According to The Desert Sun 7-day weather forecast, Palm Springs this week was due for a cooling trend, meaning the high temperatures would be in the 100 to 108 range rather than 110 to 118. So I jumped on an Amtrak train from Oakland to Bakersfield, with a connecting bus to downtown Palm Springs on Monday. The trip was twelve hours long, but in just about every respect was wonderful, from the free wifi on the train to the great bus driver navigating the scary East L.A. freeways.
A few miles south of Merced, the train slowed down as we passed a diorama of destruction on the adjoining Highway 140, where an SUV had lost control and crashed head-on into a camper with four women from Soquel on their way to Yosemite. According to a report in the Merced Sun Star (click here), there were survivors which seemed impossible from the crash debris. (The above photo is by Bea Ahbeck from the Merced Sun Star.)
Best wishes for the survivors and their families.
What a tragic accident! In the blink of an eye...
ReplyDeleteDear Donald: I turned around to my fellow passengers after a long, shocked silence, and asked the rhetorical question, "Aren't you glad you're taking the train and not driving?" Cars and bad drivers scare the heck out of me.
ReplyDeletehmmmm...
ReplyDelete"Bad drivers...should not drive on Highway 140?"
Enjoy your much deserved time off!
good thing you're in palm springs b/c headline in examiner today: ethics commission says lee's alleged lies irrelevant when testifying under oath - when i saw that headline, i thought: OMG! gotta write mike. this is the type of obvious corruption that goes on in hick backwater deep-south towns or places like mexico. too bad you're not here to blog about this. (have sf politics always been this painfully, obviously corrupt?)
ReplyDeleteanyway, enjoy your vacation,
Dear Chris E.: I'm sort of glad that I'm not there to write about the mess this week, because the inquisition and what it has revealed about how San Francisco is run really is disturbing. And yes, San Francisco politics have always been this painfully, obviously corrupt. What's different in the equation right now is that with the advent of the internet, personal video cameras on cell phones, etc., there are more people putting out reliable information. It's not all disinformation from the Chronicle these days, and they are having a harder time getting away with their agenda with a straight face.
ReplyDeleteIt should be disgustingly amusing to see how Willie Brown, who is still running this city through his hundreds of appointed aides, spins the news over at his column in the Chronicle, not to mention the other grotesque hacks like Matier and Nevius, and the list goes on. It's time to clean house.