach with big, rolling breakers. Now, an offshore jetty 'protects' ocean going mega-ships from those nasty waves -- and helps hold the filthyy underwater pollution from the ships in the now-contained bay.]

How's yer back now?

Eegads. Thanks for the horrid account of the conditions and causes.

When I was a kid living in San Diego, we occasionally would drive up to Long Beach and Seal Beach. I don't recall many beautiful smog-free views back then. Maybe it was cleaner but I just didn't realize it.

Well... depending on when you were a kid -- it was likely dirtier.

The SoCal air (regionally) got continually better from the mid-70s -- it was amazingly horrible in the 50s and 60s -- until the mid-90s when they started expanding the port and building huge container-ship dock complexes.

Long Beach used to have the cleanest air in the LA basin (I think I mistakenly said SoCal someplace -- but in those days San Diego was relatively smog-free) because there's usually a sort of spiral of wind that brought clean air in off the ocean...

But now that that ocean is filled with parked container ships belching extremely toxic chemicals into the incoming air -- we are screwed...

BTW... I hope Dan got out there on the coast early -- because when I drove up Ocean Blvd to my favorite coffee house a few minutes ago -- Catalina was gone and a thick, skanky layer of brown was stretching from east to west across the ocean skyline. (We face south here. That same web cam gets to captures sunrise over the ocean which is kinda cool.)

Been a long time since I've been there, but you should think, or imagine, how much progress has been made. You are witness to the slow-motion invasion by the People's Republic of Wal*Mart. I've been working on a song with that theme, but lethargy and my own back trouble have been standing in the way. If I get it done, I'll post over on that Songwriting doohicky place.

Sometimes ranging as far west as Catalina

CataLina CataLina

(didle-a-dip)

CataLina CataLina

(didle-a-dip)

Pick me up in Vero Beach.... Florida.

Can someone go to NAMM and pretend to be me?

And do all my work for me?

Thanks. I'll be at the beach.

Sure. I'll do that. Let me know what I have to do. We'll discuss payment soon.

I don't recall saying anything about paying you to do my work. See, there's the rub. I knew there was a catch somewhere. I'm sure you're somehow philosophically opposed to slavery, right? Damn.

Dan

OK... get back out to the coast... the wind has shifted (at least as far as the Long Beach to Avalon axis goes) and Catalina has emerged from the smoggy brown layer once again:

Pardon one more -- this time I snapped this myself instead of snagging off a webcam... [about 20 minutes before posting]

This is the (tiny) Alamitos Bay, a two minute walk from my (tiny) apartment. It's all about the tradeoffs.

Yes, there is some smog -- but those mountains are 50-55 miles away. They rise about a mile, pretty much right out of the coastal plain. [CORRECTION: the mountain is almost 2 miles high]

Obviously, we greater-Angelenos like to use days like today to remind ourselves why we put up with living in the megalop.

Paying. Yeah. Well, look, we can maybe work something out. Whaddawhy hafta do? Am I hanging out with the girl from the BodyGlove ad? If you're talking slavery, then I'm talking bondage.

I think you're an alright guy, and I'm here to help.

Are those the San Gabriels in the pic, or the San Bernadinos?

Pardon one more -- this time I snapped this myself instead of snagging off a webcam... This is the (tiny) Alamitos Bay, a two minute walk from my (tiny) apartment. It's all about the tradeoffs. Yes, there is some smog -- but those mountains are 50-55 miles away. They rise about a mile, pretty much right out of the coastal plain. Obviously, we greater-Angelenos like to use days like today to remind ourselves why we put up with living in the megalop.

Three pictures are worth at least 7 or 8 words:

note the green arrow (whence I took the picture) and the location of the bridge that the mountains are behind in the photo

So, triangulating out... it would be Mount Baldy (officially Mt. San Antonio) in the San Gabriel Mountains (in the Angeles National Forest).

It is 10,064 feet above sea level. I'm about 8-12 feet above sea level. On a good day.

San Gabriels. That's the snowcapped Mt. Baldy in the background. Mt. Baldy is one of the easternmost peaks of the San Gabriels.

Baldy is in the San Gabriels. The 15 divides the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges.

Depends. Which parties do you have invites to, and do they have good food and drink?

Attending NAMM. Will work for food.

You want slavery and bondage? How about the teacher in the Rode University ad?

Oops.

You may not have noticed it, but it often takes me ten or fifteen minutes to get one little post right. [Or... in this case... almost a half hour. All those maps seemed like such a good idea when I started out... ]

I'll be honest... I went through all that just to make sure I did know what mountain that was... one ish I've always had is that I apparently am constitutionally incapable of retaining the fact that Mt San Antonio is Mt Baldy. Old Baldy... whatever... I have actually lost a bet about what mountain it was (in a newspaper photo, but still...)

I caught my mistake around the time I was linking to Wikipedia. (You'll notice I also upped the height almost another mile in my original post in bolded corrections. When I corrected this last one, no one else's post had shown up yet.)

I appreciate the fact-checking... I don't always catch my own mistakes. You bet.

I went to Saticoy grade school in North Hollywood while growing up in '60's. There were often days when we weren't allowed outdoors for recess because of the smog.

Yeah, we had smog days too in the late '70s when I was a grade schooler.

Air is waaaaay better now than back then. Thank you AQMD.

Much better, but I went on the INDIANNA JONES ride at Disneyland today. Let me see when I wake up tommorrow.

Dan