Dai Sho

A long day, a short day. I struggled to make it in and out of Long Beach on time, plenty of small issues, and no easy or clear answer.
Gilroy, however, I was on my way before anything opened up, and caught an earlier flight out of San Jose to get me home hours earlier. My 5PM flight was moved to 1240, which gives me a lot more time... I wish I had followed I Know Something's advice and looked around, but I would much rather go home than go sightseeing for a few hours.
I tried to sit down at the Expedia.com bar, but the bartender must have gone for a smoke, since no one noticed me, I left after a few minutes, got a burrito (San Jose has never given me a good tasting burrito yet.) and sat to read the paper.

Gilroy is beautiful. The hills are such a bright green, and the trees are a contrasting dark green spread sporadically along the sides. I don't know that I have ever gone that way when the sun shone. I can understand why someone would like to live there. They are building it almost all at once. The guys I worked with today finished a Johnny Carino's last year, a Famous Dave's this week, and are going to Arby's next month. The mall is sprouting up at the highway intersection. Target, the sign of status! I often joked about how a town in Montana becomes a city when it gets a dairy queen. Mostly, this impression was aroused during long greyhound bus trips during the UPS strike in '97. The Dairy queen was the post office, the western union, and the bus stop all in one. That's one step short of a wall mart.


I took Highway 101 last night from the San Francisco Airport to San Jose. I know better than to do that (the proper thing to do is take 380 to 280 to San Jose, and if you are going farther, catch 101 south there.) But I figured it was 10PM on a weekday, how bad could it be? It's four lanes on either side, and there cannot be that many people on the road. I wasn't counting on every trooper on the peninsula being out there at the 101-92 interchange picking up body parts. They had three officers in bright yellow pants crossing through the two lanes they hadn't cordoned off with flares to pick up evidence from the left shoulder. I spent the first hour of my trip in the 10 miles south of SFO. I was in pretty good humour through it all, but I had to wonder how powerless a mapquester must be to find an alternate route on his 1" square area map on his turn by turn sheet. There was an article in the AA magazine about how maps were antiquated and on the way to obsolescence. His general point was that no one would buy a highway map when they could always get accurate directions. His concern was that it took the fun out of a road trip, why bother going at all if you can't hand this enormous road map that is guaranteed to be the wrong detail for the destination you are approaching to your passenger, and then harrass him if he can't give you a definitive answer on the route. That was the fun, wasn't it.
My concern is that without accurate area maps, we all get stuck on Hwy 101 waiting for CHP to finish picking up the pieces. Never again. I'll take El Camino Real before I follow 101 again.