Hurricane Earl

Thanks to a thin but still strong enough cold front approaching from the west, Hurricane Earl should maintain its current predicted track and not make a direct hit on North Carolina.  However, Earl is enough of a beast that he will still cause great concern for the Outer Banks.

During hurricanes that threaten the United States, I prefer to follow local coverage if it is available.  Even if it has to come via a low quality online stream, local coverage is usually superior because it normally comes without commercial interruptions and, at the very least, the reporters are more familiar with the area and know how to correctly pronounce all of the place names.

Some are lucky as certain cable and satellite television companies will temporarily feed a local out-of-market television station out to all of their subscribers if it is showing a major news event.  However, most people will have to rely upon an online stream if one is available.

Getting an online stream during such breaking news coverage is always a hit and miss proposition.  The station has to be equipped to send out such a feed or get some assistance from its affiliated network.  Sometimes it is amazing how some tiny television markets are always willing to stream their coverage while some in larger markets never do it.

So…I cannot guarantee that any of the major television stations in the Greenville/New Bern/Washington market will provide any streaming as Earl brushes the Outer Banks sometime in the middle of the night US time.  If they do and watching such coverage is of interest, these are the links to try in case any of these stations decide to put their coverage online.

WCTI-TV – Channel 12 – New Bern – ABC

WFXI – Channel 8 – Morehead City – Fox

WITN – Channel 7 – Washington – NBC

WNCT-TV – Channel 9 – Greenville – CBS

Anyway…

I noticed several days ago that the Republican Party had begun laying out its plans for its side of the 2012 Presidential Primaries.  As everybody should recall from 2008 (especially since neither side was running an incumbent), the whole process became a big game of leapfrog as states kept moving up their primaries in order to have more say in who was going to be each party’s nominee.

In a way, I cannot blame some states for wanting to have more of an effect on the process.  A good example is California.  Regardless of one’s stereotypical thoughts about the Golden State, it does have the largest population and the most votes in the Electoral College.  Yet, for many election cycles since most states converted to primaries in 1972, everything was already decided by the time of California’s traditional primary date on the first Tuesday in June.  Is it fair that neither the millions of Democrats or Republicans in California (plus its Greens and Libertarians) get more of a say in who gets to represent them in the Presidential election?  Not really…but, then again, why should a voter in California be more important than one in any other state?

It’s a difficult problem in a county so large with states covering six time zones.  Trying to come up with a balance between giving big states a fair shake and not turning the process into even more of a money-dump on television and radio advertisements is almost maddening.  However, I believe I have done it.

As has been suggested by many others, I believe that the solution is to move to regional primaries.  This allows candidates to concentrate on one area instead of having primaries at the same time in distant parts of the country where, inevitably, the smaller state(s) get ignored.

The difference in my proposal as opposed to many others is that I break the country up into far more regions.  This makes each one somewhat more local and keeps the process long enough so that everybody else in the country — especially the media — gets about the same amount of time to look over and inspect the candidates to make sure that, for one example, a party does not accidentally nominate somebody unfit for office like former Senator John Edwards.

Another difference is that I retain the four small primaries/caucuses that traditionally begin the process.  I admit that calling the Nevada caucus a “tradition” is more than a bit of a stretch but I believe it is an excellent choice due to both population and temperament so that the western portion of the country is represented early along with the Midwest, Northeast, and South.

I also strongly believe it is good to retain these traditional early primaries as they keep a good check on those that simply come in with a wheelbarrow full of money and attempt to overwhelm the competition with advertising.  It is only in these smaller, less-populous, and more politically aware states where candidates must go to every little county and town to present themselves and their ideas in person while subjecting themselves to tough questioning if they have any hope of finishing well and moving on in the process.  If we were to begin the primary season in a state like California or New York…well, in 2008, it would have been all over before one ballot had been cast and we would have ended up with Hillary Clinton vs. Rudy Giuliani instead of Barack Obama vs. John McCain.

The next step in my process was to try to balance each region as much as possible in the amount of Electoral College votes (why I used that measurement is stated in the next-to-last paragraph) and keep each one contiguous and within no more than two time zones (thus avoiding what happened in 1980 when the Presidential election was called early after the polls closed in the east and then everybody in the west stayed home and did not vote in any of the other races).  There are still some wide differences as it is difficult to get the sparsely-populated western states to balance out the more heavily-populated ones in the east.  However, with a special dispensation given to one region combined with the remainder of my plan, it helps make up for these differences.

The ultimate balance will be given by having the order of these primaries determined by a random drawing on February 22nd (George Washington’s birthday for an appropriate twist) two years before the next Presidential election year.  This would be held somewhere in Washington, DC with the drawing performed by somebody such as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a former President, or somebody of that ilk.  In subsequent drawings, whichever region went first in the previous cycle would not be allowed to go first in the next one, and whichever region went last would not get stuck being last again.  Other than that and the one exception I will get to next, everything else will be at random.  Being two years out, this will give all of the states plenty of time to schedule their other elections.

The one region for which should be made an exception is the one I call the Mountain, Pacific, Alaska & Hawai’i.  The reason for this is it includes our two “outpost” states where travel time is always a problem (and thus why they are usually completely ignored in primaries especially since Alaska is heavily Republican and Hawai’i usually leans Democratic in general elections).  To assure that this region does not get ignored and to give candidates the proper amount of time to cover it, I would give it the exception of always having the slot two Tuesdays after Easter.  In my plan, Easter (and its following Tuesday) would be considered to be an “off” week for this primary process even though we all know that no campaign in its right mind is going to rest all that much even if it is one catering to the Christian extremists in this country.  Of course, it is always up to each campaign as to how each one wants to spend its time and money.  However, with Easter always coming in March or April which is still basically the first half of the primary season, I would think that only woe would befall anybody that took a drubbing in this region due to ignoring it, especially the states of Oregon and Washington where the margin between parties is very thin, and had the press barking about being a loser for another week.

So, there you have it…a regional primary plan that combines the best of tradition along with good old common sense…so, of course, it has absolutely no chance of ever being implemented. :-D  Still, I think it’s one heck of a good idea…and, hey, who knows?  Maybe there is hope that there are enough “radical centrists” coming out in this world that want to reject both the tired old policies of both parties as well as their increasing hate and deception.  If enough people demanded this and other reforms, they could happen.  The thing is…will anybody stop watching American Idol long enough to actually start fighting for them?

Using the 2012 calendar, here is how everything would fall under my plan.  Do know that the number of Electoral College votes (noted in parenthesis) will change slightly for some states after the 2010 Census is calculated.  Yes, I realize that primaries award delegates and that Electoral College votes are for the general election.  However, party delegates are distributed in about the same ratio by the major parties — using Electoral College votes is just easier to digest for display purposes.

Also note that all elections are held on the traditional day of Tuesday — no more of this Friday and Saturday crap that actually decreases voter turnout (if there is concern over that, get your state to move to voting by mail like in Colorado and Oregon).

February 28th – Iowa (7)
March 6th – off week
March 13th – New Hampshire (4)
March 20th – South Carolina (8)
March 27th – Nevada (5)
April 3rd – random region
April 10th – off for Easter
April 17th – Mountain, Pacific, Alaska & Hawai’i Region (29)
April 24th – random region
April 30th- random region
May 1st- random region
May 8th- random region
May 15th- random region
May 22nd- random region
May 29th- random region
June 5th- random region

REGIONS

NORTH EASTERN (61)
Connecticut (7)
Maine (4)
Massachusetts (12)
New York (31)
Rhode Island (4)
Vermont (3)

MID-EASTERN (59)
Delaware (3)
New Jersey (15)
Ohio (20)
Pennsylvania (21)

SOUTH EASTERN (61)
District of Columbia (3)
Georgia (15)
Maryland (10)
North Carolina (15)
Virginia (13)
West Virginia (5)

NORTHERN CENTRAL (48)
Michigan (17)
Indiana (11)
Minnesota (10)
Wisconsin (10)

MID-CENTRAL (53)
Arkansas (6)
Illinois (21)
Kentucky (8)
Missouri (11)
Oklahoma (7)

SOUTHERN CENTRAL (62)
Alabama (9)
Florida (27)
Louisiana (9)
Mississippi (6)
Tennessee (11)

NORTH CENTRAL & MOUNTAIN (37)
Colorado (9)
Kansas (6)
Montana (3)
Nebraska (5)
North Dakota (3)
South Dakota (3)
Utah (5)
Wyoming (3)

SOUTH CENTRAL & MOUNTAIN (49)
Arizona (10)
New Mexico (5)
Texas (34)

CALIFORNIA (55)
California (55)

MOUNTAIN, PACIFIC, ALASKA & HAWAI’I (29)
Alaska (3)
Hawai’i (4)
Idaho (4)
Oregon (7)
Washington (11)

Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama – by Jane Mayer

I do want to add this.  For my more conservative-minded friends, there is nothing wrong with having a general philosophy on government of low taxes, less regulation, and fewer federal intrusions into daily life.  I would just give the caution to strongly think through how far this should all go and consider what things would be like in a pure “Tea Party” world where there will be nobody standing between you and the giant corporations like Koch Industries that will end up running everything and cannot be voted out of office.

NOTE: Koch in this case is pronounced like “coke.”

Of course, “bad” is my own definition and is much broader when I am trying to find stations that fit within my pretty tight stipulations for making it onto my Radio page.  Overall, there is certainly nothing “bad” about the BBC but I want to avoid network stations as well as those that do not feature mostly music programming.  The United Kingdom has a small handful of college and “community” stations, but many do not stream or broadcast 24/7.  There are also a lot of stations there with no websites or no way for me to find them since there is no standard by which I can look them up (such as by the call letters used in other countries).

As for the commercial stations there…wow…and I thought that American radio was bad!  Almost all of what I heard in my second go-around in trying to find more good stations to add to my list had no heart, no soul, and no imagination in either the “presenters” as disk jockeys are called there or in their playlists.  Even in the highly populated and greatly important City of London, I could not find one decent non-BBC radio station that was streaming on the Net.  I can only suppose that this is why so many people use public transportation in London as trying to listen to the radio while driving there would make people want to slit their wrists.

All of that being said, I did find two stations over there that are absolutely magnificent.  Both are surprising not only for being an oasis in a desert of radio mediocrity but also for what they play and how the deviate from their standard formats.

The first new addition to my list is a “community” station located in Glasgow, Scotland called Celtic Music Radio.  Most of the time, this station plays music appropriate to its name — folk music from Scotland and Ireland along with high quality modern interpretations of the genre.  However, there is also specialty programming where they explore other “roots” music including reggae, blues, general folk music, Americana, and several others.  Despite my disparaging remarks about UK radio overall, most American “community” stations would give their left nut to be this good.

Celtic Music Radio

The other great station I found in the UK is in Sheffield, England and is also a “community” outlet.  I am a bit angry at them because they stole an idea that I had way back in the early 1980′s — to have a station that focuses on new rock music but that does not totally forget its long and rich history.  That’s exactly what radio2XS does.  They even tag themselves as being the home of “60 Years of Rock & Roll.”  Best of all is that they don’t just mash everything together like a bunch of mp3s they slapped onto an iPod.  Somehow, they get a Marianne Faithfull song to blend well after just having played Rage Against the Machine.  This station does not seem to ignore anything rock no matter how old, obscure, or — unlike many American rock stations — how non-white.  Thus, I suggest to all of my readers that like rock in multiple forms not to ignore this station.

radio2XS

After having dredged these two gems out of the putrid sea of UK radio, I had hoped to find more in the Caribbean to fulfill those requests for more reggae and other “world” music.  Sadly, I found the same thing this time around as I did the first — good stations that were no longer on the air, good stations that had awful sounding streams, and a whole lot of hip-hop trying to pass itself off as reggae.  Thus, the remainder of the next round of station additions as I try to get everything I missed the first time around due to my computer glitch are going to come from Canada and the good ol’ U S of A.  Yes, I was hoping for more diversity but I can only play the cards that I am dealt…and say again to my readers that, if anybody knows of a good station that I missed that mostly sticks to music programming, has a good sounding stream, and broadcasts 24/7, please pass it along.

As it turns out, I found that my main computer was having some sort of problem in playing certain streams while the smaller one I am using now while traveling churns them out with no problem on standard media players.  While this will mean a little extra work for me once I finally move into a new home and have to do the dreaded reformat/reinstall on Windows on my main rig, it also means that a decent-sized chunk of new stations are going to be added here for everybody’s enjoyment.

I cannot say at this point how many of these will end up being from other countries as many of the good ones I have listened to in the past, especially in the Caribbean, seem to be disappearing faster than peanuts in front of an elephant’s cage at the circus.  However, my readers eager for at least a little something outside of the American sphere of influence can be assured that I will work just as hard to unearth any good ones that remain as I did on the original list.

This afternoon I worked on Oceania with a focus on Australia and New Zealand since both of those countries speak something resembling English. :-)  These are very unusual countries as far as radio goes.  They both have government-owned broadcasting entities yet they do not dominate.  There are quite a few “community” stations yet they have a much broader amount of programming than similar stations in North America.

Thus, it was hard for me to find stations in this area that met my basic requirements of broadcasting mostly music, had a good quality stream, and put out programming that was not just the same old thing.  In some ways, I was saddened to see that many Australian stations were relying upon some of the same syndicated programming that permeates North America because they just cannot afford to do something original.

However, I did come up with three stations from this area of the globe that I have already added to my Radio page.

The first station is an unusual college/alternative station based at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand simply called Static FM (or just Static).  I call this station unusual because the “alternative rock” it plays is overall much more mellow than similar stations in North America — not that it will put one to sleep by any means.  It is just not the same old buzz-buzz-buzz, drone-drone-drone sound-alike stuff.

Static FM – http://www.static.co.nz/

Moving over to Australia, the next new station on my list is fairly typical of that country’s “community” outlets although it does focus much more on music than most others that have a lot of talk and information shows.  Its call letters are 5DDD but it is better known as Three D Radio.  Broadcasting out of Adelaide in the state of South Australia, the program types seem very similar to a North American “community/variety” station but it is not long to hear that it definitely has an Australian twist to it.

5DDD – Three D Radio – http://www.threedradio.com/

Finally for this round is another Australian station, this time from the country’s Sunshine Coast broadcasting out of Nambour, Queensland.  4SDA is better known as Sunshine FM.  This is another station with a regular-sounding format of “oldies/standards” but with a large amount of Australian flavor.  From what I can tell, they are mixing in hits of the past that never made it off the continent along with others that were famous world wide.  The music selections definitely lean toward the more mellow side so this is a good station to listen to when one wants to relax or not get too distracted.

4SDA – 104.9 Sunshine FM

At this point I have already again covered most of the other English-speaking countries outside of the United Kingdom and North America including the Caribbean.  Unless one of my highly appreciated readers knows of a station outside of those areas — or a non-English speaking one that is so good I won’t mind not knowing what they are talking about — I simply did not find anything that was worth a link.  Everything was either too chatty, too boring, or too government-controlled.

As for what remains…well, that will take a while to go back through because, as one can imagine, it’s a big job to go through three very populated countries and then cover all of the little islands in the Caribbean Sea.  Keep in mind that this second going-through will also be occurring while I am still trying to find a new job.  If anybody is already bored with the stations I have already posted…well, first of all, what in the hell is wrong with you… :-p …and, second, just be patient.  I will try to go through a few regions every day and post any new ones here as I can to bring them to everybody’s attention.

Thankfully, with those losses came some good gains.  Some of the non-commercial stations in the wider Denver area have put in extra transmitters or have taken over other frequencies to more fully cover the region.  On the commercial side of things, even some of the stations owned by the major conglomerates seem to be better than most at playing a wider variety of music and having at least some thought over caring about the local audience.

As already placed on my Radio page, KUVO remains one of North America’s greatest jazz/blues stations and KGNU is still cranking out its sometimes oddball programming from what some around here call “The People’s Republic of Boulder.”  However, the great surprise and the latest addition to my list comes from a station that is kind of out in the sticks and who’s frequency was silent for a while until it roared back in October 2009.

Broadcasting from Severance, Colorado, KYEN seems to be trying to outdo the glory days of KQMT by playing some of the deepest and most surprising “classic rock” tracks that I have heard on commercial radio in many years.  The selection of music is often jaw-dropping and so deep that even a fairly informed rock music fan like me cannot always identify the artist.  I have even caught them playing an occasional bootleg track!

The one bad thing I have to say about this small station is that, often times, it seems to be on “auto-pilot.”  Normally, I try to avoid publicizing stations like that as I feel that proper radio comes with a proper announcer to set the mood and inform the community.  However, when I consider how this station must be run on a shoestring budget and think about all of the great music I have heard in the short time since I drove back into this area, the automation can be very easily forgiven.

So…for those of my readers that are still fans of “classic rock,” KYEN comes with one of my highest recommendations.  When they say, “We rock the Rockies,” I usually answer back, “Fuck yeah, you do!”

KYEN will now be found on my Radio page.  For quick reference, clicking on the logo below will open up their website in a new browser tab or window.  KYEN’s stream is available in five different formats so nobody should have any problem in listening to them online.

Before I get to all of those to give them a proper highlight, I need to give some well-deserved kudos to a station already on the original version of the list.  While driving around the greater Portland, Oregon area, no station of any format has been such a pleasure to listen to than KMHD out of Gresham.  I am normally not one that listens to a lot of jazz especially while driving as I normally prefer something with a lot more pep.  However, the quality of the music played on KMHD is so well thought out that it seems to absolutely fit the conditions of the day whether cool and cloudy or hot and sunny.  There are several great jazz stations in my list right now but I highly recommend taking some time to check out KMHD.  As I said, they have already been in my list, but here is their link for easy reference:

http://www.kmhd.org/

The first new addition I will bring up is an extremely unique station in at least three ways.  First, it is one of the very few non-commercial stations remaining on the AM portion of the radio dial in the United States of America.  Second, it is one of the few remaining daytime-only stations as it must sign off the air at sunset to avoid interfering with 50,000 watt KNBR in San Francisco (although they do stream 24/7 even though they are not going over the air).  Third, it is one of the extremely few stations that play what is best called a “nostalgia” format.

This great little find is KBRD-AM (K-Bird) in Lacey, Washington next to the state capital of Olympia.  The stream plays right through the website so no outside player will be needed.  As for describing this station…well, if it’s old — really old — they play it.  Other than that, I just highly suggest visiting KBRD-AM’s site at least for a little while if only to feel good that somebody out there is still playing and preserving this kind of material…plus to learn why it is called K-Bird.

http://www.kbrd.org/

The next addition is another station of historic importance but, this time, is much more modern.  If you were fond of the “grunge rock” scene that came out of Seattle, KGRG-FM had a lot to do with that.  It was this station that helped to break all of the bands that led up to bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and all of the rest.  They are still attempting to break new ground today although I might quibble with how much new “alternative rock” is truly all that alternative since so much of it sounds very similar.  That being said, this is still a great station especially when you need to annoy somebody in the car next to you. >:-)

http://www.kgrg.com/

The next station is KSER which is the Seattle area’s version of the typical left-wing style community/variety station.  Their music selection seems quite good so I feel it definitely warrants inclusion even though they also run some of that repetitive Pacifica Radio programming that I mentioned in my entry about KFAI.

http://www.kser.org/

KBCS out of Bellevue north of Seattle is similar to KSER but with their own take on great musical programming.  Of special note to many of this site’s readers would be the Sunday evening program Grateful Dead & Backtracks.  Their tag line of being “a world of music and ideas” is very fitting.

http://www.kbcs.fm/

The final addition for now is a standard classic rock station, KZOK out of Seattle.  It’s not all that bad especially for a station owned by CBS and it certainly has some of the coolest call letters in the area.  Many of you might not immediately recognize the name of the morning man, Bob Rivers, but you would every Christmas when radio stations begin playing his many parodies of holiday songs that have been popular for the past 15 years or so.

http://www.kzok.com/

Speaking of morning men, I now get to the first recent deletion from my list.  Gone is KGON out of Portland, Oregon.  The reason?  Running the syndicated and never-has-been-funny Mark & Brian Show out of Los Angeles.  That combined with the fact that KGON’s playlist was nothing spectacular compared to the other “classic rock” stations on my list just screamed to me that this station was not fit for sharing.

The two other deletions are due to a discovery that I made by accident although something a few weeks ago should have tipped me off earlier.  I was out very early one Sunday morning while I was still wallowing in the swill of the putrid Los Angeles radio market.  I tuned to my favorite radio station there, KSWD.  Instead of hearing the usual programming, they were broadcasting the church service from the big Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.  This was sort of unusual and sort of not.  It is not uncommon for music stations in the USA — even rock ones — to broadcast a church service at an obscure time of day to help them meet the weak public service requirements still required by the Federal Communications Commission.  However, it is unusual to have that program come from far away instead of from a local church or synagogue.

Well, while doing a little research on Seattle television stations a few days ago, I stumbled onto the fact that all of the stations owned by Bonneville International are actually owned by an entity called Deseret Management Corporation that is, in turn, owned directly by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints…a.k.a. the Mormons who I am greatly pissed at for interfering in California state politics over the recent battle over gay marriage.

I am all for freedom of religion and expression.  However, when a church already totally runs one state they should stop being greedy and trying to tell other states how to run their business.

Therefore, because I do not wish to be seen as supporting an organization that doesn’t truly believe in many of the things Jesus actually said in the Bible, say goodbye to KSWD, Los Angeles and WDRV, Chicago.  There are still plenty of other good “classic rock” stations for everybody to listen to without letting people be fooled into supporting a borderline cultist church.

I was on the last leg of my tour of the greater Olympia, Washington area and heading up Washington State Route 3 into the very nice little town of Shelton.  Upon approaching the city from a hill that overlooks it, I saw this giant wheel and, at the last moment, realized that there was a little pull-out from the road so it could be viewed more closely.  As it turns out, this is an amazing piece of historic machinery.

The “Big Wheel” is left over from the days when the timber industry ruled the Pacific Northwest.  It was originally used elsewhere to saw spruce logs used in airplanes built to fight World War I.  It came to Shelton in 1926 and remained in use until 1967.  It is one of the largest saw wheels ever built at 11 feet in diameter (approximately 3.35 meters).  During its time of use in Shelton, it sawed through three billion board feet of lumber which is enough to house over one million people.

While the timber industry is still important in the Shelton area, it is certainly not to the extent of days past when things like the Big Wheel were needed to slice up the huge trees left in the old growth forests before the remainder were set aside for preservation.  Yet, Shelton has made sure that this part of its past is not forgotten.  While we all know better now about the logging practices of the past, there is still nothing wrong with being proud of their once mighty sawmills and how they helped to build this country.

The Big Wheel may no longer turn but it still serves a great purpose as it greets residents and visitors alike with a message of, “I got your attention, didn’t I?  Now look at that nice little town down there!  This is where it came from.  Now, come on down the hill and see what we’re up to today!”

The Big Wheel in Shelton, Washington USA - Copyright © 2010 by KoHoSo

Of course, not all of those things of the past were bad to leave behind.  As certain cities and towns grew, signage became so big and overdone that it eliminated the real personality a place had and blocked the view of any of its surrounding natural beauty.  The country also got to a point where some of the old ways of attracting business became passé and downright un-cool.

During the rise of the Interstate Highway System and McDonald’s, many of the old giants of the past began to be sent to the scrap heap.  These included beautiful neon signs, Sinclair Dino dinosaurs, juice stands shaped like oranges, motels shaped like big tee-pees, and — perhaps most famous and prevalent of all — the plethora of Muffler Men and their various offshoots that once dominated many a roadside.

Thankfully, not all of these giants have been lost.  With a wave of nostalgia that has it roots in when the last section of US Route 66 was finally decommissioned in 1984…well, some people began to realize some of the memories and fun that had been lost.  Later, with the advent of the commercialization of the Internet, more and more people began to seek out information on the old roadside attractions of the past and, better yet, started organizing to preserve many of them.

In other cases, some businesses refused to yield to modernity.  Their giant sign or cheesy mascot was going to stay and that was that.  They would not make the mistake of designing a new logo or trying to reformulate themselves in any way.  That is what I have here for today’s K-POD.

Harvey Marine is a business located in Aloha, Oregon (pronounced AL-o-wa) which is a western suburb of Portland.  Placed right up on the edge of what is known locally as the “TV Highway” (short for Tualatin Valley), it has been serving boaters of the area for many decades.

Whether one likes to boat upon the local waters or not, Harvey Marine is a local favorite and even nationally known — not just because of it service or prices but because of its appropriately-named giant mascot who’s toes almost touch the road itself.

This particular animal might seem like a strange choice to many.  After all, when thinking of boating, one usually conjures up images of fish, frogs, and birds.  However, for those that like and/or remember classic movies of the past, it doesn’t take long to find out that Harvey is extremely appropriate.

I like that Harvey sits in front of the US flag especially as this photo was taken earlier today on Independence Day.  It’s a weird but nice reminder that this country was founded on individuality and that not everybody has to be “extreme,” live in a cookie-cutter existence, or morph their company into a name and logo that means absolutely nothing…as I still await an answer as to exactly what a Verizon is.

So…on America’s birthday, I salute Harvey and all like him.  May Harvey and all of his fellow giants continue to stand proud while simultaneously sticking it to the man by pissing off yuppies on local planning commissions.

Harvey Marine in Aloha, Oregon on July 4, 2010 - Copyright © 2010 by KoHoSo

From there, I-5 goes across the Tejon Pass in a stretch also known as “The Grapevine.”  This is where, on steep grades, many drivers either become so frightened that they cannot bring themselves to touch their gas pedals or, on the other side of the coin, want to relive their own version of The Grapevine’s mention in the great old song, Hot Rod Lincoln.

Once down from The Grapevine, one is met with the wide expanse of the Central Valley, the main part of the Golden State that people are referring to when they say that California feeds the world.  Unfortunately, feeding the world is very boring visually as — for reasons still unknown to me — I-5 was plotted along the far western edge of most of the Central Valley instead of using the old US Route 99 route through big cities such as Bakersfield, Fresno, and Modesto.  Thus, with only the quick touches I-5 makes on the western edges of Stockton and Sacramento, there’s a whole lot of nothing to look at for mile after excruciating mile.

Thankfully, this changes just after one pulls out of Redding.  Some might not like the sharper turns and steeper grades than those found on most other Interstates (as compromises to the general rules for the superhighways had to be made to get the road through such rough terrain), but the views are simply amazing and well worth some occasional white-knuckle driving.  While I am usually never one to recommend traveling by the Interstate Highway System as so much of it is surrounded by such blandness and hardly any locally-based businesses, I-5 from Redding up until the next big metropolis, Portland, Oregon, is a joy to behold and probably one of the five best stretches of Interstate in the country.

Upon leaving Redding, it does not take long to be surrounded by beautiful pine forests.  Then, at one point after traversing a turn in the highway, one is confronted with a full and powerful view of the area’s major landmark, Mount Shasta.  It’s almost as if the builders of the road intentionally designed this sudden unveiling of Mount Shasta not only as a visual delight, but also as a statement on behalf of the mountain as a reminder that it is a force to be reckoned with whether one tries to climb it, deal with the weather it helps to generate, or dare to live in its volcanic shadow.

Not far beyond the “debut” of the mountain when approaching it on I-5 from the south, there is a “vista point” where one can pull off of the Interstate to take pictures or just soak in the view.  Even at 8:10 a.m., the parking spots were almost all full and even truckers were stopping to at least take a quick shot with their cell phone cameras.

It is this kind of view that would make me almost want to stay in California if things were better in the state with the economy and government.  Sadly, Redding and points north are not exactly economic powerhouses even in good times.  On the other hand, Mount Shasta has a lot of brothers and sisters to the north.  As I write this, I sit in the shadow of Mount Hood and within relative shouting distance of Mount Saint Helens.  Sometime in the next few days, I will be up to visit the area dominated by Mount Rainier.  There is also a chance that I might end up back in Denver where Mount Evans dominates the western skyline with all of its own tight family of other peaks.

While I had left this morning thinking that I would end up making today’s K-POD something from one of the new places in which I hope to plant myself for the remainder of my life, perhaps it was more appropriate that my best photo of the day ended up being Mount Shasta and I saying goodbye to one another.  We used to have dreams and plans…to live there in a cabin and spend the warm months on the waters of Shasta Lake in a pontoon boat.  But, alas, as with many potential romances, the timing was never right for us and, now, other circumstances have driven us apart.  Still, I can leave knowing that Mount Shasta’s beauty will remain for thousands if not millions of years to come and that there will be many more loves in its life long after I am gone and forgotten.

Yep…I’m pretty happy with this.  It’s a good ending to a story that was not always so good.

Mount Shasta on July 2, 2010 - Copyright © 2010 by KoHoSo