Several of my fellow bike commuters are talking about the “heavy” rain that’s been in the Bay Area. I heard one guy talk about the “sheets” of rain falling from the sky the other week.

For those outside of California, I’ll describe the typical California rain storm. Take a spray bottle — the kind you use to mist your plants. Hold it about six inches from your face and spray yourself until the bottle is empty. That’s a heavy rainstorm in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m not joking. It’s not even a drizzle like you guys up in Seattle get. Occasionally we’ll even have a mild zephyr to accompany the storm.

A heavy rainstorm in just about any other location is hauling a 30 gallon trashcan up to a second floor balcony and filling with water. Optionally add an 8 pound bag of ice (for the hail), small twigs, frogs, puppies, scrap lumber, etc. Stand under the balcony as several of your friends lift the can up and over so the contents of the trashcan fall directly on you and your bike, with the trashcan tumbling immediately afterwards into you. That’s a spring storm anywhere in the U.S. Midwest and South. Of course it’s not really a storm unless 80 mph winds knock down utility poles.

This is kind of a sidebar for my article about bicycle fenders at Commute By Bike.

I recently received a letter from Caltrans in response to questions that I sent them on October 28 about bicycle detection. I am concerned that although they say they will be installing bicycle detection at new and modified traffic actuated signals, their only options are Type D loops and video detection. They totally ignore my October 16 presentation to their Electrical Systems Branch on detecting bicycles with loops that, among other things, recommended larger loops and the use of bicycle detector symbols. Furthermore, they plan on doing no more development work on in-pavement detection (loops) and to concentrate on video detection. That means that any progress on improving bicycle detection at existing signals with inductive loops is years, if not decades in the future. Finally, they are concentrating on detection methods that differentiate between motor vehicles and bicycles rather than on detecting bicycles in the first place. They are not taking first things first.

The letter says that they will be adding a Discussion Item to the January 2008 CTCDC meeting agenda. I think that we should have some representation at that meeting to try to change Caltrans’ direction and to get them to do some development work on inductive loops. I will be contacting the secretary of the CTCDC about giving a short version of the presentation that I made to the Electrical Systems Branch, focusing on my recommendations to Caltrans.

Comments?

Bob Shanteau
Consulting Traffic Engineer

Robert M Shanteau, PhD, PE
13 Primrose Cir
Seaside, CA 93955-4133
Voice: (831) 394-9420
FAX: (831) 394-6045

World War 2 poster.

More fascinating WW2 propoganda posters can be viewed at New Hampshire State Library.

I don’t normally do restaurant reviews here but I just ate a place so extraordinarily bad I feel compelled to warn you all.

Ariake Sushi on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, California is that place. After my family and I sat down the table stank like a stale, sour, dirty dishtowel was used to wipe it down. When I picked up the top soy sauce dish from the stack of dishes, the dishes were all stuck together!

We moved to another, cleaner table. We ordered a couple of sushi combos, a fried fish dish, and udon. I went in the bathroom to clean up and the restroom reeked — it was nasty gross gas station restroom bad, stinking heavily of old stale urine that’s been laying in puddles for days. I also passed by the kitchen and saw what looked like gray water on the kitchen floor — gross.

That pretty much killed my appetite, and then the sushi arrived. Imagine a tray of sushi you buy from Safeway for the office Christmas party. You bring the leftovers home and leave them in the fridge uncovered overnight, and that’s the stale, rubbery tasteless fish that the waiter brought to our table. Even the rice balls were tasteless, the wasabi was dry and crumbly, and the soy sauce tasted watered down. The miso soup tasted almost sour, like it was leftover and left out from the previous day. The udon soup was from a cheap bottle of instant soup sauce.

Restaurant review for Ariake Sushi, 759 El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA 94087. If my family all dies of food poisoning overnight, you all know the reason. Now excuse me as I go barf.