Phutu...or is it?

8/30/2003 I've been thinking about it for a while now and I have come to the conclusion that John Muir was a damnably optimistic person. I could definitely be wrong, but since I started reading his first book "The Mountains of California" I have been working toward this conclusion. I don't think that I could be accused of being so optimistic. Afterall, when we look at the mountains of California today there are a lot of things to be less than optimistic about. Perhaps in the middle of the 19th century, as Muir traipsed around Yosemite without another soul within hundreds of miles, it was a lot easier to be optimistic about those mountains. Today, as I drive back and forth between the State Fair in Sacramento and my cousin's house in Roseville, and look off into the distance I can't see them, even though in his time they would have loomed large on the horizon like a line of teeth projecting into the sky.

The other day, as I sat in this little office waiting for the inkjet printer to spit out another photo, I got to thinking about sunglasses. Yeah, sunglasses...ya see, people managed to survive for a hell of a long time without sunglasses in this world and they didn't go blind and the world wasn't so bright every day that it gave them headaches. The human eye must have evolved so that the brightness of the average day's sunlight was approximately the maximum amount of light that it can handle. But as I drive back and forth to Roseville, if I didn't have a pair of sunglasses I would be squinting the entire time and wishing that I had a pair. I guess there are a couple explanations, but I'm going to go with this one: air pollution. The atmosphere in it's unpolluted state diffuses sunlight at some rate which causes ambient light....e.g. when you cast a shadow from the sun, there is still light in the shadow, just less of it. But the atmosphere in its current state diffuses sunlight much more, causing an overall increase in the brightness of the sky, which means there is less direct sunlight and more diffused sunlight, something that the human eye did not evolve to deal with.

Muir didn't have to carry sunglasses when he hiked around Yosemite.

While I was up in Eureka, I stopped at an outdoor store. They sell all kinds of stuff, but I was mainly interested on that day in the water filters and the maps that they had of the nearby national forest areas. I looked at the water filters with a little confusion, they range in price from $50 to $300. While Dory and I were hiking in Lassen National Park, I was wishing that I had one. We hauled bottled water with us, which was fine except that it was about 90 degrees outside and I have a black backpack. The water didn't stay cold for very long. Of course, you can't drink out of that nice ice-cold stream that you criss-cross on your hike up the mountain...no, that would almost certainly cause gastrointestinal armageddon. I did stop, once on our most difficult hike, to cool myself off with a little bit of water splashed on my face and head. Dory was fretting about it as I did it, telling me to make sure that I didn't accidentally swallow any. But if you pay for a water filter and you have enough strength left in your arms after all that hiking you can have ice-cold, armageddon-free water any time you come across a nice stream...or even a mudd puddle I guess.

I don't think Muir had to worry about armageddon.

After I left that shop, I headed, as I have already mentioned in a previous entry, off to do some hiking. The cows that were standing around to greet me when I arrived at the end of that ten-mile long dirt road were something that I really didn't care to see. Muir did have to deal with cattle during his time, perhaps even more than we do now. He called them the "hooved locusts" and urged lawmakers and ranchers to remove them from the wildlands so that they wouldn't trample the streams and meadows beyond recognition.

Roseville is an interesting town. One part railroad (it was called Junction until a few years ago), one part small old town and about ten parts new suburban expanse. Mixed in to all of this is an admirable number of old oak trees, like the one that I talked about last week. I haven't found out for sure, but it seems that someone in the city government has an affinity for the trees. All of the new residetial develpments, along with the shopping plazas, movieplexes, hotels, car dealerships and golf courses have huge old oak trees, cordoned off, in fifty-foot circles, without lawns or pavement, just leaf litter and small tufts of grass. One of the plazas, which is conspicuously missing them, has a little sign on a fence at the corner of two streets where there are about eight young trees planted. It expains that the trees were planted for the people of Roseville and that if the planting should fail to succeed that there is a $20,000 bond that will be forfeited. Gee, how warm and fuzzy. I'm sure that they put up that bond voluntarilly and that they are really concerned for the safety of those small trees. Really, what is $20,000 compared to the amount the real estate developer made by cutting down the trees that were originally there to put in that Albertsons? I'm gonna say nothing.

I don't think Muir had to deal with real estate developers.

So you see what I'm getting at. Maybe in Muir's time there were a lot more reasons to be optimistic about the beauty of the mountains of California. I can't say for sure...he did have to deal with cattle, there were gold and silver miners about, ripping up the landscape, burning the trees for coal and using them to shore up the mine shafts. There were Native Americans around also, long thought of as benevolent toward the landscape...but only relatively I would say. He didn't seem to find them particularly admirable in his book. I guess I'll look to Muir's descriptions when I want to feel all happy and awed by the majesty of the mountains, and I'll go hiking when I feel more like myself: critical and less than optimistic.

8/27/2003 It's funny, I haven't really been inspired to write anything lately. I've been taking a few photos that I could add to the site, but for the most part I am bogged down with work up in Sacramento. Yesterday was my only day off for the two weeks that I am up there. I did manage to do a little exploration around my cousin's house in Roseville. I discovered what is probably the largest oak tree that I have ever seen. It's in a little park along the side of one of the streets.

A couple weeks ago, before I left to go up to Ferndale, I had to call a plumber out. Plumbers are really expensive; in fact, they're ridiculously expensive. The problem was that there was sewage backing up onto the street through what is called the "side-sewer." I had already tried to convince the city that it was there responsibility, since it is under the sidewalk...but they weren't going to have anything to do with it unless it was under the actual street. So I called a rooter company to try to clean out the drain. I actually know what the problem was; it was caused by my own negligence and stupidity. While I was doing all the tile work in the house I was washing the excess adhesive down the drain along with a lot of water to make sure that it didn't end up stuck to the pipes. What I didn't know is that there is a trap under the sidewalk just like the trap under a sink which was collecting all the little bits of tile adhesive. It was two weeks after I finished tiling the bathtub and the kitchen countertops that the problem started.

The guy told me when he came that it would be about $300 to snake out the line and clean it with a pressure washer, but that if he didn't do it successfully that there would be no charge. That sounded expensive but since I knew that he probably wouldn't be able to get a snake to break up tile adhesive, I was pretty sure that he would not be successful. After many attempts over the course of two days with three different people doing the work, they managed to get the water flowing throught the clog...but they couldn't get the snake through, or the pressure hose, or a snake camera that they used to show me what it looked like down there. So, as they were cleaning up I said thanks for trying, assuming that there would be no charge...I mean the drain wasn't cleared up, and the guy from the city had done the exact same thing that they did in less time and for free. But they proceeded to tell me that it was clear and that I owed them the $300. What followed was an hour-long argument which I guess I lost in the end. The reason I lost is that I agreed to pay them to replace the pipe in exchange for them not charging me for the drain snaking.

The whole thing stunk, aside from the sewage smell. Now these guys had baboozled me into paying them even more for a job that I could have been doing myself. I didn't have the time to do it, I had to go up to Ferndale. The guy told me that it would take him three days to finish it and that I should pay him before I left. So, the day before I was leaving, at about four in the afternoon he asked me for a check (this being the first of the three days) and showed me that the new pipe was in and that it just had to pass inspection before he filled in the reaking hole and replaced the cement. I gave him the check and told him that I would be gone for two weeks emphasizing that I didn't want to see a hole in the sidewalk when I got back. He reassured me that there wouldn't be.

So when I came back last week I'll give you one guess what I found as I drove up...a big stinking hole in the sidewalk. Now, I can understand that there are reasons for delays in construction...but two weeks to fill in a hole and put cement over it? I called the company and left a message that I was annoyed. They didn't call me back. The next day the guy showed up like there was nothing wrong and when I asked him why there was still a hole in my sidewalk he said:

"I was busy"

Of course that is NOT the right answer. So I went back inside, called the company and chewed them out for everything that I could think of that had gone wrong with this little adventure. The main point being that I hired them to take care of the problem so that I wouldn't have to deal with it and now, after spending way too much money for their services, I was having to deal with it anyway. The situation is yet to be resolved, but for all my complaining I might get back a little bit of my money. One thing I have gotten from this is that those "rescue rooter" and like companys are not to be trusted...for the same reason that you can't trust so many other big companies. They overcharge their customers, underpay their employees and don't even bother to equip their technicians with the right equipment.

8/13/2003
7/29/2003
7/19/2003
7/8/2003
7/1/2003
6/3/2003
5/29/2003
4/22/2003
3/18/2003
2/27/2003
2/18/2003
2/15/2003
1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

There it is, and I'm off to the state fair.

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