We live a few miles down a dirt road in California. It is owned and maintained by the county, and we are not supposed to do any work on it. Any work done on the road is supposed to be done under contract using union labor. So any personal attempt to improve or maintain the road is illegal…. and we must accept the condition the county leaves it in.
Unfortunately, the county probably has hundreds of such roads to maintain, so they only come along to our five-mile road four or five times a year, and we realize (and are told) that we are very lucky they come by that often. At times the road becomes laden with potholes…. so one must often drive at an idle through the worse areas, to go faster is to invite severe damage to your vehicle because the holes cannot be avoided.
A primary reason for the holes is the people who insist on travelling at high speeds along the road…. each time a tire hits a wet pothole at speed, it will sink into the hole and splash a bit of mud out, deepening and widening the hole. In time, many of them become several inches deep, and may become a few feet wide.
Often people will swerve all across the road in their attempts to avoid the potholes… this makes for distracted drivers who are aware of the holes, but not used to seeing another vehicle on the road… they may concentrate more on avoiding holes than other drivers. Also the potholes have disabled vehicles causing them to veer off the roadway or to become stranded immobile in the roadway imperiling the occupants and other vehicles.
This winter has been one of the wettest we’ve had…. and the road now has more traffic than ever before… so it is seriously the worse I ever recall seeing it. Here’s a few photos of two vehicles that experienced sad consequences for the pocketbooks of the owners…. but luckily no one was injured in either.
The top three photos are a neighbor who was travelling down the road and encountered a vehicle going the other direction travelling on his side of the road to avoid the large pothole in the road…. he ran off the road to avoid a head-on collision… his vehicle rolled while running down the bank, but luckily he was properly belted-in and had no loose items in the cab to strike him… so no one was physically injured.
The lower three photos is one of our neighbors who tried to drive around the pothole in the photo. My little truck can slip between the pothole and the edge of the roadway… but this large truck could not fit… as he tried to avoid the pothole the soft moist soil on the bank started to slip downhill…. and the entire truck started slipping sideways…. he tried to climb back up… but each attempt brought the truck closer to a tragic slide downhill… he stopped before things got worse,,, and with two tow trucks it was possible to slide it back onto the roadway where he drove off with the vehicle undamaged… and he didn’t get hurt… but his pocketbook is a bit lighter after he paid the two tow trucks.
I’ve also seen a couple of vehicles with tires that blew out after hitting a hole at speed, and two that had the shock mounts break in just the last month…. and I only see the tip of the iceberg in vehicular damage as I usually only drive out once a week this time of year. There are likely many incidents I don’t know of.
“It was the best of times, it was the worse of times…” so begins the famous book….
Oceano has highs and lows also…. rampant methamphetamine use and high trucks.
Oceano sits at the edge of a huge sandbowl… a series of dunes with an Offroad Vehicular Recreation Area, so there are numerous tall trucks with wide tires designed to navigate the deep loose sands.
Here we see a small house of the type built in the forties and early fifties. There are a number of these small homes still occupied in the local area, and there are some boarded up and closed off such as this one.
We wouldn’t want the owner of this home to rent substandard living quarters to people who can’t afford the local exorbitant rents… far better that they sleep in their cars on the street.
We have a commercial landowner nearby who is proposing developing their property in a way that makes most of us worry about the local water supply and traffic concerns. Since the land in question changed hands twelve years ago, they have switched from dry land bean/hay farming with no inputs of water, to a wine-growing vineyard operation with thousands of acres now under irrigation. As the owner drills wells and makes his millions, he is slowly draining the water level, causing some dismay among nearby people who have had their wells go dry. A coalition of locals has been formed to fight this unwise expansion that threatens to displace many families when their wells go dry. Here is their latest letter.
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Hello Neighbors,
I know that many of you are following the recent news stories about the Caltrans proposal to block the five crossings on Highway 101 between the Thompson/Los Berros exit and the Traffic Way exit in Arroyo Grande. Click here to see the recent article in the Adobe Press.
Your NiHA Steering Committee met last week to form a stance on this proposal and to draft a letter to Caltrans. Keep in mind that one of our concerns is that if the freeway crossing opposite of the Laetitia winery is closed, it will give Laetitia an arguing point to force all access to their winery and proposed housing development through the Thompson/Sheehy/Dana Foothill/ULBR entrance. This is not good, since, as you know, our roads cannot handle this heavy traffic. The Laetitia housing development alone calls for and an added 1,000 vehicle trips per day through our little country roads!
I have attached the letter that was sent today to Caltrans, SCAC, and Katcho Achadjian. I hope you will take the time to read it.
I would encourage all of you to write a similar letter expressing your concerns to:
Matt Fowler
Caltrans
50 Higuera Street
SLO, CA 93401
Jay H.
The Nipomo Hills Alliance
PS: With all the rain we have had this season, you might expect Los Berros creek to be running. Right?
Wrong. As it passes Laetitia, it flowed for only two days, and has been dry ever since.
Also…do you have neighbors that would like to keep informed on this email list? If so, please let me know of their address.
We had what is to us a large amount of rainfall in January.
Sometimes nature gives to us with one hand and takes with another…. in this case we were given bounty both times… first with the heavy rainfall coming in long and slow, not causing great erosion problems or run-off… for the most part, it came slow enough to soak into the ground. But it seems the last five weeks have given us more rainy days than not. And now, the next month after, we finally got a week-long break in the weather. We used it here to get caught up on our cactus harvesting and fill back-orders, some of which had waited for a couple of weeks for their cactus leaves. The warmth brought swelling in the buds of the fruit trees which will soon burst forth with blossoms. It also stimulated the flowering of many of the native forbes and flowers. The manzanitas are blooming, and the fragrant ceanothus (California Lilac) is in full bloom with the many shades of blues the various bushes carry. We took a little walk through the hills with neighbors, and took some photos of blooming flowers.
Some of our neighbors have a bullriding school… You can read about much of their doings at ‘RodeoUp.com’
Gary Leffew is a World Champion Bullrider and his bull riding school is on his ranch. He’s a pretty interesting fellow…. you’d expect ‘hard-bitten’ Western Cynicism from a full time Cowboy…. but Gary reaches out for any help in his sport… and some of that even includes mediation to get ‘in-right’ with the bull and yourself. He also is an advisor for films, he knows Cowboy history and customs…. if you need a bunch of professional Cowboys who really know how to ride for a Western, he can provide you with professionals who will show up on time when and where with the equipment they need and who know how a film-set works. He also has livestock for rodeos and films. He was a Big-Guy on the HBO series ‘Deadwood‘ as an advisor, some segments of ‘Jackass’ were filmed at his ranch, along with ‘Cowboy Up’ and a couple others. His son Judd is in plenty of commercials… if you see cowboys in a commercial… chances are they know of the Leffew’s if they are not the Leffews’.
Growing up mostly in this area I am used to rodeo as a professional sport and recreation. It is mostly modelled off of real skills that pro Cowboys need to know and do. I’ve seen Spanish bullfights before, and I’ve seen traditional Mexican Rodeo… US rodeo seems fairly tame on the animals by comparison. Bull riding for instance seems to cause no harm to the animals… these bulls are treated like royalty by Cowboys… they know the names of the famous bulls… they like them and respect them, and cheer when a bull gives a hard ride that a Cowboy still rode well…. again, the rural flavor of this area shows when I was quite surprised to have someone holler at me that “Rodeo is animal abuse”….. I guess anyone who feels that this is terrible will never understand why I would support it. Yet if they are from the city, and don’t really know about animals much…. I can see how they’d feel that way. They don’t know…. yet I don’t expect they’d give me the ‘benefit of the doubt’ like I do them.
We were going by Gary’s place the other day, and they were taking a fellow out for a ride on a bull…. they said we could take some photos… here’s two that I like.
These animals are athletes… it is in the best interests of the ranch to keep them happy and healthy, and not scared…. but if you don’t believe that…. there’s nothing that can make you believe it… but I feel you can relax your worry for these animals, I pass by them from time to time, and they seem happy.
After a week of rain, we took a little road trip to a secret spot…
The rain has brought mushrooms out… which causes problems when people roam the hills looking for mushrooms. Many chantarelles are ‘wild-harvested’ which may be done in an irresponsible and unsustainable way… don’t go on private property for mushrooms… it gets people upset when they get trespassers.
A canyon…. cowbones… pathway, and an oatmeal cookie with craisens.
Appalachia??? No, a California canyon. Water in a creek, forbes in a field, and a cow skull
Black Oak, fog in the window, not been run for a week in the rain. Sycamores… and cows
We’ve had nearly a week of rainy weather… accompanied by high winds.
Some local areas got twelve or more inches of rain in a week…. this is about one third of a usual year’s rainfall… all in one week. For many places, this would be merely a regular stormy week…but it is the first such weather we’ve had in three or four years.
Here is a flooded area just off the 101 in the Avila area.
Here are two shots I took near our place… one is a downed oak in the canyon.
We had several trees go down in the canyon. The soil is so wet that the winds allow the roots to semi-liquefy the soil by moving the tree back and forth, hour after hour, day after day… for five or more days while the rain comes down, hour after hour, day after day…. this can help the tree topple.
The other photo is a nearby field, used to graze beef cows…. it is years since I have seen this amount of runoff water on this spot. The water has natural drainage swales… these people treat this ground prety good… they never allow livestock in while the ground is marshy… it is bad for the feet of the animals… and it turns the wet spots into mud wallows that don’t provide any food for the animals, and keep them muddy. Their animals are rotated around different fields so they always have fresh clean grasses, and never destroy the structure of the soil.
On the left is a tree that went down on the canyon road … there was no way to get around it. This has happened before.. once I traded vehicles with a neighbor on the other side of a downed tree…. it got me home, and him to work. Some local folks carry chainsaws with them when coming in and out… you never know when a tree will come down…
In a case like this it is local custom that anyone coming along with a chainsaw may take what they can cut… but the first goal is to open the road. In this case, the county came by and cut it. Usually when a tree goes down like this, local canyon dwellers usually cut it up and haul it away before an hour has gone by…. he who waits will not get wood. In this case.. the wind was blowing fiercely, and no one else was about… I went home and waited out the storm rather than risk a tree falling on me. I was going out taking a cat to the vet to be teutored… this is the third time he has escaped his lessons… the first time he got locked in a neighbor’s garage, the second time he clawed his way out of the doggie door while being held indoors overnight… and this was the ‘third-time’s-the-charm’ thing.. and it seemed like God caused the tee to fall to keep this cat’s bloodlines going…. what’dya think?
This is a neighbor’s barn. We had a few hours of decent weather between the thunderstorms…. just after I took this photo the radio sounded off with the ‘Public EmergencyAlert’ (first time I recall hearing an actual messag on it instead of jsut a test), warning of a severe thunderstorm crossing Pismo Beach, and heading inland at thirty MPH. A few minutes down the dirt road hail started falling onto the truck. We seldom get hail… I’ve only seen it here perhaps five times in the last twenty years. The severe thunderstorm was overhead. In a matter of minutes the wind started roaring and blew like crazy again.
Here is a photo of some clouds coming onto the shore at the Dinosaur Cove area near Pismo Beach. On the way back into the canyon I saw a young deer on the road… My first photo used the flash… but the deer was too far away… but I like the deer-eyes glow. You can see what condition our road is in…. four miles each way daily will take a toll on car batteries, and suspension systems.
A storm like this can topple some of our cactus plants also. The large Opuntia ficus-indica to the far left fell over…. it was perhaps seven feet tall, and probably weighs about one hundred pounds.
The middle photo is some of the grasses growing on one of our hillsides.. notice how they are bent over by the rain and wind. I really want the grasses to grow… they absorb water reducing runoff, they also open the soil permitting more water entry, helping the water to infiltrate into the soil. Depending on the situation, we often let the grasses grow, mature and set seeds. We will then mow them to reduce the cover for snakes, and keep the weed stickers down. The cut grasses form a mulch on the soil.
The third photo is one of our outdoor cats, Elizabeth Little-Grey. She sleeps in a little cat-condo… here she sticks her head out. We often lay a blanket over the condo at night, to help keep her warmer. On occasion we’ve brought her indoors during storms, but she doesn’t like being indoors at all… she quickly runs to the door begging to get out. She’s really cute and friendly outdoors though. All-in-all, it’s been a fairly un-fun experience the last week. Plenty of ag and mining operations have lost much production. The tourism industry likely lost some revenue during these storms… but on-the-other-hand… we’re pretty darn lucky… things could have been worse (but we’re not out of the weather yet), most of the country has had much worse weather for the last two months than this one single week has been for us. So we’re really lucky, but still hope we don’t have to go through anything near this again for some years.
This is my surfboard from High School
I never was a good surfer, LOL… I tended to ‘purl’ the nose into the water, stopping the board and pitching me in front of it where the wave and the board would both pummel me. But I was pretty durable back then…. cuts and scrapes from rocks didn’t bother me too much, although I sometimes wondered of the wisdom in hanging my bloodied feet in the water from a board in the ocean for hours.
I really do think that surfing is one of the best sports there is…. it is usually an individual endeavour… just you and the sea….
Some of the beautiful and memorable events in my life happened from the top of my surfboard…. I’d spend a long time in the water…. all that rowing is good for the shoulders and back…. and the regular beach activities are healthy and clean. On ‘flat days’ we’d sometimes just paddle out to and beyond the kelp ‘fields’.. far out at sea, such that the cliffs along the shore were only visible at times when the swell raised you up a bit. Ah yes, the rash impetuousness of youth… but it was all good clean fun.
It’s always fun until someone gets hurt.
Many of my friends still surf.. even now that they are in their fifties and some in their sixties…. those who still surf have retained flexibility and stamina… it’s good seeing folks getting older nowadays and still staying kids in many ways… with the added smarts of being older.
This is my old surfboard from high school. It was made about 1967 by a shaper in Santa Barbara named John Bradbury. He eventually became a well known shaper, but unfortunately he passed away nearly twelve years ago. You can see this board had part of the tail break off before I got it, it was repaired with some fiberglass and resin. There are also a few small dings I (inexpertly) repaired with resin.
He built this and other similar boards for the waves at places along the Santa Barbara area… the Rincon… The Ranch… Jalama…. I still have the board… but don’t surf anymore.
One photo has the logo he put on this board.
His logos changed through the years as you can see at Stanley’s Surfboard Logos
(a huge site with a large number of surfboard logos)
Well, I buried my Mama and I buried my Pa,
they sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall.
I bring them flowers about every day,
but I just got to cry when I think what they’d say;
If they could see how the sun’s settin’ fast,
and just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
So go on now and kiss it goodbye,
but hold on to your lover,
’cause your heart’s gonna die
Go on now and say ‘goodbye’ to our town, to our town.
Can’t ya see the sun’s settin fast on our town, on our town
goodbye.
This is a photo of the sun setting beyond our town, Nipomo Calif on New Years’ Eve We’re a very lucky little place, blessed with great weather, but sadly most of the town sits on a huge sand dune so most ag products will not grow well in the sand.
Yet we’re a little tiny agricultural town… but we don’t grow corn or rice here… our main ag products are nursery plants. Since the weather is so conducive to growth, and the highway 101 runs right through town, and there are natural gas pipelines nearby… there developed a greenhouse industry in our location. I don’t know how many acres are under glass and plastic here…. I know some operations that have hundreds of acres covered. so I’d imagine there may well be over a thousand acres under glass here. They grow seedlings for the farms in California and neighboring states. Seedlings are a very fragile little thing, and growers have much more success by having them grown in the tightly-controlled conditions of a greenhouse….. then enough tomato or celery seedlings for a forty acre field might fit into a tractor-trailer rig and get pulled to the Central Valley to be laid in that loamy soil.
The economy has hit this place like it has any others. But people still need to eat…. so while things are tough, and some homes have shuttered, things will go on. But still, this lonesome plaintive song by Iris Dement accompanied by Emmylou Harris is heart-and-soul of the nature of a small town…
Here’s two photos I took of the hillsides nearby the town. While most of the rest of the country is blasted by horrid temperatures, we’ve been basking in daytime temps in the sixties and low seventies. Most nights are staying in the forties.
Winter is the time that we have green hills…. by May the plants will be putting out seeds and drying up. All through the summer our hillsides tend to be parched and barren… tan tawny blankets piled high around one side of the town… the other side open to the moderating effects of the ocean… this keeps the town from getting too hot in the summer… and it helps keep it warmer in the winter.
This is the view I get every day! Our main cactus plantings are just up the hill behind me.
I think the cactus like the view, and they like the soils we’ve built up.
Happy cactus comes from California!
