If you drive around the city of Gilroy, you get the idea the folks here are very proud of their town. It is the garlic capital of the world, and I’m sure if I looked for it, I could find some of that famous garlic ice cream. Today there seems to be an undercurrent of dissatisfaction. Like many other...

Tuesday was a jelly bean day. Specifically, I took a tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. This is the jelly bean brand of President Reagan. It must be the one. There are portraits of him in photographs and in jelly bean mosaics. All over. At the entrance and on the walls of the factory. I can’t...

A couple of the pictures show some hills that look like the west end of Oahu. You need to remember that this whole little mountain range sits in the middle of the northern end of the Central Valley. Some call it the Yuba City Buttes, but I think the official name is Sutter Buttes. It is absolutely stunning....

Short trip to Sacramento and a visit to the California Railroad Museum and Old Town Sacramento. I didn’t know the original streets were raised due to river flooding in the 1870s. I’m still not convinced the fill wasn’t just so much BS running downhill to the waterfront from the Capitol building. The...

Well it looks like El Niño started the music and has started to dance a little. Isn’t it great that the weather guessers got it wrong for yesterday and today? How about the cooler temps? My GPS tells me I’m sitting about 34 feet above sea level. A little over half a mile away is the levee for the...

El Niño, we hardly knew ye. You came in as the strongest and biggest bad guy promising untold riches and help, but you really haven’t done much of anything. In fact you’ve not done much more than the folks we send to Sacramento to work on our other problems. The one good thing about you is –...

The incomplete and growing list of reasons to have a high-speed rail system in California, in no particular order of importance: 1. “Europe and Asia have them, and we should, too.” Remember when we tried to use that reasoning to go to a rock concert our folks had already said we couldn’t attend? 2....

Up here in Yuba City, I decided to have lunch at a Sonic Drive-In. I’d forgotten just how those many years I lived in Virginia and Kentucky had affected me. When asked if I wanted “sweet or un-sweet” tea, I almost couldn’t believe my ears. I nearly checked my GPS to make sure I was north of the...

Watched a biplane crop duster this morning. Nearby orchards were being sprayed. The pilot had to fly the plane under some high-voltage electric lines. You know – those lines with the big steel towers. It was a great show. As the sunrise awakened the upper Central Valley, a low fog hugged the ground...

Cue music: “On the Road Again.” Or is it another song, “The Long and Winding Road?” Whatever the song, the journey has started at last. So it was from Acton to Bakersfield and now in a little town called Nicolaus. I’m just about 35 minutes north of Sacramento on Highway 99. I’ve been following...