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The Last Word


Bazza

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Re: The Last Word

 

I'm a Californian and while I think I wouldn't want to live in a perpetual white zone, snow doesn't bug me. Maybe it's the years of skiing? So I associate it with fun and I haven't had to shovel very many driveways.

 

And with driving, ice is no worse than a coat of fog on top of eucalyptus oil.

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Re: The Last Word

 

Well, we moved from San Jose (which was as far north, and just about as high in altitude, as I had ever lived to that point) to West Berlin in the middle of December; I was 6. When we got there, there were 17 centimeters of ice on Tegler See (a lake in the city). So I moved from the Santa Clara Valley quite suddenly into the middle of what was at the time the harshest winter there since WW2. And that is a shock.

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Re: The Last Word

 

I'm a Californian and while I think I wouldn't want to live in a perpetual white zone, snow doesn't bug me. Maybe it's the years of skiing? So I associate it with fun and I haven't had to shovel very many driveways.

 

And with driving, ice is no worse than a coat of fog on top of eucalyptus oil.

Just how often is that a problem?

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Re: The Last Word

 

That would of been a shock to me as well. And I grew up just north of you in Marin. Though you moved just before I was born it looks like.

I realize made a minor error; we lived in Vallejo (on the north side of San Francisco Bay) for a few months in early 1962. That was the northern limit prior to going to Germany. Before that we'd spent most our time in & around San Jose, except for one stretch, the better part of a year, further south (around Camp Pendleton).

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Re: The Last Word

 

In principle, yes, but it's not like they have any sanding equipment in those parts of the country. Probably a better long-term solution would be to cut down the trees, but that's not a real happy alternative either.

 

Aggravating the circumstances is that California tends to "mean" the speeds on the yellow highway warning signs. By that I mean, if the yellow sign says 35 MPH because of a curve in the road, chances are you really do want to be down near 35 MPH in order to negotiate that curve and stay in your lane. By contrast, most of the states I've driven in don't "mean" those speeds; continuing my example, I can typically take a curve posted at 35 MPH at 50 MPH without any problem whatsoever. (This is certainly true here in WA; it isn't until the warning speed gets down to 15 or 20 that you really need to be within 5 mph of that speed in order to negotiate the hazard safely, and since I don't go over 75 ever, a warning speed of 50 is an utterly meaningless sign.)

 

So when he says "tourist off the road", you have that factor worked in too: out-of-staters haven't adjusted to that difference in signage, in the sense that their normal habits will put them at too-high speeds for the roads already.

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