Highways

Highway 120 in Westchester County, NY

A little local “fun with highways” as I spend Thanksgiving with family in Chappaqua, just north of New York City.

We have noted Chappaqua in the past as the “home of CatSynth and Hillary Clinton.” It is a relatively small but affluent town in the middle of Westchester County. You can read more about it here, including its noted school system and famous residents.

Our main road is NY 120 which starts in the nearby community of Millwood (which is actually part of the same town), and continues southeast through the town center of Chappaqua. The main intersection is famously confusing and dangerous and years of trying to install such safety conveniences as a traffic light have met with local resistance. Apparently a traffic light would ruin the character of the town (in a way that car accidents apparently do not). 120 also crosses the Saw Mill Parkway, our nearby excuse for a highway, and the main commuter rail line that passes through town to New York City.

From there, 120 works its way southeast, through Armonk (one-time home of contributor whaleshaman of JellyPizza), the Westester County Airport (which I have never used), Purchase (home of a state university campus) and eventually the town of Rye on the Long Island Sound (home of the Playland amusement park). It's not really the most efficient way to cross Westchester, that's what our freeways including aptly named Cross Westchester Expressway are for, but that's a topic for another day…

Astoria

Just a quick note this afternoon, from Astoria, Oregon. Our second show of the tour (third, if you count 1510 in Oakland) will be here in Astoria tonight, at the Astoria Visual Arts center. And I will also be performing a solo set to open, again with electronics and my folk and toy instruments.

We have posters all over town, and a great write-up in the Coast Weekend, a local paper.

Astoria itself is an interesting little town, at the mouth of Columbia River on the Oregon coast:

The coast highway runs through and north across the river into Washington state.

Here are a few photos from town:

And here is the band at the “Astoria Column”:


Click to enlarge

More on the performance itself after it actually happens. Also, I might go backwards in time to our show and day yesterday in Portland…but in the meantime, Polly has already journaled the first two days of our tour…

Pinnacles East

On this rather dreary and anxious day, we take a few minutes to remember a much happier day from this summer.

That day trip which included the drive down highway 25 also included a side trip to the eastern section of Pinnacles National Monument. Both the east and west sides are approached by highway 146, but they are not connected (unless you walk).

The main features of Pinnacles are the volcanic rock formations that appear out of the otherwise soft hills of central California. They seem transported from the southwest.

This was a great day to visit the park. It was completely empty, I did not encounter a single person on the trails. Surprising, considering it was just after July 4. But it was very hot, over 100F, and that probably discouraged most casual visitors. Really not so bad, though, if one carries plenty of water and sticks to the simple trails.

Actually, for the middle of summer, things were quite lush in spots, and there was plenty of shade.

Even a few small critters remained out and about:

Although the wildlife and vegetation was interesting and welcome, the focus of Pinnacles remains the rocks:

Large boulders like these form small caves and tunnels beneath which one can walk (or crawl). There are also real caves formed from lava tubes, but these were closed for the season to protect the bats.

There is something quite rewarding about solitude in a place like this (as opposed to just being alone at home or in a crowded place). There was more of that beyond the borders of the park as well. Those who have not yet read the original highway 25 article are encouraged to do so.





Bay Area travel madness

Living in Santa Cruz can be a challenge at times. One of the major challenges is getting to and from places in the Bay Area, where most of my musical, job-search, and social activities located.

For San Francisco trips, one takes Highways 17, 85 and 280 (or 101 as suggested below) into the city:

If I am not in a rush, highway 1 along the coast is always a rewarding experience.

For the east bay (Berkeley, Oakland, etc.), one instead follows highway 17, which becomes I-880, along the east side of the bay:

The trick is avoid the bridges. Sometimes this is unavoidable, and one ends up making a “grand circuit” to and from Santa Cruz around the bay.

The trip is about 70 miles each direction (slightly longer on the east bay side), and about 90 minutes unless one hits bad traffic. Really, it's not so bad, and I have been doing trips like this for years for music and art events, or to see friends, family, and such.

But when it becomes several times a week, and nearing every day, it starts to wear on you. Almost all of my job interviews are in the bay area. Then there is the upcoming performance schedule, back-to-back shows in SF and Oakland followed by the tour.

And this weekend will top them all:

Saturday. Rehearsal for Polly Moller and Company. Then br'er performs in San Francisco that night. It's quite a coincidence that br'er is touring the west coast right now, just as I am about to go on tour. Indeed we will also be crossing paths again in Seattle when we both play on October 20th.

Sunday. Rehearsal again. Then the :plug3: headphone festival in San Francisco. I have a solo set at 7:30PM.

Monday. The tour's kickoff show at 1510 8th Street in Oakland. I have a solo set in addition to our group show.

Tuesday. I need to stay overnight so that…

Wednesday. We leave on tour from SF and Oakland bright and early.

This is out of control. Not because of the activities themselves, which are manageable, but the fact that it is far from CatSynth HQ every day. I have options to stay overnight to make things easier (and will likely do so some of the nights), but that means being away from home, away from everything that needs to be done here, away from Luna (which also means setting up more cat sitting arrangements).

Living in Santa Cruz is becoming one huge liability. It was fine when I was working every day here and going up to the city once a week or so, but now my life and all the action in it seems to be back in the bay area. How long can I keep this up?

Bruckner Interchange, again and again

In writing about my trip to New York, where better to begin than with our old friend the Bruckner Interchange:

Most of my trips to New York pass through this interchange, which connects to and from JFK Airport via I-678 (the Whitestone Bridge and Van Wyck Expressway); and north into Westchester via Hutchinson River Parkway. However, this trip involved more encounters that most, and indeed a “complete” tour of the major connections. First, north via Whitestone Bridge via the Hutch on arrival. On departure, we came east along the Bruckner Expressway (I-278) and again to the Whitestone. Our family events involved travelling from Westchester to Long Island, again via the Whitestone Bridge. For the return trip, we took the Throgs Neck Bridge (I-295) and the Cross Bronx Expressway (I-295, I-95).

I almost always use the Whitestone for travel to and from Queens and Long Island, so it had been years since I travelled on the Throgs Neck Bridge. It seems in dire need of maintenance. Big rust spots do not give one a sense of confidence when travelling on a major bridge 150 feet above water. I would expect folks to take maintenance very seriously after the Minneapolis bridge collapse this summer. Especially after I find articles like this…

CT 11, unfinished projects

Highway 11 in Connecticut is a north-south freeway connecting a major route from Hartford to, well, nowhere. So one moment, you’re happily traveling south on a nice country highway, and then the next moment, you better exit before it turns into a large dirt track and ditch. Or at least that’s the impression I get, having never been there.

It’s quite dramatic, as can be seen in these aerial photos from Greg Amy (we saw a few of his photos before when visiting Yale and New Haven, CT).

It kinda looks like someone just stopped building the highway one day, and forgot to come back and finish. The story, as described on Kurumi’s website and other sources, is that the project simply ran out of funding, and then ran into opposition, though it sounds like plans are now in the works to complete highway 11 to the New London area.

However, the details of CT 11 aren’t really the focus of this article, but rather it serves as a metaphor for the many unfinished projects here at CatSynth. These include:

Finishing my album 2 1/2. There are a few tracks left from this project last Februrary that need to be replaced before releasing the album. I still think I’d doable by late November, but so far I haven’t been able to work much on it during this period of “free time.” Technical problem with my “studio PC laptop” provide at least one excuse.

Although I have been doing work all along on Open Sound World, mostly to support my own music, it’s been quite a while since I have done a full-blown release of the software. It’s hard to feel motivated when most of the feedback reads like this. However, the core software (minus the old user interface) is really solid and musically useful, and I do plan to announce a new direction for the project “real soon.”

I need to do some revisions to my professional/artistic website. At the very least I need to get the performance schedule updated – fortunately, it is already up at MySpace. The goal is to bring it more in harmony with CatSynth and rest of my websites.

I purchased one of the last Kittenettik Fyrall kits from Ciat Lonbarde, but have yet to assemble it. I guess I’ve been waiting to find the right “space”, both literally and figuratively, to do this. If I get on it soon, I might have it done in time for Woodstockhausen.

And of course there are several large articles waiting to be completed and published here at CatSynth, particularly CD reviews, film discussions, and travelogues.

But then again, maybe it’s not so bad that I’m spending time looking for employment.

Sacramento Valley and Mt. Shasta

This is the first of several articles on my recent “grand loop” through northern California in August. Starting from the Bay Area, north through the Sacramento Valley to the Cascades (including a side trip to Lassen Volcanic Park), and then west to the Mendocino coast and back south to San Francisco.

The segment of this trip is along I-80, crossing the Bay Bridge and north through Berkeley into the towns of the “North Bay” that always seemed remote even when I was lived in the area. I-80 crosses over the New Carquinez Bridge into Solano County, ultimate towards Sacramento.

In order to head north without having to get too close to our state's capital or Arnold, one takes the short-cut known as I-505 into the Sacramento Valley. This is a largely agricultural region of fields and orchards, and it is flat. As in “how much more flat could you be? None more flat.” (Apologies to Spinal Tap).

One of the interest sites along the side of the road was this flock of sheep, doing what sheep do best, except for that one looking straight at us:

Somehow, sheep are always instant humor. I am not sure why, but it's a fact, they're just funny even when they're not doing anything. We need to confer on them some sort of hip cult status befitting their character. Baaaa!

I-505 soon rejoins the main I-5 freeway coming north from Sacramento towards the Oregon border. Somehow, I-5 manages to appear even flatter than 505:

However, such images are a bit deceiving. While the Sacramento Valley is indeed very flat, it is quite visibly bounded by mountain ranges. To the west is the inner Coast Range, and far to the east are the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range. There are also the Sutter Buttes, dubbed the “smallest mountain range in the world.”


(Click to enlarge)

Whether we are seeing haze or the infamous Central Valley pollution in this photo isn't clear (no pun intended). The Sutter Buttes are actually quite a distance away from I-5. One surprising characteristic of the Sacramento Valley, at least during this visit, was how humid the air felt, so it could easily just be haze.

Pretty much things continue this way along I-5 until one reaches Redding, the largest city in California north of Sacramento, and the gateway to the Cascades. Very quickly, the highway begins to climb into the foothills, winding its way along the sides of hills and over high valleys (one of which was flooded to create Lake Shasta). No sign of Mt. Shasta. The directions to get there includes those famous words “You can't miss it”, but a first time traveller might begin to doubt that aminst the endless steep green hills and valleys. But then, there it is. And yes, you can't miss it.

Oh, and here it is again:

Shasta is a volcanic peak, one of the tallest in the Cascades, and is distinct for being very disconnected from any other other tall peaks. About the closest I could find nearby was this peak which I simply dubbed “pointy mountain:”

“Pointy Mountain” turns about to be Black Butte, a nearby lava dome (not to be confused with Black Butte in Oregon). It is clearly visible from the town of Mt. Shasta on the other side of I-5 (town on the east, peak on the west).

It is from the town of Mt. Shasta that we take this final shot of the mountain, a little before sunset time:


(Click to enlarge)

One thing to note is the lack of snow on the mountain. Granted it is August, but I was here in August 1998 and remember seeing a lot more snow, This is probably a product of our drought in California, including relatively little rain/show this past winter. Whether or not the trend continues, and mountains like Shasta become less “snow-capped”, remains to be seen…

Highway 1: South Monterey Bay

One of the happier aspects of my increased leisure time is getting to take more trips, some close to home, some further afield. Last Thursday I found myself not to far from home, traveling one of my favorite stretches of highway along the southern edge of the Monterey Bay.

Highway 1 becomes a freeway (as it does in many small stretches), between Castroville and the area south of Monterey. I don't think this section has a name, but I think one appropriate name would be the Castroville-Monterey Freeway. And while there are many more spectacular places along Highway 1, this was one of the first drives I did on the coast, and it is also unique for being a “freeway on the beach”, with sand dunes on either side. Signs of the yellow-diamond variety warn motorists of “drifting sands.” This is most noticeable in the towns of Seaside and Sand City, just north of Monterey.

This photo is from AARoads, one of many great sites we at CatSynth turn to for information and fun on highways.

Also from AARoads, one of the major exits along the beach and dunes in Seaside:


Photo by Pete Sison

I would take my own photos, but stopping along the freeway is prohibited, and doubly so if you look to an over-eager CHP officer like you're photographing highway overpasses for the next terrorist attack, and that if he catches a “suspicious middle-eastern-looking guy” he might get a promotion, or even a medal from W. It's just another sad statement of our times. But we're happy to have resources like the folks at AARoads who publish great photos like these.

Looking from above, one can see the freeway, and some surrounding development, is indeed right on the beach (click the map to enlarge). This includes not only the highway and some resort hotels, but also a huge shopping center, an “auto row” of car dealerships, and indeed much of the commercial development for the town of Seaside. It turns out Seaside is actually larger than Monterey, something I only found out about a year or so ago, and has a lot of the commercial development in the area not directly related to tourism.

More perpexing in some ways is the aptly name town of Sand City. It is an incorporated city, but has a population of under 300. I could never quite figure out what it was about, i.e, why it was a separate town. It's main feature as seen from Highway 1 is a huge shopping center, which I have generally avoid. Sand City's boosters suggest that it is a small but very hip oasis with artists in old industrial buildings, like one might find in trendy sections of New York or San Francisco.

The southern Monterey Bay seems to have had its share of nasty development, despite its current reputation as a resort- and environmentally-conscious area. In addition to Seaside, there were major military installations in the area, and of course the early-20th-century industries in Monterey made famous by John Steinbeck. The area is still recoving in some ways from those scars. One place that seems to be a successful recover project is the Marina Sand Dunes, slightly north in town of Marina. I often stop here on trips when I have some extra time; the sand dunes are quite different from the rest of the mostly-rocky coastline:


click to enlarge

Yes, those sand dunes are actually on the coast. One just was to walk over a small rise for a spectacular view of the dunes and the bay:


click to enlarge

If you look really hard, you might be able to see CatSynth HQ beneath one of those hills across the bay.

Indeed, the area now seems to focus publicly on its coastline and the bay, with the center of gravity moving to institutions like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, itself on the site of a former factory/cannery. This makes for an interesting mixture of retro-industrial architecture and sea life, both of which rely on simple structures and geometry, and thus great for photography.

Of course, the main attraction at the aquarium as well as area wildlife preserves are the otters. No one can resist otters. No one.

But otters are more than just cute and furry. They're also very informative and entertaining.

Janis Chaffin in MBA's Basta Basura is seen here as Ollie Otter and Freddie Fishie. I believe Basta Basura will be ending its run at the aquarium soon, but I hear they will be available for bar mitzvahs and weddings starting in September.

Fun with Highways: the "Can of Worms"

There are a lot of exciting things coming up here at CatSynth. We have two tags/memes, three travelogues, a CD review, current events, and of course more cats and synths. Unfortunately, we're too tired for any of those today, so here's another fun highway interchange instead:

This is the junction of I-490, I-590 and NY 590 in Rochester, New York. My first-hand knowledge of western New York pretty much ends at Ithaca, so this is all second-hand for me. It was originally featured on Empire State Roads as an “interchange of the week”:

I-490 runs left to right. I-590 enters at bottom left, changes to NY 590 at the double overpass (center), and leaves at top right. NY 96 (East Avenue) runs from bottom right to top left, passing over I-590 and under I-490 simultaneously…The brown line is the CSX railroad mainline…This interchange is familiarly called the “Can of Worms”, a name first applied to the original interchange at this location (see bottom photo). This was completely reconstructed between 1987 and 1991, resulting in the configuration shown above.

Those who are interested are encouraged to visit the original article for more details and history.