Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

It's my 4 year anniversary of blogging on Dreamwidth. Oh, I've been blogging longer than that.... I started on LiveJournal over 13 years ago. And I do still blog on LiveJournal. I cross-post (manually 😡) to both.

Having a shorter history on Dreamwidth makes it easier to pull recent statistics from there. For example, I know from my profile I've posted 2791 blogs in 4 years and 702 in the past 12 months. That's an average of 1.92 posts per day this past year. I can also see which tags I've used most frequently in that time:

Top Topics, Past 4 Years

Rank	Tag	Uses
1	In Beauty I Walk	466
2	Planes Trains and Automobiles	345
3	Waterfalls	224
4	Coronavirus	223
5	Weather	214
6	TV	212

There are a few changes among the top 5 compared to last year's ranking. "In Beauty I Walk" remains in the lead, and "Planes Trains And Automobiles" remains at #2. Coronavirus dropped a spot to #4 while Waterfalls climbed to #3. And Weather edged out TV for the #5 spot. (TV is now #6.)

I'm certainly happy to see Coronavirus recede into the rearview mirror. It looks like by this time next year, unless something goes horribly wrong, Coronavirus will disappear from the Top 5.

Weather seems like a lame thing to creep up into the leader board. I mean, people talking about the weather is kind of insipid. Blogging about it seems like the same. But the Weather tag got a lot of use this year because there were simply so many times that weather became a factor in something I wanted to do— sometimes an opportunity, but more often an obstacle. And many times it was extreme weather I was writing about— which I call out is happening more frequently, and will continue to happen more frequently, because of human-caused climate change.

Speaking of things dropping a spot— or maybe moving up a spot— let's take a look how tags ranked in the past 12 months, since the last time I reported these stats.

Top Topics, Past 12 Months

Rank	Tag	Uses
1	In Beauty I Walk	112
2	Planes Trains and Automobiles	102
3	New Zealand	77
4	Weather	67
5	Waterfalls	65
6	Dining Out	60
7	Australia	56
8	Taking it Easy	55
9	TV	52
10	Job	51
11	No Rest for the Wicked	48
12	Let's Go Shopping!	43
13	Memory Lane	40
14	Road Trip!	37
15	Being Sick Sucks	36
16 (tie)	Frequent Flyer Points	34
16 (tie)	Money	34
18 (tie)	Video	33
18 (tie)	Family	33
20 (tie)	Alaska	31

The Top 10 list contains a number of the usual suspects but it does have a few new entries.

• New Zealand came out of nowhere (well, technically, it came out of the Southern Hemisphere 😂) to notch 3rd place with 77 journal entries. That's all from a two-week trip we made to New Zealand in April. 77 blogs... and still I've got maybe a dozen more in the backlog!


• Similarly, Australia stormed onto the list, landing at 7th place with 56 blog posts. Those are all from a trip we took in late December.


• Job (my current job) isn't a new topic but I did write about it more this year than in past years, so it made the top 10, barely.

I enumerated the list out to 20 spots this year to show where some of last year's top 10 fell to as well as some that almost made it. Alas, even cutting the list at 20 leaves out some of the story. Three topics tied for 20th, and three more were only 1-2 posts short of making the list.

• I show Alaska in spot 20 because it's an almost new tag. I finally got to Alaska this year!


• Pool Life is technically tied for 20th. It's a new tag I created this year to describe the joy of lounging around the pool. I was inspired by a few weeks of hot weather and one stay-home vacation when we decided to spend a few hours at the pool every day.


• D&D is a topic that finished just one post shy of making the top-20 list. I had hoped it'd make the list so I could write about why it made the list. It didn't, so I'll just tell you anyway. 🤣 Thanks to starting a new game late last year I more than tripled, in one year, the amount I've ever written about Dungeons & Dragons. Considering I ran a long-term game for many years in the past, that's telling. (What it tells is that I wasn't so inspired to write about my LT game.)

Finally, what happened to Coronavirus? On the basis of the past 12 months it not only dropped out of the top 5, it did not make the top 10 or even top 25. It was tagged to a paltry 11 blogs this year, coming in all the way down at 65th place. Good riddance.

I've posted plenty of times recently about the weather being hotter than past averages (and getting hotter). It's only fair that I share when the weather's cooler than normal, too. The past week or two we've seen slightly below-average temperatures around the area.

Here at my house it's been around 77° F (25° C) most afternoons recently. That's not a huge amount below the long term average of 81° F for this time of the year, but from a subjective perspective it makes a difference. It means we haven't had to run the air conditioner for a while. Balancing which windows are open or closed, when curtains are drawn or open, and judicious use of fans keep the house livably cool during the day. And at night it cools off enough that getting to sleep isn't a problem.

Now, when I point out that the weather's cooler than normal, even if just by a few degrees for 10 days to 2 weeks, I can pretty much hear the climate skeptics scoffing, "So much for global warming!" But just like one hot spell doesn't prove global warming, one cool spell doesn't disprove it. Global warming is about widespread and sustained trends versus long term averages. And even within a sustained, global trend of warming weather there's still room for a couple weeks of slightly-below average temperatures.

BTW, the forecast for today is 82°, so back to normal.

We made a decision to cancel our travel plans for the Fourth of July weekend. We were going to drive up to northern California and spend 4 days hiking in the Trinity mountains near Mt. Shasta. Now we'll stay home instead. I've even given up Friday as a PTO day. I'll work on Friday instead. 😢

We made this decision on Sunday, when we were home and resting up after our long day-and-a-half trip to the Sierras. It wasn't because we were too tired to take another trip so soon, though I was really tired on Sunday. I rolled into that Sierras trip less than 24 hours after coming home from a business trip and I was feeling ragged on Sunday. No, the reason was weather. Weather.

No, it's not that the weather's going to be cold or shitty (or both). Summer weather is predictably warm and sunny in Northern California. The problem is the opposite— it's going to be too warm and sunny. Look at those temps on the four days we'd be out hiking (Thu-Sun), with highs running well over 100° F! (For those outside the US, 108° F is about 42° C.)

Yeah, those temperature figures are for Yreka, the town where we'd be staying in a hotel. Weather up in the mountains at ~7,000' elevation where we'd be hiking would generally be cooler by 10-12° F. But still, temps in the mid to high 90s are not ideal for hiking. Especially not for physically demanding hikes climbing mountains.

It's a bummer canceling these plans. Even though I do find make plenty of opportunities to travel and do things I enjoy, I'm always looking for more opportunities. The challenge, of course, is balancing fun times with needing to work for a living. In that sense a holiday weekend is such an easy opportunity with free time away from work I feel like I'm squandering it, like I'm failing to step up and take what's mine. Thus Hawk and I did not come to this decision easily. We debated it and came to the decision reluctantly. But as we've asked ourselves since Sunday (it's now Tuesday) if we made the right call, our confidence has grown as the weather forecast has gotten even more extreme. 🥵

Are we being wusses? That's a question we've asked ourselves several times as part of our debate. We didn't used to cancel plans because of hot weather. But now we've done it at least twice in recent years. (The other time I'm thinking of is when we canceled a trip to Eastern Washington when the temperatures were so hot roads were melting.) Sadly, increasingly extreme hot weather is becoming increasingly more common with climate change. Yeah, we didn't used to cancel trips over weather. But worse weather is a new normal now.

What'll we do instead? We'll stay home. It's going to be hot here, too. Our local forecast has highs in the mid to high 90s. But instead of climbing mountains in those temperatures we'll hang out by the pool all day. Except Friday, when I'm working. 😢

Alaska Travelog #17
Kenai Fjords National Park - Mon, 17 Jun 2024, 1:30pm

We have a big hike ahead of us today— to Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. Ordinarily this is the sort of thing where we'd get up early in the morning and get going early to make sure there's enough daylight. But with Alaska's ridiculous long summer days, plus being only about 10 miles away, we didn't sweat it. We relaxed in our hotel room while there was a heavy fog this morning then got lunch in town (no, not pizza a fifth time!) before heading into the park.

As we drove up into the park from Seward the fog thinned out. It wasn't so much that the fog was burning off for the day as that it was concentrated around the bay. The cruise crewmember was right yesterday when they called it a convective fog. It's a phenomenon created by warm air over cold water. Ergo, get away from the water and you get away from the fog. By the time we reached the first viewpoint for Exit Glacier we were completely out of the fog.



This is a long-distance view of Exit Glacier. It's the low spot in between those two mountains. The scale can be a bit difficult to understand from a picture... the mountain on the left is just over 4,000' high, the right just over 4,500'. The top of the glacier's ice field, the low part in the middle, is 2400' elevation. And the outwash plain at our feet is 300-400' above sea level.

Exit Glacier wasn't always this small. At the height of the last Ice Age, 23,000 years ago, the glacier covered everything in view, including both mountains. Even 200 years ago the glacier was much bigger than it is today. 200 years ago the foot of the glacier was basically right in front of where I stood for this photo.

But hey, let's get on with the hike!



Well, okay, before we got on with the hike we stopped at the visitors center. We always do that to check conditions, get suggestions on things to watch for or other places to visit, and, of course, to buy hawk and sheep toys if we see any. They only had a scruffy eagle and a small sheep that we already own a bigger version of.



Here we are again on the trail. As you can see in the photo it starts off easily. It's a paved, gently sloped path. This is the "bunny slope" part of the trail that everyone hikes, including the cruise ship tourists who just waddled off the activity bus and are complaining about the lack of a McDonald's in Seward.



Here's another view of the lower part of the trail. I'm pleasantly surprised I found a moment with nobody in the frame.

That "1926" marker in the lower right corner of the photo indicates that just 98 years ago the glacier came down to here. Yeah, today you can't even see the glacier from here. The toe of the glacier is over a mile away and now this spot is a temperate rain forest.

Up next: Up, Up, Up to the Ridge!

Last week came an alarming announcement from the head of the UN. “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” UN Secretary General António Guterres declared, as scientists confirmed that July 2023 was on track to be the hottest month on record— and possibly in more than 100,000 years. Example news coverage: Guardian article 27 Jul 2023; Washington Post article 29 Jul 2023.

It's important to note that July's record didn't just edge out the previous record. It's well over it. In climate change discussions a figure of 1.5° C is often used as the goal to strive for— as in, let's work to limit the increase to 1.5° over pre-industrial levels. Well, July's average was 1.5° over those levels. So, that limit we could stay beneath if we started working hard today? Forget about making it; we're already there. And it looks like we're still accelerating as we go screaming past it.

Earlier today I began sharing my opinions about the statewide propositions on the ballot in California. See Ballot Propositions - Nov 2022 - part 1. Here in part 2 I address the latter four props on this November's ballot.

Prop 28: Lock in Funding for K-12 Arts and Music: Gentle No.

A few days ago I wrote blog entry The Problems with Propositions. Prop 28 is exactly the sort of measure I had in mind when I explained the trouble with props that lock in spending requirements. The bill would ensure a certain baseline amount of funding for K-12 arts and music education. To be sure, supporting such education programs is a worthy goal. And because of that it may well pass. I mean, who could be against teaching art and music to kids? But here's the thing: a vote against this initiative is not a vote against art. It's a vote against tying the hands of state legislators in the budgeting process.

This year California's budget spends nearly $100,000,000 on K-12 education, an average of $17,000 per student. For context: yes, that's a lot. And it's a lot partly because the state has enjoyed strong tax revenues for several years. But strong revenues are not a given. During an economic slowdown— of the sort that most economists, business leaders, and even ordinary citizens are predicting will happen next year if not sooner— California's tax revenues fall. Legislators then face tough choices in where to allocate funds. Each voter-passed initiative that locks in funding for one item or another makes the decisions about where to spend the remaining money more dire. Lock-ins for art and music may mean that school programs for language suffer... or perhaps that programs for supporting the elderly or combating climate change get short shrift.

Again, I recognize that supporting art and music education is a sympathetic choice. The only problem I have with this bill is that it's a funding lock-in. That's why I'm calling my position a Gentle No on 28.

Prop 29: Dialysis Clinic Regulation: No.

Patients who need kidney dialysis face dire straits. Shouldn't the industry that keeps them alive be better regulated? Don't be fooled; that's not what this is about.

This initiative matches at least 2 of the 5 proposition problems I described the other day. First, regulation in an industry that is a matter of life-or-death for certain individuals is a deeply detailed bit of policy that  shouldn't be left to ordinary citizens to enact on strict up-or-down votes.

Second— and more importantly— this is a special-interest, self-dealing initiative in disguise. Follow the money to see who is bankrolling this and understand why. Funding comes almost entirely from the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West union, which has been fighting with the two major providers of kidney dialysis over workers' contracts for years. This is now the second time in recent years the SEIU has gone to the ballot box in an attempt to gain extra leverage in negotiations. I support unions fighting for fair pay, benefits, and working conditions. I do not support them misleading voters at the ballot box to win what they cannot win in equal party negotiations. Vote No on 29.

Prop 30: Tax the Rich to Fight Wildfires and Climate Change: No.

Ah, Prop 30, another measure with a worthy-seeming set of goals. Wildfires are already a very destructive phenomenon in California, costing billions annually, destroying homes and habitat, and often causing deaths. Who could be opposed to reducing the risk of wildfires? Especially since as bad as they are now they're expected to get worse as a result of climate change.... Which this measure nominally also fights. Who but climate deniers doesn't want to fight climate change? And who better to soak with the bill for all of this than California's highest income citizens, those making over $2 million per year?

Alas, Prop 30 is another case of a moneyed special interest looking to do itself a favor at taxpayer expense while using a noble goal as a disguise. Follow the money and you'll see: a) the measure's main sponsor is ride-share company Lyft, and b) the measure's main expenditure is subsidizing purchase of electric cars and the construction and operation of recharging stations. How does (b) relate to (a)? California recently passed a law requiring all new cars sold be electric by 2035. Lyft depends on a huge fleet of vehicles... which it wants taxpayers to subsidize its contractor-employees buying & refueling.

Look, I'm all in favor of vehicle electrification. And I don't like wildfires or climate change. But this tax-the-rich-to-subsidize-a-huge-company measure is the wrong way to further either of those goals. It's a flawed and self-dealing initiative. Vote No on 30.

Prop 31: Uphold Law Banning Flavored Tobacco: Yes.

Prop 31 is a referendum... Instead of being an initiative proposing to create a new law, it is an initiative allowing citizens to veto an existing law. Many voters feel confused and irritated by so many props each year that they take a stance of "I'm just going to vote No on everything!" This is one of the cases where that mindset is misplaced. With a referendum a Yes vote upholds an existing law and a No vote removes it.

What's the law at stake here? 2020 the California legislature approved, and the governor signed into law, a bill banning the sale of certain flavored tobacco products. Cigarette smoking is a major public health hazard generally speaking, and flavored tobacco products have repeatedly been shown to appeal to underage smokers, hooking kids on a destructive, lifetime habit. It's important to attempt funded by the tobacco industry (again, follow the money) to veto our laws— and to do that voters must vote YES on 31.

Another heat wave is rolling across the Bay Area. Temperatures reached a high of 102° F (39° C) update: 103° in Sunnyvale today. It looks like San Jose hit 103° only 102°, still enough to edge out a record set for this date in 1973 (per National Weather Service).

I say another heat wave because just eleven days ago I posted about 98° heat. And just four days ago we started a cool snap. Temps didn't rise above 69° Friday. Cool weather continued through Sunday while we were out of town, warming up yesterday before peaking today.

Peaky weather like this is abnormal for the Bay Area. Here in Sunnyvale our average daily high this time of year is 81-82°, and usually the actual weather stays within a few degrees of that. Yet a few days ago it was 12-13° cooler than normal, and today it's 20° warmer. Extreme-r extremes like this are part of global warming.