WTF, California!

Sorry for the title, just keeping up with the current political jargon. This is one of those WTF moments – for California.

Forbes Magazine has this dreaded annual list entitled the 20 Miserable Cities in the US. And not only does a CA city, Stockton, top the list a second time for the last 3 years, 7 other CA cities are on the list with most of them clustering close to the top.

And here's the list:

1. Stockton, Calif.
2. Miami, Fla.
3. Merced, Calif.
4. Modesto, Calif.
5. Sacramento, Calif.
6. Memphis, Tenn.
7. Chicago, Ill.
8. West Palm Beach, Fla.
9. Vallejo, Calif.
10. Cleveland, Ohio
11. Flint, Mich.
12. Toledo, Ohio
13. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
14. Youngstown, Ohio
15. Detroit, Mich.
16. Washington, D.C.
17. Fresno, Calif.
18. Salinas, Calif.
19. Jacksonville, Fla.
20. Bakersfield, Calif.

Forbes takes some pains explaining its methodology in arriving at the “honored” list.

“We looked at the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. The minimum population to be eligible is 249,000. We ranked each area on 10 factors, including unemployment over three years, tax rates (both sales and income), commute times, violent crime and how its pro sports teams have fared over the past three years. We added two housing metrics this year: the change in median home prices over three years, and foreclosure rates in 2010, as compiled by RealtyTrac. We also considered corruption based on convictions of public officials in each region, as tracked by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. Lastly, we factored in an index put together by Portland, Ore., researcher Bert Sperling that rates weather in each metro on factors relating to temperature, precipitation and humidity.”

Not content with the unintended hurt inflicted, Forbes proceeds to detail the whys and wherefores for the individual selections. Here are those for the CA cities:

No. 1 Stockton, Calif.
Unemployment has averaged 14.3% the past three years, which is third worst in the country among the 200 largest metro areas. The housing market collapsed as well, with home prices down 58% over the same time. All the California cities on the list are struggling with the inherent problems the state is facing, including high sales and income taxes and service cuts to help close massive budget shortfalls.

No. 3 Merced, Calif.
The economic downturn and busted housing market hit Merced harder than any other area in the country. Average unemployment of 16.2% since 2008 is the highest in the U.S., as is the city's 64% drop in median home prices.

No. 4 Modesto, Calif.
The median home was valued at $275,000 in 2006; today it is $95,000. And don't leave your car on the street in Modesto, where 3,712 vehicles were stolen in 2009, making for the second-highest auto theft rate in the country. It ranked first in four of the previous five years

No. 5 Sacramento, Calif.
No state taxes $50,000 of income like California, with a rate of 9.55% for that middle-class tax bracket. Sacramento is a one-team sports town, and that team has been awful in recent years. The NBA's Kings have won just 26% of their games the past two-plus seasons.

No. 9 Vallejo, Calif.
This one-time Navy town became the largest California city to file for bankruptcy when it entered Chapter 9 protection in 2008. Unemployment is expected to average 12.5% this year, up from 4.9% five years ago.

No. 17 Fresno, Calif.
Despite the ongoing economic recovery, unemployment is forecast to average 16% next year in Fresno, the highest rate among the 75 largest metro areas in the U.S.

No. 18 Salinas, Calif.
Salinas has arguably the best weather in the country, but it can't mask other problems. Home prices have fallen a staggering 61% over the past three years.

No. 20 Bakersfield, Calif.
The residents of Bakersfield are among the most uneducated in the country, with only 15% possessing a college degree and 70% a high school diploma. The U.S. averages are 28% and 85%, respectively

Again, except for one (Vallejo) all the California cities are in the Central Valley, a huge extended valley noted for its abundant agriculture. And infamously as home to many illegal immigrants. California has the distinct privilege of accommodating one half of the total illegal immigrant population in the entire country.


Had wondered where my beloved Tracy would place on this list. Thankfully, it is not included I bet you largely because it has much less than the 249,000 minimum population required to qualify on the list. Tracy only has a population of 80,000, but is very close for comfort to No. 1 Stockton, to No. 4 Modesto, and even to No. 5 Sacramento, which is the state’s capital and less than an hour away from Tracy. The first two honorees are some 20 miles away through the main freeway.

I suppose with regard to the other factors, Tracy would be very much like Stockton, Modesto and Sacramento – namely, in real estate prices, unemployment, crime rates, etc.

Tracy used to be a quiet farming town until many of its farmlands were carved out to accommodate many tract housing developments which were sparking red hot until the housing bubble burst. Today, housing development has eased up considerably but the rest of the town remains preoccupied in its many agricultural pursuits.

To the west of Tracy, beyond the Altamont Pass, lie the extended edges of the Bay Area – the cities of Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon, Castro Valley, etc, all similarly emasculated with depressed real estate prices and high unemployment.

Any hopes for recovery?

Well, for one voters chose more of the same last November , installing essentially the same cadre of politicians and bureaucrats who have been largely responsible for the dire conditions the state finds itself trapped in – budget deficits, looming bankruptcies, high unemployment, problems with illegal immigration, etc. Name the rest, and California suffers from it.

As dazzled residents, we can only exclaim: WTF, California!

UPDATE:

Here's an even gloomier picture.

71% of mortgages in Clark Country, NE, where Las Vegas is, are underwater!

My beloved Tracy which belongs to San Joaquin County, CA, places 5th on the list with 59.6%.

Tracy, CA and Cagayan de Oro, Mis. Or.

We now divide our time of the year between Tracy and Cagayan de Oro. In terms of living conditions, no two places could be as diverse, in my personal opinion. One is in the tropics and the other in a temperate zone. Thus, while Tracy may be heating up at this moment in the low 50’s, registering 80’s in Cagayan de Oro would be quite normal even during this time of the year.

The wife just flew back to Tracy, via San Francisco, and should be arriving any hour soon, while I had just bathed here in Cagayan de Oro after a sweaty jog around our park at past 7 this morning.

We have just recovered in the morning after from the noisy and raucous fireworks that brought the New Year in last night, but the wife will have arrived on the same day she left, New Year’s Eve, after logging in a total flight time of over 15 hours throwing in some waiting periods between flights. Credit that to the still-confusing (to some) datelines one crosses amid-flight.

To highlight a stark contrast, once the wife gets home to Tracy and prepares for bed early if the planned celebration is for the following day, a quick and complete change in attire and sleeping habits will immediately ensue. She will have to bundle up even inside the well-insulated house if the heater has not been turned on. And batten up under blanket and thick covers when getting to bed. Quite a drastic change from what she has gotten used to doing in the over 6 months she spent in Cagayan de Oro, where we are down to our shorts, or even naked from the waist up for me, when we prepare for bed even if the electric fan and air-con both do double duty to make the room comfortable. Only a very flimsy poplin blanket will provide cover should the air-con misfire from its med-cool setting.

But we have done this several times already.

Now to the geography of both places.

Tracy sits as part of the wide and fertile San Joaquin valley that stretches from northern California all the way to the central valleys in the south. It is one of several cities under the San Joaquin County. It was essentially a farming town before creeping housing developments started carving up the huge flatlands to perimeter-fenced housing tracts accommodating new residents spilling out from the crowded parts of the Bay Area.

Only the housing bust and global recession have frozen the almost unstoppable urbanization of Tracy. It now boasts of a population of about 80,000.

Our development sits closest to the western boundary of Tracy and from the ramps of Highway 205, which connects with Stockton and the Sacramento areas. The lot cuts are sizeable enough to allow for some miniature gardening in a number of streets. Thus, we have been able to plant some fruit trees and some flowering shrubs.

And one of our choicest advantages is that we can access the fabled Baghdad By The Bay, San Francisco, easily and within an hour going west.

On the other hand, Cagayan de Oro sits at the northern coast of the big island of Mindanao, land of promise and questionable security issues, in some parts of it anyway. No doubt from its vantage view, it is the premier city and is the unquestioned gateway to the rest of the island.

But it has own many redoubtable shortcomings – such as too many people, too many poor people, governments are ineffectual and lazy in serving constituents properly and adequately, its southernmost portions continue to be wracked with violent encounters with rebels and militias, between them and government forces, etc.

The city itself has a population maybe topping a million or a little less. Nobody really knows for sure. Many residents belong to the squatting class, people/families living on shanties built on either government lands or unused private lots, or even on shoulders or sidewalks of streets. It has a teeming population cramped within a relatively small city. Though it still has far-flung barrios, they call them barangays now, considered remote and rustic.

Our old house is inside a subdivision situated less then two kilometers from the heart of the city. One can literally walk from the house to the city’s premier plaza. Built in the 70’s, this squat one-storey and timber-frame building still reveals after some cosmetic work the cruel ravages of nature’s harsh tropical elements – like humidity, termites, and the blistering sun, etc. Now it has more concrete components than when it was first built – used to replace wooden panels, joists, and posts obliterated by fast-working and hardly detectable termites.

But we call it home, the first home that sheltered our emerging family then. And we also call our Tracy house home because it is in the place where we spent decades watching the kids grow and the grandkids added to the growing extended family.

This is called living bi-coastally. I think.

The Lemoncito Blooms In Tracy

Though arguably a native of the Philippines, the lemoncito (Sp. diminutive for lemon), or more popularly known in the Philippines as calamansi, does grow and fruit in temperate climates like in California.

The lemoncito is a shrub or a small tree known to grow as high as 3 to 6 meters and is better adapted to tropical areas. Known in the West as the calamondin, its scientific name is citrofortunella microcarpa. Aptly termed microcarpa because of the fruit’s small size, looking like a small orange orb when ripe.

Old childhood memories prodded one to transplant a growing lemoncito shrub from foggy Daly City to our new abode in sunblest Tracy, CA. Nostalgic recollection points one to childhood experiences where the fruit and its many uses figured prominently.

One such use could be classified as medicinal or therapeutic.

As I easily recall we were a family of nine kids, living in cramped quarters in the middle of a bustling city and whose young members were thus most prone to ordinary ailments children were heir to – colds, coughs, sore throats and other irritating EENT conditions.

Our ever resourceful doting mother was always ready with the concoction she called agridulce to treat those minor distractions. And preventatively dispensed with at times when the climes were ripe for them to visit us, like the rainy season, or the very humid nights spent inside our shuttered rooms curled inside our musty mosquito nets.

Agridulce, which is Spanish for sweet and sour, was blended from the juice of the lemoncito, with hot or tap water added, flavored with a liberal dose of sugar, and stirred with all the fruit’s pits swimming in the pale mixture. The fruit’s very sour taste blended well with sweet cane sugar, creditably acquitting its name of agridulce.

Our present lemoncito tree, which grows proudly side by side with a regular lemon tree, appears stunted in growth though abloom with fruits that are now ripening. I blame that on negligent maintenance, due to the long absence of the resident gardener, me.

Still I eagerly look forward to the day when I can harvest the lemoncito’s fruits and make me an agridulce.

Cheers.

Tracy Went Bean Crazy

This past weekend for two days, Saturday and Sunday, a sizeable portion of the old downtown of Tracy was festively converted into one huge bazaar, carnival, cook-out, etc., for its annual dry bean festival.

Dubbed as the 22nd Annual Tracy Dry Bean Festival, it is Tracy’s prideful reply to similar festivals celebrated around the farming centers of this huge San Joaquin Valley. Stockton has its asparagus festival, Manteca its pumpkin, and famous Gilroy its garlic

Tracy residents could not helped but noticed and hopefully attended the festivities since they were given more than adequate exposure and promotion by the city’s newspaper, Tracy Press, which devoted an entire supplement to focus on the event. http://tracypress.com/

Though I couldn’t find the time and effort to witness the festivities on the first day, I finally was able to gather myself up at almost 2 p.m. on Sunday and gingerly negotiate the almost one mile distance from the house to the downtown area. And let me tell you that the sweltering heat of that hot afternoon couldn’t shrink my newly-minted interest, or maybe just ticklish curiosity, to see what was cooking.

The blistering heat from the no-mercy sun definitely affected many of the goers, most of them slyly escaping to the shaded areas and under the trees. But it was easy to see that total attendance and interest were not dampened by this, even considering that this was already the afternoon of the second and last day of the festival. Most were dressed outdoorsy and I espied many of them either licking or eating bottled water or soda, ice cream, shaved ice, popsicles, anything that had coolness written on it.

I simply gave my feet and fancy freedom and control to roam wherever, through main Central Ave and down the side streets looking and observing the activities. With the many vendors and participants around, in my mind there was enough diversity of selection, activities, and assorted wares to tickle the fancies and interests of everybody attending that festival – from enticing cook-outs of many varieties, fancy motorbikes and odd-looking trail vehicles, carnival rides, to the usual T-shirts, and performances on the stages erected at strategic places in the venue.

With one hand dangling at one time and clicking the next, I had my little point and shoot ready to record what I saw and from the singular and limited prism of this one eye witness here are the scenes witnessed:

One side-street scene

Slide ride

Western movie set

Along Central Ave

Tracy Firehouse

Fireman bronze statue

Grand Theatre

Bank building

On stage..

.. and the audience

Mini-carnival

A Not So Super Tuesday

Today was a day at the polling place. And as has been touted by media incessantly for the last months, today was supposed to be Super Tuesday. The day that will determine the rise and fall of the remaining presidential candidates. Or maybe not. A day when over 20 states in unison hold their presidential primaries. Many eyes will be on California, a very populous state where a hefty number of delegates are up for grabs to the different candidates still on the hunt.

An early sunny winter morning ushered in this Tuesday, a good harbinger for those bent on fulfilling a crucial civic duty – voting for the presidential candidates plus a round of propositions placed on the ballot. Being a registered Independent, I am entitled to vote also on the candidates of one of two parties that allowed unaffiliated voters to participate in their primaries. The two parties allowing this are the Democrat Party and the American Independent Party.

But the surfeit bordering on ennui of media coverage of the different multi-pronged campaigns leading to this somehow turned me out, so I decided that I would only vote on the seven (7) measures on the ballot. Four of them making a tight cluster since they all pertained to Native American gaming issues.

At past 11 a.m., I drove quietly to our assigned polling place. And this being the first time since our move from another county, I had to drive slowly so as not to miss our polling place, which is snugly nestled in a quite hidden cul-de-sac in one of the residential developments here in western Tracy. And so positioned inside a residential garage as to not easily be recognizable until within a distance of a few meters or so.

Anyway the warm sunny day was a good respite from the cold nights we have been experiencing, enough to make me park a little distance away and thus allow the little leisurely walk to the place.

There were three voters ahead of me, and three polling officials to man the precinct. With marked sample ballot in hand, I was out of there in no time. A couple of minutes or so at the most. But tarried a bit in walking to the truck to see if more voters would be streaming in. Unfortunately, no more. The polling place was empty save for the people assigned. And I saw one precinct watcher leave in her vehicle, to lunch I had surmised.

It did not look like it was primary/election day. And driving to another section of Tracy to do some errands, the same observation prevailed. No signs of excited activity. I thought maybe later when people have gotten out of work that’s when most will attend to this important civic duty.

But for my purposes, it did not seem like Super Tuesday. More like any Tuesday except that the sun shone early, clearly a teasing invitation for people to go out and enjoy its warmth and glow.

To idle the day?

Wind As Productive Energy

Nasa Picture
Today as the unaffected rest of us in the United States go about our workaday lives, about a million harried and displaced residents in the Southern part of California, specifically San Diego County, are caught in the vise-like grip of fear and uncertainty caused by fearsome conflagrations unabatedly fueled by fierce winds popularly referred to by natives as the gusty Santa Ana winds. This added deadly factor has made possible the indiscriminate razing of hundreds of thousand of acres dotted with many precious residences, in spite of having the best fire-fighting technology and people in the world. Many separate fires that now may have been purposely started by loathsome arsonists.

We no doubt fully understand the destructive powers of wind energy in deadly combination with other factors, such as dry as tinderbox conditions in certain wooded or grass areas whether accidentally or purposely combusted with the introduction of sparks or fire.

And overly cautious people that we are, I and the wife wondered whether such an unwanted calamity could happen in our very neck of the woods, Tracy, in Northern California. We see hills and mountains to the west, openly bald-headed and coated brown by dead flora. And we have the added ingredient of gusty winds, too. The Altamont Pass being home to thousands of wind turbines that rely on steady streams of winds to turn them on.

And of course, it could happen. As a matter of fact, it has happened in the recent past and we used to see unmistakable signs of their aftermath as evidenced by easily distinguishable blackened spots while driving through the pass after reading or hearing about them.

While cognizant of its gale-force destructive powers, we like to think of the wind in more benign, soothing and constructive ways. The wind as fatherly image blowing on lifeless sails of ships carrying homeward-bound sailors to familiar ports, or so our early children’s books used to fancifully regale us with.


The Altamont Pass which actually knifes through a range of stretched-out hills of comparative height and ominously called Diablo Range, is precisely one such location where wind energy has been harnessed to provide an alternate source to electrify our homes, our businesses and industries. The pass and several other locations in the state proudly define the area’s worthy contributions to the country’s resolve to tap other sources of energy to satiate our ever-growing needs for power. A commendable drive toward possibly independence from foreign energy sources such as oil.

Geographically the pass could be considered a defining landmark for Tracy because it separates it from its western neighbors. Like the daring riding adventures in the Western movies of the past, the narrow mountain pass with its maze of winding uphill and downhill grade have to be carefully negotiated to arrive in Tracy from the west. And would be the only straight and direct way to Tracy, of course, discounting the other surface roads and the original Altamont Pass Road which can be taken as alternate routes when not using Interstate 580.

But beyond this romanticized depiction of the pass, the Altamont Pass is stellar because of the pivotal role it plays in the generation of wind energy for the state.

According to the California Energy Commission, the pass is one of several major wind energy resource areas in the state, the rest are: Solano, Pacheco Pass, Tehachapi Ranges, and San Gorgonio Pass.

On this list two are located in Northern California, namely Solano and Altamont.

Three sites on the list, namely Altamont, San Gorgonio Pass and Tehachapi Ranges, comprise 95 percent of the commercial wind energy generated in the state. And to understand the global impact of this production, this represents 11% of the world’s wind- generated energy.

And to reduce further to terms we can more readily relate to:

“With an average California household using 6,500 kWh of electricity per year, 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of annual electricity generation from wind resource in the state provides electricity sufficient to power over 530,000 homes.”

Altamont alone generates 1.071 gWh from 4,788 wind turbines (2003 figures), making it the world’s largest wind farm in terms of number of turbines. These turbines are spread out on hilltops stretching some 15 kilometers in diameter, many of them visible from the highway.

So gusty winds are not necessarily bad all the time. At the very least like most fortuitous events in nature, they are indifferent.

And loosely speaking if it is any consolation, Southern California’s ongoing wind-caused losses may somehow be offset by Northern California’s benefits from wind-generated energy resources.

Credits for Altamont panoramic picture.

Tracy, CA: Is it Biker-Friendly?

Lately I have had ample opportunity to look into the bicycles that have been sitting idly in the storage sheds at the back, slowly collecting dust and becoming hapless victims to rust.

They have been cleaned, greased, re-aligned, tires pumped, and finally checked off as roadworthy. So now I am the grateful user of three bikes of different sizes and configurations. One is a full-sized menacing Fuji racer left behind some years back by my twins when they finally left the house for good. The other two while of similar stance and profile have different uses, one having balloon tires and intended off-road, while the other has racer tires and looks like the typical wimpy road bike. The hulky off-roader was left by my daughter who moved to another house, and the wimpy one I believe was left behind by a girlfriend of one of the twins and never reclaimed


So now the late autumn afternoons have seen me exploring the immediate environs of our development, treading faithfully along bike/pedestrian lanes which fortunately encircle the entire grid bounded by Lammers to the West, Corral Hollow to the South, and Byron Road and 11th St., North and South respectively. Stretching maybe close to three miles circumferentially, it makes for a good afternoon workout.

The few leisurely driving jaunts that we have taken around the city, going through the new and not- so- new residential housing developments around the city made us aware of their ample provision for bike lanes along inside roads and around the outside perimeters. Thus, one has been encouraged to plan for extended ventures farther out of the comforting familiarity of home and to boldly explore the many storied nooks and crannies of the city of Tracy.

Driving around one cannot miss the many bike lanes around city streets. And a little Googling even informs us that the city is ever vigilant about providing bike lanes, when it can and has the opportunity. Thus, a bike lane(s) with no parking allowed will stretch along Grant Line from Corral Hollow to Tracy Boulevard. Has this particular ordinance been passed and implemented? Will try to see the next time I get the chance to drive over in that area.

So from that scanty perspective one is predisposed to declare that Tracy appears to be biker-friendly enough. But the next few months will confirm or challenge that when I do get the chance to pedal my bike along the different areas. Till then.

From where I have been, I have seen many bare-headed bike riders. So bike crash helmets are not mandatory in Tracy? Google was not helpful in assisting me on this score.

Officer Sir, Mr. Policeman. Can you supply me with the answer to this question? It would be seriously appreciated.

Sounds Around Town

At the onset of dusk when the slowly fading light of the sun starts being pushed out by darkness, I typically prod leaden feet to make lazy steps out of the front door and position myself to enjoy nature’s dramatic closing of day for night. During this transitional time of late summer, the particular time would be when 7 PM is announced by the ever-reliable grandfather clock with the booming chimes.

When that front door opens and ushers in the vista and the sounds of outdoors that’s when creepy nostalgia and a bit of melancholy commence. Extruding some somber kind of aloneness and solitude. Thankfully the compelling though muffled drone of freeway sounds generated by the constant stream of vehicles from a distance, rudely jars one to reality and dominates one’s aural attention. The constant drone from I-205 which guides east-bound travelers toward Stockton and ultimately Sacramento, almost never abates, from earliest morn to past midnight.


Pointing my face west, I let eyes feast on an artfully clouded sky that continues to source out whatever light that still lingers on.









And had I gone out earlier, this same skyward orientation would have awarded me with the attention-grabbing sunset where old Sol begins to descend to the mountain-tops in the distance, past one of the neatly-trimmed parks that punctuates our four-year old development, clearly defined and framed by a high perimeter fence. Thus, as one gazes at the fast changing skyscape, above the freeway din one’s attention is quickly co-opted by the faint shouts and tiny shrieks from children frolicking in the now barely visible park, under protective mantle exuded by eager watchfulness of matronly ladies close by, a number of them dressed in their flowing native saris.

Also, I tarry at my fixed gaze to await for the passing of the car of the wife as it wraps around the western end of the park and points homeward, at about this time, too.


Turning right from the same front-door vantage point, I extend my squinting gaze to the end of a short road that skirts left and can’t help feeling like I am in some kind of dressed parade, stiffly seated in the reviewing stand presiding over an array of stocky sentinels, neatly color-coordinated in differing pale shades of beige, brown, and gray. In reality it is simply the illusion occasioned by the pale light on the houses that populate both sides of the street.


Apart from these now all to familiar sounds, Tracy is still essentially a quiet town, still doggedly clinging to the homey feel of the old farming town that it once was. Though, no more cocks crowing. No more birds chirping on treetops. Replaced by the continuous drone from the distant freeway, constantly reminding one that certain places around here are never asleep. And the many new houses dotting its once farming landscape? Another mute witness to an old town slowly receding to history.

Inevitable transitions for a growing region, a growing state, and an equally growing country.

Getting Acquainted With Tracy

We have now completely settled in and ready to call ourselves residents of Tracy. But unfortunately beyond our immediate surroundings and the few places we have visited, such as the church, the malls, the grandkids’ schools, and our daughter’s house along those gated developments hemmed in between Tracy Boulevard and Corral Hollow Road, we have not really gotten acquainted with the city. In things both tangible and intangible.

Our life experiences have shown us different ways to get acquainted both with people and with things. Typically one could approach it with serious purpose and design, or simply allow one’s many unplanned and spontaneous interaction with it to develop into some form of bond of acquaintance and familiarity over time.

I did begin to approach this “task” with some basic purpose and design at the very beginning. First, securing a street map of the city, allocating time to peruse its main community paper, Tracy Press, and of course, driving and asking around whenever possible. But then again, this process could easily get stunted or onerous as to be too mechanical and maybe, devoid of emotional and purposeful content.

Why not allow the local sights, color, history, and its people to simply be slowly soaked in as one is being exposed to them and to allow these to seek their own levels of ease and comfort, before unerringly and automatically being translated into some kind of amiable acquaintance with and understanding of the entire city?

This process can be so effortless, so natural and uncontrived. And so smooth as to make one totally unaware of and unburdened by the many little changes that will take over one’s life.

Thus, the decision was made and today, a Sunday, was to be the first sortie. Much like beginning to know a person, any person, one can begin to notice and make judgments of the physical characteristics of the place. Its terrain, its geographic orientation, its infrastructures, etc.

Man is funny in a way. Any analysis he makes about most things is usually couched around comparing that thing with other similar things he has known or experienced. Any judgment made is typically based on an analogy. Thus, we say this is good because compared to this it is… Or, this is a good thing to do because it is authoritatively written that given these, this is the right and properly thing to do. Etc.

Having lived in a San Mateo County city, Daly City, for many years, the unveiling comparison will hinge on that experience.

When one catches sight of Tracy coming from that milieu, one is immediately taken aback by the flatness of Tracy’s terrain. One taking a 360 degree look around can only notice the Altamont to the west as a clear and unmistakable gradation of its flatness. Everywhere else is flat terrain as far as the eye can see. Minus the many undulating hills that pock the areas to the west and into the ocean. Clearly without much serious research, Tracy was or is a farming town, complete with grid-iron cuts of land all around.

Given that it now counts about 80,000 as among its residents, many of these new houses must have sprung from old farmlands converted into tract subdivisions.

Today, we took a leisurely drive from home to church and back to the house, on a calm sunny morning before eight. This took us through Byron Road going east, which road is cut close to the railroad tracks. Then through Lowell Street passing through the now storied high school (Remember the reported fatal accident of car-riding students some weeks ago?) before turning right on Parker St. Stopped at its intersection with Eaton St. for church service.

After church, continued on through Parker St to its intersection with 11th St, which dissects through the city and could arguably now be considered its main street. Given that it is also I-205’s business route. And its multi-laned wideness defined by an ample median island gives it the feel and look of a real highway. Taking a westerly direction we ended at its intersection with Lammers Road, the last intersection prior to the on-ramp that takes one to I-205 going west.

We made our right turn and back to the bosom of our gated community.

The following pictures trace graphically the same route described above. And one cannot help but notice how wide the streets were. No such luxury in many neighborhoods of “old” Daly City where we came from. How few the cars parked curbside overnight. How empty the streets of people were, though granting that it was a Sunday morning. Truly for us, these were novel experiences.

It was overall, a nice leisurely and mute ride for us. An enlightening experience.








(View pictures from bottom up) Click on individual pictures for larger and clearer view.

The experience continues. . . .