A Flight to Winnipeg

The Assiniboine River

Last July, I visited Winnipeg for the 15th North American Science Fiction Convention, flying up on the 19th. I woke up at 4 a.m. PDT that morning to drive up to Millbrae BART, where I dropped off my car and headed to SFO, getting to the airport at about 5:30. It was pretty quiet that early. Security was really fast, and I got to see for the first time SFO’s new baggage screening carousels that at least look a lot cooler than the old ones we’re all used to. This would be my first flight out of the revamped Harvey Milk Terminal 1, and while I think I missed the biggest part of the exhibition outside of security, there were a good amount of Harvey Milk pictures inside the secure area. There was also a cool little SF Opera Centennial exhibit with a bunch of costumes from a century of opera productions.

Boarding started promptly a bit before 7 a.m., and I was soon on the airplane, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 operated by WestJet. Despite getting in the night before, the airplane apparently had a last-minute mechanical issue that needed to be addressed; fortunately this only took about fifteen minutes, which was just long enough for me to start researching backup flights to Winnipeg before the situation was resolved, the gate doors were closed, and the flight proceeded apace. We made up the time en route to Calgary, arriving there a bit after 11 a.m. MDT.

Canadian customs was quick and fairly painless (sadly, Canada did not stamp my passport) and so I had a good three hours to kill at YYC before my connecting flight to Winnipeg left. And, well, it felt that much of YYC is awaiting new tenants. I was flying out of Concourse C which was absolutely packed, so I headed down to the other domestic concourses which were a bit quieter. I did get a bit of fun planespotting in: most notably WestJet’s Mickey Mouse Disney World 737-800, but I also appreciated the Dash 8 turboprops that the Canadian regional airlines still fly. (The U.S. majors phased out turboprops in their regional affiliates some time ago.)

After finally finding some food I wandered over to my gate and ran into a few fans; we chatted until it was boarding time. The 737-800 (in normal WestJet livery) was on a very quick turnaround from YQQ and ended up departing a bit late because there just wasn’t any way to board everybody in time. (And by everybody, I mean every seat—both flights today were full.) There wasn’t a whole lot to look at between takeoff and landing, so I finished the novel I was reading—The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvio Moreno-Garcia—about fifteen minutes before landing. The ride down was a trifle bumpy but nothing to write home about.

Upon deplaning in Winnipeg, I headed for the bus stop outside the airport. Just after I got there it started pouring rain, so I had to duck into the covered bus shelter to grab my hoodie out of my suitcase and don it. The bus started out pretty empty but filled up quickly as we got close to downtown. (Amusingly, it’s the exact same kind of bus that VTA runs.) By 6:30 p.m. CDT it had stopped raining and I was at my hotel, the Holiday Inn & Suites in Downtown Winnipeg. This was actually the overflow hotel for Pemmi-Con because I was lazy about booking my reservation. I didn’t mind, since it served as an excuse to walk around the city more. I got a top-floor room and even a little welcome gift of Perrier and lemonade, which surprised me since I had, uh, “Club Member” status with IHG.

After taking a half hour or so to decompress a bit, I decided I needed to stretch my legs a bit in a luggage-free environment, so I walked down to the Forks Market, which took about another half hour. I passed by the Manitoba Legislative Building, the RBC Convention Center, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on the way. What really struck me is that I also passed by a bunch of low-density commercial and industrial lots, too. For being in, or at least very close to, downtown Winnipeg, it’s really not that built-up and feels surprisingly run-down in sections. I was actually a bit surprised.

I wandered around the Forks Market, which is an old railroad site near the conjunction of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, for a bit before heading back to my hotel, getting dinner, and turning in for the night.

The Canadian Museum of Human Rights

Sunnyvale Planning Commission: Three Consent Items

This was, well, a nine-minute Planning Commission meeting, so not very exciting. There were three consent items which were all approved:

  • The previous meeting’s minutes;
  • Continuing to the 25 March meeting applications related to the Applied Materials project on East Arques Avenue, and
  • A use permit to install three new antennae and raise the height of the existing wireless tower at 1070 Stewart Drive from 59 feet to 70 feet.
Photo simulation of the 1070 Stewart Drive monopole modification

The next meeting should be quite a bit longer given the aforementioned Applied Materials project, which has received attention from as high up as the Vice President of the United States.

View from a Carson Hampton Inn Window

I flew into Long Beach today for the League of California Cities’ Planning Commissioner Academy. I am not staying in Long Beach because, well, the conference hotel sold out their room block. So instead, have a lovely view of East Albertoni Street and the Colony Cove Mobile Estates. You can kind of see Dignity Health Sports Park, home of the LA Galaxy, left of center on the horizon. Off-camera in the foreground: the hotel’s outdoor pool.

Happy Election Day, everybody.

San Emigdio Mountain, Cerro Noroeste & Grouse Mountain

The Southern California heat wave finally broke on Tuesday, 4 July 2023, which naturally was the day I had to head home. Still, I figured I could get a decent amount of peakbagging before leaving SoCal. I decided the best plan was to leave the hotel fairly early and cross Los Angeles before the traffic got bad; I was able to just cruise up I-5 without worrying about any clever traffic avoidance routing and, soon enough, made my way across Tejon Pass. And then I exited.

The plan for the day was to bag three HPS peaks in the San Emigdio Mountains. First up was, well, San Emigdio Mountain (7492′), which is an easy drive-up except the drive entails three miles of dirt road. Not a big deal, but a bit exciting for me as this was the Baby Bronco’s first off-pavement excursion. It, unsurprisingly but satisfyingly, handled the bumps and divots with aplomb. (The most exciting moments of the drive involved the vehicle that had to back up to allow me to pass on ascent and the hikers I startled on descent.) From the parking area, it was a nine-minute walk to the tree-covered high point. The best views were actually from where I parked.

I logged the ascent and drove back down to Apache Saddle, where I crossed Mil Potrero Highway and headed back up the other side of the San Andreas Rift. This time it was all pavement to the top, which in this case is just outside Campo Alto Campground (I parked outside to avoid the $10 day use fee), which is located right at the top of Cerro Noroeste (8280+′). It took all of three minutes to tag the summit.

Fortunately I had an actual hike planned to cap off the day’s peakbagging, and started down the road to the Mt. Pinos Trail’s terminus. It’s signed as 4½ miles to Mt. Pinos, but I wouldn’t be going that far today—I had previously stood atop both Pinos and Sawmill. Grouse Mountain (8582′), however, was the one peak on the ridge that I had yet to surmount.

From the road, the trail dips further to Puerta Del Suelo at 7708′ before steeply climbing again to near the top of Grouse, reaching 8400′ before turning away. (I encountered a pair of hikers who said they got a mile in and turned around due to the steepness.) The cross-country is easy from the trail, particularly with a GPS device such as a cellphone. At the top I encountered a pair of hikers, arriving shortly after I did, who came from Sawmill. We signed into the rodent-nibbled register, chatted for a bit, and took each others’ pictures before I headed back. The ascent took an hour and 32 minutes; the “descent” (which included almost a full reäscent of Cerro) took just nine minutes less.

I got back to the Baby Bronco at 2:24 p.m. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so (like it had been on Saturday and Sunday). Just before I reached my parking spot, a man driving out in a red pickup truck asked me whether I had seen any snakes. He seems surprised that I responded in the negative. I’m not anti-serpent but I can’t say I was unhappy about not being surprised by a rattling tail this trip.

And then it was all over but the drive home. In total I drove 1083.4 miles this trip for a total car time of 23 hours and 41 minutes over five days. At this point, that was a significant proportion of the Baby Bronco’s total mileage. I’m very glad to have had the break from my ordinary life even if things didn’t quite go as well as I’d have liked. It’s not like the mountains are going anywhere….

Sunnyvale Planning Commission: Parking Minimums

No study session tonight, so we started at 7 p.m. and went for about two hours. At the beginning of tonight’s session we heard from a couple of public commenters on the importance of preserving retail in village centers, and then we approved the consent calendar—a couple sets of minutes, and a single-family home design review on a site near the Palo Alto Medical Foundation clinic.

Our first public hearing item was to approve a recommendation that the City Council approve an ordinance to clarify by-right approvals as they relate to subdivision maps. You’ll remember that the by-right ordinances were approved by City Council on January 30. Well, apparently they weren’t quite in line with what HCD was looking for so we have to do another round of ordinances for a small change. I am not happy about this, and I made it pretty clear that I don’t want this kind of communications failure between city staff and HCD to happen again. Hopefully this will finally be resolved when City Council adopts this on March 19th.

Our last public hearing item, the meatiest of the evening, was for a recommendation that the City Council evaluate minimum automobile off-street parking requirements for residential uses. This is just an item for further study—staff advised that, while it’s heavily dependent on departmental workload, we’re likely to get the actual changes to the requirements (assuming Council agrees to proceed) late this year or early next year. The current Sunnyvale parking requirements are high compared to our neighbors and other similar cities around the Bay, and it’s high time we reduced them—to my mind, it’s absurd to require four parking spots in every single-family home when most people just use their required garages for non-automotive activities. (Plus, under state law, Sunnyvale’s parking minimums don’t apply in significant portions of the city anyway.) Staff’s recommendation was to pursue outreach and prepare Municipal Code amendments to reduce single-family parking minimums, introduce unbundled parking in multi-family, simplify requirements for unassigned spaces, and a few other things. I added an amendment to additionally look at following San Jose’s example in removing residential parking requirements altogether and instead requiring Transportation Demand Management plans for larger projects. This goes to City Council on March 19th.

After getting clarification that the Village Center projects called out earlier in the meeting would be entitled to waivers under the state Density Bonus Law, and that staff was working with the applicants to try to preserve as much retail as possible, we adjourned at 8:50 p.m.

Mount Lawlor

My original peakbagging plan for Sunday, 2 July 2023, was to hike a couple of the easier peaks in the northeastern part of the Angeles National Forest, but before going to bed I rechecked the weather forecast and decided that the best way to beat the heat would be to add some elevation. So I set the day’s objectives as Winston Peak (7502′) and Mount Akawie (7283′) and went to sleep.

I woke up early Sunday, got everything ready to go, hopped in the Baby Bronco, and told Google Maps to take me to Cloudburst Summit on the Angeles Crest Highway. Google said it couldn’t find a route. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Google Maps had been confused about the current state of the roads on this trip—the day before, it erroneously reported that Glendora Ridge Road was closed—so I pointed myself at Highway 2 in La Cañada Flintridge and headed up. The drive was smooth right until I got to Red Box Picnic Area, at which point I discovered that the Angeles Crest Highway was still closed between there and Vincent Gulch Road, well past my target of Cloudburst Summit.

Angeles Crest Highway closure.

It was 6:45am. I didn’t want to burn a bunch of morning hours driving somewhere else to hike, so today’s objective was going to have to be something close. I ran through various thoughts in my head (including just driving the five miles to Mount Wilson and hoping there was cellphone reception or Wi-Fi; Wilson itself is a trivial drive-up, but while I suspected as much, I did not know that for sure then) when, wandering at the western edge of the parking area for the Haramokngna American Indian Cultural Center, I got just a bit of reception. The nearest HPS peak was Mount Lawlor (5957′), which I had skimmed over last night but passed on in favor of higher game. I was able to quickly download route information from the HPS site as well as a map. Figuring 6 miles round-trip and 1300′ of gain shouldn’t be too bad, I set out at 7am.

And lo, the Strawberry Trail was really quite pleasant. While there were stretches that were a bit too vegetative for my taste (I’m not really a huge fan of narrow trails with bushes on both sides that are higher than my head) the shaded sections—and that includes the hedge tunnels—were actually pretty temperate. I was feeling good enough to take a quick detour to Point 5166, immediately opposite the firebreak that forms the most direct route up Lawlor (“This ridge is very steep and very loose. A high degree of care is required on this section.”), took some pictures, and then continued on my way. This led to a long stretch of trail that was actually shaded from the sun by Lawlor’s bulk. I felt pretty great hiking up that part, and even when the trail emerged from Lawlor’s shadow I was still quite content at 8:15am when I reached the Strawberry-Lawlor saddle at 5200+′. I allowed myself momentarily to entertain the thought of adding Strawberry Peak to the day’s agenda before dismissing it as a bad idea given the lack of beta I had on Strawberry and my limited water supply.

That brought me to the crux of the hike, which was the steep use trail out of the saddle up onto Lawlor’s ridgeline. The first part was the steepest, but overall this was the most exhausting part of the hike, not helped by being in direct sunlight the entire time. There were quite a few moments when I was grateful for a nearby rock formation to hold, and there were also a fair number of stretches where the trail—though always present—involved close encounters with vegetation, on both sides. (And that also meant spiderwebs.) It took me maybe fifty minutes to navigate the ridge, and by 9:06am I stood on top of Mount Lawlor. Surprisingly, the views from the summit weren’t actually the best of the hike due to the large flattish area on top. And that area is covered in seeding plants that worked very hard to get into my socks, so I didn’t want to wander around too much. I took my pictures, chugged some water, and headed back down.

View west from Mount Lawlor, to Mount Lukens and Josephine Peak

The ridgeline went a lot faster on descent. The steep parts were mercifully not as bad as I thought they were going to be and the vegetable parts were actually quite fun because they were a preventative against falling off the ridge. When I got back to the saddle, I came across a pair of hikers who asked me where the Strawberry Trail led onwards. I gave some guesses but emphasized that I didn’t really have information past Lawlor. I really should have had a paper map of this area.

Unfortunately the Strawberry Trail—while still easy—was much less pleasant now that the shadows had fled. By the time I had reached the final stretch of the trail, past Point 5166, I was just focusing on getting to my air-conditioned vehicle. It was too hot! It only took me an hour and twenty-one minutes to descend, and when I reached the Baby Bronco I stopped my GPS trackers, slung my backpack into the back, loosened my boots, and fired up the AC-powering engine. It was just before 11am, and I had no desire to be out in the heat anymore.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped by a couple used bookstores (which held nothing of interest, although I did make the unpleasant discovery that Montrose was having a vintage car show that was extremely loud) and Atomic Comics in Artesia, which had a bunch of the Dixon-era Robin issues that I was missing.

Later that day an inaccurate list of Hugo finalists (not that the final list we ended up with can really be called accurate, but…) showed up on the Chengdu Worldcon website, and with all of the ensuing drama and the extremely loud nearby fireworks, I didn’t get to bed until significantly later than I had hoped. With the heat wave continuing at roughly the same level for another day, the thought of waking up early and driving an hour inland to try to get in some more hot hiking was vastly unappealing. So on Monday, 3 July, I slept in, relaxed a bit, read the New Yorker profile of Chip Delany that dropped that morning, and headed to the coastline. I spent most of the day cruising around the Pacific Coast Highway and hitting the beach. There would be time for peakbagging on the Fourth of July….

Canada Life Centre

The Sharks resume their season in Winnipeg tonight to play the Jets, so I figured this was a good time to post a photo of the Canada Life Centre, as it’s currently called, that I took when I was up there last year.

One cool thing about Winnipeg is the Winnipeg Skywalk, which lets you perambulate around downtown without having to actually go outside. While the hours of operation could be longer (as I learned to my regret when it was raining), I liked that I actually got to go inside the arena without a ticket or anything. Didn’t take any interior photographs, though—corridors aren’t that exciting.

Sunnyvale Planning Commission: Mostly a Study Session

The main item for consideration at today’s Sunnyvale Planning Commission meeting wasn’t anything up for final action; rather, it was a study session regarding a planned redevelopment of the gas station at 898 East Fremont Avenue, opposite Butcher’s Corner. The applicant wants to add a convenience store and a takeout restaurant, with a bunch of electric vehicle charging spaces.

The actual public hearing portion of tonight’s agenda took all of ten minutes. It wasn’t just minutes, though—we also approved, on consent, a Design Review application for an addition to a single-story home in the Cherry Orchard neighborhood.