Ron's Log

Plastic Bags Removed From Agenda

Everything on the agenda at tonight's Desert Hot Springs city council meeting was approved unanimously. How do they do it? Other political bodies in southern California must be jealous.

Even worse than unanimity, the two most interesting items on the agenda were delayed. The Chamber of Commerce quarterly report was delayed because the CEO was not present. Recently the C of C has generated some news by removing the CEO and then reinstating her. Me, I just wanted to hear her mangle her numbers again.

The other item was the plastic bag item. As anti-libertarian was it would be, it would have been very interesting for Desert Hot Springs to require local retailers to charge for those nasty plastic bags that float around us everywhere. It would not only have distinguished DHS from the other cities in Coachella Valley, but almost all other California cities. But the city councilmembers decided (unanimously, of course) to delay it for a study session. Very fair and democratic, but boring to those of us who were looking for a little excitement tonight.

In public comments Father Ted Pantels of St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Palm Desert spoke about his desire to create a non-profit urgent care center in DHS. He didn't give any specifics as to whether any of the groundwork had been done yet, and I think he was looking to the city council for guidance, which they can't give during public comments, of course, but later Councilmember Baker expressed his strong support for the idea, so I expect a connection will be made and the idea will move along. I think it's an exciting idea, and I look forward to the day when I can entrust my urgent medical needs to a Greek Orthodox sponsored clinic.

Ted Mayerhofen got up and made a weak and offensive joke suggesting that in DHS a runner is a mugger, but in Palm Desert they're running for their health. I try to fend off remarks like from ignorant people in the rest of the valley. When it's somebody local and supposedly informed I can only express my disgust and disdain.

A Randy Buxbomb (I welcome spelling corrections) got up to plug a device called the "Cool N Save" which had something to do with improving air conditoning efficiency and costs $99. He rattled off a phone number, but who had time to grab it? As soon as he started speaking my internal spam alert was triggered, and I could see that it had done the same for attorney Rubin Duran. As soon as he could get a word in Attorney Duran pointed out that public comments were not a place to do commercial promotions. Mayor Parks agreed and Mr. Buxbomb sat down (and left shortly after) mumbling something about how no other city had problems with his presentation. Anyway, Cool N Save has a website and it seems to be a misting system for central air conditioning units.

Many other positive, constructive public comments were heard.

During city councilmember reports Russell Betts promoted his Shop Local campaign.

And here's the text on the back of that image:

Contest Rules

Save Your Receipts for all your retail purchases within the City of Desert Hot Springs from May 1 to May 31, 2008. The highest combined sales total wins $100.00. Prizes for second and third place to be announced. Qualifying purchases must be from a merchant or retailer with Desert Hot Springs city limits. Wholesale purchases and institutional supply purchases do not count. All receipts must show the retailer name, date of purchase and purchase total. Date of receipt must be for purchases 5-1-08 through 5-31-08. Qualifying receipts must be turned in before June 10, 2008 at midnight. For location on where to turn in receipts and more information, call (760) 288-1613.

It's time to get started. We can fix our city.™ Keep our retail dollars at home creating jobs and supporting our local economy!

My first thought was that I had already lost 6 days of receipts, although I could probably find a few from today in my recycling bin. How do I get on the Russell Betts mailing list so I can find out immediately when these things happen?

The deal is better than it appears. There are actually going to be TWO $100 prizes, plus another $100 prize for groups. Currently the Boys and Girls Club is competing with the city government of Desert Hot Springs in the groups category. The smart winner will be someone who buys a car in DHS, I think...unless buying a house counts.

In his comments Councilmember Al Schmidt said that the Skyborne development out on western Pierson is set to start building its next phase! In one of its categories of homes (and he didn't say if that was high, low or mid-priced) the development has sold all but two homes. So it wants more. Apparently that view is selling!

Councilmember Scott Matas made a presentation on city parks which was utterly destroyed by the evil forces of Redmond. It seems that when a Powerpoint presentation is created in Vista it will not run on an XP machine. Our city has been wise enough to stick with XP, but Microsoft has seen fit in its greater wisdom to cripple the reports of Councilmember Matas. I think we should sue for no less than a billion. I believe City Manager Daniels said that he would see that the report was put up on the city's website so that we could all see it.

The final show of the evening was a presentation on a proposed development to be called "Desert Rose" on Verbena Drive near Two Bunch Palms. This is a really forward, cutting edge design, being very creative and green. It was approved, but before that there were public comments from Tom Hydrick (spelling corrections invited). He wasn't able to get to his point in his three minutes, but on his way there he made it clear that he thought no residential construction should be permitted until every previously approved development is fully built out, completely sold, and nearly fully occupied. I think that's how the Soviets used to do residential development, but it doesn't work very well in the real world.

A Change On Palm Drive

Word comes to me that this landmark/eyesore midcentury modern gas station on Palm Drive will be torn down within about two weeks. Those who object are welcome to rush in with the thousands required to restore it to other-than-eyesore quality.

Hinds Pumping Plant

The Hinds Pumping Plant is the pump on the Colorado River Aqueduct that you can easily see from I-10 east of Coachella Valley. Most people call it Hayfield, since that's the name on the exit. But in 1967 it was renamed for Julian Hinds.

This is the last pump on the aqueduct and raises the water up above 1,700 feet so it can cruise the rest of the way into the L.A. area. Here's the Google satellite view of the pumping plant.

All my photos of the Hinds plant can be found here or if you want to see these plus all my photos from the Eagle Mountain Pumping Plant, go here. Here are some samples:

You can see where the reservoir used to be. They used the reservoir only for the first few years, but it was unlined and too much water was lost into the ground.

This used to be the intake from the reservoir.

Gardner looking over the sand trap.

If all nine pumps are turned on the water overshoots the tunnel and carves away at the rocks above. This is the point where the water enters the tunnel under the Little San Bernardinos. It's all downhill from here as the water travels around Desert Hot Springs, under White Water Canyon, under I-10 and then under Mt. San Jacinto.

After passing through the sand trap.

In 1967 it was renamed from "Hayfield Pumping Plant" to "Julian Hinds Pumping Plant."

Before R2D2 and C3PO...

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"Risking A Catastrophe"

Earlier I had mentioned to news reports of this guy who had crashed and then returned to walk along the highway naked with his guts hanging out, and now I'm linking to what would have been a dull, routine report of the charges against him because one of the charges is "risking a catastrophe." I am not familiar with the enlightened laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but that one sounds like it's either a leftover from the 18th century, or a new concoction dreamt up by someone at Homeland Security. I wonder if it's ever been used against a pre-Broadway opening in Philadelphia.

Googling for more info I have found that Pennsylvania can also charge one with "failing to prevent a catastrophe." I'd never want to be governor in a state with a law like that!

Eagle Mountain Pumping Plant

As I was moving to Coachella Valley I was driving my rented truck on I-10 approaching from the east when I was startled by the sight of what I now know is the Hayfield pumping plant and could only wonder what it was all about - it was my first time on I-10 east of the valley. A few months later when my friend Carlton was visiting we tried to just boldly drive right up to it, only to be thwarted by security. I can recall going on my second 4WD trip with Great Outdoors when Ed and Gardner stopped to show us one of the many syphons of the Colorado River Aqueduct, thus explaining the tailings that one can see in many places along I-10 and other parts of the aqueducts route.

In the few years since then I've had many opportunities to visit parts of the aqueduct, whether the parts within walking distance right behind Desert Hot Springs, or the far flung isolated parts in the desert like Iron Mountain. You can see some of my photos of the aqueduct here on Flickr and here on Iperntiy. When you explore bits of the aqueduct out in the desert, out where they thought no one would ever admire their craftsmanship, even the discarded bits give evidence that the designers, engineers and workers who built the aqueduct considered themselves the spiritual heirs of those who built Rome's aqueducts.

Here is the Wikipedia page on the aqueduct: 242 miles long, 63 miles are canals, 92 miles are tunnels, the remainder is conduits and syphons. There are only five pumping stations to raise the water up and get it across California to Los Angeles.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was created to build the aqueduct. Los Angeles had earlier built the aqueduct from Owens Valley, but that was strictly for the City of Los Angeles. The MWD included surrounding cities. Construction of the aqueduct went on from 1933 to 1941. The presence of the aqueduct was essential in the siting of Pattons' training camps in World War II as he illegally took water from the aqueduct.

Today the aqueduct supplies 1.2 million acre-feet of water to Los Angeles per year. In addition, small amounts are taken in Desert Hot Springs and Whitewater Canyon for aquifer regeneration.

When I got word that a member of Great Outdoors Palm Springs was an employee of the MWD at one of the pumping stations and had offered to lead us on a tour, there was no holding me back. We first went to Eagle Mountain Pumping Plant which you can examine on this Google satellite image. Eagle Mountain is close to Desert Center. You can see Eagle Mountain railroad snaking near it.

Roy, our co-member and leader told us that the MWD is very open to groups that want to come visit a pumping station. I won't address the security systems we went through, but I will say that I was delighted with the freedom we were given once we got inside. We followed along with Roy, but we were free to wander here and there and take photos of EVERYthing. Roy emphasized we could take photos of EVERYthing. The only explicit restriction was not to touch any knobs or levers in the control room.

The basic parts of Eagle Mountain Pumping Plant are these: a residential area for the employees, the aqueduct coming into a reservoir, huge transformers handling the gigantic amounts of electricity coming in from four sources that is used to power the pumps, the pump building itself which has the motors at street level with the actual pumps below, the control center in the pump building, and then the most noticeable part of the whole scene: the pipes rising up more than 400 feet and penetrating the mountainside where the water enters a tunnel to flow eventually to the next pumping plant, Hinds.

After visiting Eagle Mountain we went to Hinds and did it all again. I'll get to those photos later. Now I've got only photos from Eagle Mountain.

Scott's photos can be seen here.

Ed's photos can be seen here.

My photos can be seen here. These are some samples:

Some info on the MWD seal.

Indian Orchard, Massachusetts.

Short videos:

Milfs Shocked By Urban Outfitters

This story rises above the usual one of someone-looks-in-a-place-that-appeals-to-young-adults-who-claim-to-be-sophisticated and finds things-that-don't-appeal-to-middle-aged-moms only because of the middle-aged mom's name: Marci Milfs. Sorry, no photo of the offended Milfs is provided. Mrs. Milfs went in to the Urban Outfitters in Lynwood, Washington, and dug into some books to find Porn For Women and Pornogami: A Guide to the Ancient Art of Paper-Folding for Adults. I couldn't find the books on Urban Outfitters' own site, so those are Amazon links. You can browse some of the contents of the books at Amazon and see that the books are intended as humor. Here, for example, is an image from Pornogami:

Milfs was so appalled that she is preparing to file a complaint with the city of Lynnwood, and has already aired her frustrations to State Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, and organizations including Morality in Media, Concerned Women of America and the American Family Association.

She's a busy woman, as you can see, but as an afterthought "She also called Urban Outfitters' corporate office in Philadelphia." That's probably why she didn't have time to complain about the store's high prices for clothing of dubious quality.

Urban Outfitters, for its part, presents a charmingly old fashioned approach to public relations: "A woman who answered the phone at the company's corporate office said Urban Outfitters responds only to media inquiries of its choosing and that interview requests must be mailed to corporate headquarters." I assume that inquiries must be hand-written and exhibit good penmanship.

World's 10 Most Disgusting Beers

It only lists ten, so I have to guess that positions 11 and 12 would have been occupied by Budweiser (or Bud Light) and Clamato and Heineken...or, that is, Heineken as sold in America. I've not had the good fortune to drink Heineken in its home country yet.

Me at Hayfield

Photo by PSHiker.
That's me, Scott, Ed and Peter at the top of the Hinds pumping station (most people called it "Hayfield") of the Colorado River Aqueduct. We are looking down at the point where the water pumped up is dumped into the portion of the aqueduct that flows through the Little San Bernardinos as they run along the edge of Coachella Valley.

My photos are coming.

Fresh Cactus Photos

Carissa Nwene's Sidewalk

I haven't seen it mentioned yet in either the Desert Sun or Desert Local News that the new sidewalk on Palm Drive between Camino Aventura and Camino Campesino built in response to the hit and run death of Carissa Nwene has been complete for about two weeks. Maybe they talked about this at the city council meeting that I missed.

So I stopped there this morning to get a few photos. The complete set of photos is here, and these are some samples:

How many drivers actually observe this speed limit as they come into Desert Hot Springs? I try to get it down to 45 MPH, but there's always somebody behind me who wants to run right up my ass when I do that, so they pull around and pass.

Carissa's memorial which was moved further back from the road during sidewalk construction.

The new full-size bike lane.

TING Hike in the Mecca Hills

A group that calls itself "TING" comes to visit Palm Springs twice a year and asked me to lead them on a hike in the Mecca Hills today. I was surprised to see how many Mecca Asters are still blooming.

Kangaroo Rats

Scott found a couple of baby kangaroo rats lying on Graham Road near Chuckwalla Road with no mother in sight. He moved them off the road, but their chances of survival seemed slim. Why would these blind babies even be outside the nest?

In the following video you can see and hear the baby's heartbeat:

Kangaroo Rat Pup(0538)

Bradshaw Trail

Yesterday I rode along on a Great Outdoors 4WD outing on part of the Bradshaw Trail. Other than little bits of dirt roads near Dos Palmas, this is the first time I've gotten to see the Bradshaw Trail which is drivable by any vehicle with good ground clearance. We started along the Coachella Canal near Dos Palmas and headed east, paralleling and crossing the Eagle Mountain railroad.

A lot of the Bradshaw Trail runs along the border of the Navy bombing practice range which is lined with warning signs. A few dummy bombs were near the road in order, I suppose, to satisfy the curiosity of travelers and discourage them from trying to explore in the bombing range.

You can see all the photos here, and these are some samples:

"Dirty Jobs" On The Tram

Dirty Jobs, the Discovery Channel show hosted by the stinky yet lovable Mike Rowe, will feature on May 5 a program on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Dirty Jobs website here.

Over here you can see Bossco's photo of Mike Rowe at the upper tram station when they shot the program back in January.

Dana Hobart Appointed To CVMVCD Board

Dana Hobart has been appointed as the new trustee from Rancho Mirage to the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District. Mr. Hobart is currently a city councilmember in Rancho Mirage.

He replaces John Fuschetti who announced his resignation a few days ago. "Fuschetti, 83, said Thursday that it was hard to drive from Rancho Mirage to the vector control district's Indio office because of his age and that back problems made it difficult for him to stand and walk."

Apache Peak Fire

Complete, updated, official information here.

Million Person Marijuana March

18-year old Aurora Maldonado is organizing a march in Palm Springs to protest the prohibition of marijuana. She says she "grew up in Desert Hot Springs 'where marijuana was just a part of the natural order of things,'"

She said she was inspired to organize this march on Saturday when she saw an ad for the Million Person Marijuana March in High Times magazine. However when I Google for "Million Person Marijuana March" I get only four hits: two from this Desert Sun article, one from a blog who says 10,000 marchers were on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, and another blogger in Oregon who mentions a march there.

Maybe it's the first year of a movement and next year it will be bigger.

Good Customer Service Report

The regular reader will recall that my longtime hiking companion, the Canon 450SD, ended his reliable career with an instantaneous bout of lens lockup. I replaced it with a Canon SD870 SI in March. You may imagine my consternation, then, when on the hike on April 22 I looked down at the camera in my hand and saw that its lens was extended despite the fact that the camera was turned off. Pressing the power button only produced some little motor noise and then a series of beeps. Lens lockup in less than 5 weeks!

I still had the original shipping box and all the paperwork sitting right next to my computer at home, so it was no challenge to get the stuff all together and call Canon customer service. There was a short menu to click through and then I got a human instantly. I described the problem in two sentences. The customer service agent immediately agreed with my assessment and gave me instructions on how to ship the camera to them for repair. With my long experience with Time Warner customer service (which is mostly pretty good) I at least expected the Canon man to run me through some time-wasting checks like replacing the battery, pushing the power button while he had me on the phone, etc. But no, none of that nonsense.

So it was down to Scott Matas's UPS Store in the Von's shopping plaza where, we might as well confess, the service is always good. In no time at all the camera was on its way to Chicago. Canon had estimated a 6 or 7 day turn-around time. They sent me an email when they got it with an initial diagnosis and then an email the next day when they shipped it back via FedEx. I received it just six days after I had shipped it. They replaced the entire lens and the new one works so smoothly and quickly that I can't feel any vibration at all when I turn it on. Several times I thought I had missed the power button, before I looked down at the camera. This new lens, I mean to say, is smoother and faster than the original.

Second best repair service I've ever gotten. It's second only to Apple, and that's only because with Canon I had to pay for shipping it to them myself. Small matter.

Escrow Closed On Lautner Motel

Escrow closed April 25 on the Lautner Motel (AKA, the "Desert Hot Springs Motel"), designed by John Lautner. Final selling price was $425,000. The new owners, Tracy Beckmann and Ryan Trowbridge promise a swimming pool in the future.

My set of photos of the Lautner Motel can be seen here.

UPDATE: In response to Tomm's question about the condition of the exterior of the place I took a drive by the Lautner Motel this afternoon and walked around the perimeter taking photos. You can get to them by following this link or these thumbnails:

Another Cactus

Not sure if those are going to be flower buds or just more cactus. It formed similar, but much smaller buds last year and they eventually dried up and fell away, so I think those were flowers.

Soup Supper at Cabot's Pueblo

The next Desert Hot Springs Historical Society soup supper will be held at Cabot's Pueblo Museum, 67616 East Desert View in Desert Hot Springs, California. A very entertaining presentation has been promised.