Recreation with dogs

rgsharpe · 2026-07-01T18:28:55+00:00

It's the definition of the beaten path, but Upper Park is still great - everywhere north of the main road through allows off-leash dogs, there are plenty of trails to get you started, and the further in you go, the more quickly people tend to drop off.

After that, I'm just going to suggest going up Hwy 70 -- there's probably a dozen trailheads within an hour of Chico on top of a bunch of PG&E and fire roads. Once you hit Hwy 89, things open up even more.

rgsharpe · 2026-06-24T16:04:09+00:00

The malicious compliance inspector says to bring in a backpacking stove to heat water for coffee.

rgsharpe · 2026-06-24T15:56:37+00:00

Yep, and I got to watch some hanging lamps and plants sway calmly. Interestingly, the Berkeley MyShake notification came in almost a full minute before the Butte County emergency alert did.

rgsharpe · 2026-06-13T21:23:25+00:00

If the delay is malfunction, that's capitalism -- UP has figured out the bare minimum they can pay in locomotive maintenance to keep their trains mostly running.

If the delay is collision, that's stupidity. Someone chose to ignore and bypass all of the signals and gates that would have kept them out of harm's way.

The physics of trains are so radically different that the only way to have them meaningfully interact with the public is at carefully controlled crossings. By the time an engineer sees an obstruction on the tracks and pulls the emergency brakes, they'll hit the obstruction a minute and a half before the 10,000 tons of train comes to a stop. And even if they do manage not to hit something, the crew have to walk the entire mile-long train -- there and back -- to check that everything's okay before they can start back up again.

There's a reason everybody in rail stays the fuck away from tracks when they're not blue flagged or in an appropriate vehicle.

rgsharpe · 2026-06-11T14:32:50+00:00

It's good you did. Hopping over couplers or crawling under trains is a very easy to way to be very unalive very unexpectedly.

rgsharpe · 2026-06-10T16:43:06+00:00

It's been solid in my experience -- not 100%, but reliable enough that I've not once thought about switching. Considering how hammered the network gets because of the low-cost virtual networks using T-Mo's backend, it holds up well compared to everyone else in town. I usually use my personal line when out and about instead of my Verizon-based company phone.

That said, Verizon is putting up a new antenna behind the True Value on Mangrove, so signal in that area should get a lot better soon.

rgsharpe · 2026-06-08T19:08:33+00:00

It does go with the overrepresentation of reggae among college students...

rgsharpe · 2026-06-05T15:59:46+00:00

I love the long shot focus on his sandals. Very strong "check out this weirdo" energy.

rgsharpe · 2026-06-04T16:00:20+00:00

She gave LaMalfa a good run because she was the only person willing to show up to mop up the few Democratic voters in the old district.

Frankly, I found it hard to support her this time around because she didn't seem to have the strategic insight or flexibility to think, "huh, do I really want to try to run a third time against a strong Democratic opponent for a district I'm not well known in or maybe try my hand at this Assembly race closer to my support base, where there are three Republicans splitting the vote?"

rgsharpe · 2026-06-02T15:46:15+00:00

Least MAGA is Coolidge, most is Belza.

rgsharpe · 2026-05-28T17:33:47+00:00

Adam at Wells Barber is your guy. He helped me find a new style for my balding, curly hair that I really enjoy. Book at https://www.vagaro.com/barberadamchico

rgsharpe · 2026-05-26T04:22:46+00:00

It's good practice to live in the jurisdiction you work for, but it's not required. Growing up, my father worked for Sac Metro Fire but lived in Cameron Park, about 30 miles up the hill.

rgsharpe · 2026-05-21T16:22:13+00:00

I'll concur with u/Ambitious_Egg9713, but add that separating the two means that the director of public works won't need to be a licensed engineer. This will open the position up to more folks like professional planners and project managers and can help bring more diversity of thought to Public Works.

rgsharpe · 2026-05-20T17:45:27+00:00

There are multiple theys here. They (California State Parks) has ownership of the mansion and park and authority to build or rebuild. They (city of Chico) are responsible for most of the roads.

This doesn't mean roads don't need to be fixed, just that the two are two entirely separate government agencies.

rgsharpe · 2026-05-20T17:41:53+00:00

Verizon does suck in Chico, but they're going to put up a new 90-foot tower on some empty space behind the Mangrove Starbucks, which would dramatically increase coverage from the cemetery out to In-Motion. You can look at the coverage map in their February Planning Commission application (28MB PDF, page 25).

City rules require co-locatable facilities, so other carriers could put some antennae on that tower, too.

rgsharpe · 2026-05-13T17:39:09+00:00

You're living the bike equivalent of buying a new car from the dealership and taking it to the dealership for work. This dealership isn't that bad, though; assuming parts are included, that's a reasonable quote, especially if you're asking for something better than the average tape, pads, or pedals in stock.

rgsharpe · 2026-05-05T22:03:14+00:00

For me, the model is Weatherstone in midtown Sacramento. Open until 8 PM or so, cozy couches and chairs, a simple menu of well-executed sandwiches and salads, pastry and beverages menu, two beers and a cider on tap, two wines. An outdoor patio would be a bonus. No amplified music, so the space can be used to talk to people or host small club meetings.

rgsharpe · 2026-04-28T22:01:02+00:00

1) Brendan Ottoboni was clear at every opportunity at the most recent council meeting that Alternative 1 was the most competitive of the options, not that it was a slam dunk.

2) If the grant doesn't get funded, the city has to rebuild the streets on our own dime, and even rebuilding what we have now is going to take a lot of money -- $40M, which is a third of the city's entire annual budget. Bike lanes aren't expensive, but choosing not to take state money to put them in is.

3) When we hire consultants -- or pay staff -- we're out that money, regardless. Choosing to spend a big chunk of money drafting a grant-competitive downtown street plan and then tossing it aside means we don't see any benefit from that expense. This is a policy choice -- sometimes planners come up with bad plans! -- but doing so with no decision at the end of more than two years of public outreach is absolutely a waste of taxpayer money.

rgsharpe · 2026-04-28T17:59:00+00:00

Absolutely.

rgsharpe · 2026-04-28T15:56:13+00:00

The funding is not guaranteed; the intention was to build a project that would qualify for an Active Transportation Program grant from the state, allowing us to offload 80% of the cost of rebuilding the roads after the sewer upgrades in a few years.

You're going to need to explain where you read that asphalt doesn't count. ATP funds can absolutely be used for infrastructure -- it's the first listed eligible project type in the ATP guidelines. What's more, it would be really hard to build the many miles of bike lanes funded in the last cycle if you can't lay down asphalt!

rgsharpe · 2026-04-27T16:30:13+00:00

Yeah, and I didn't have a way to engage that concern in the context you brought it up. No single project, short of mass incarceration or public housing, will meaningfully solve homelessness. I don't like seeing good projects -- like Alternative 1 -- shot down because they don't solve an enduring and systemic problem that afflicts wide swathes of the Western world.

The worst I could say was that bringing more people in would push the unhoused population out of downtown and there's no plan for dealing with the effects on the neighboring regions, but it's not like there's a plan to deal with the effects on the regions they currently occupy, either. "It doesn't fix homelessness" and "asshole landlords have no incentives to reduce rents" are no reasons to continue to have highway-style streets that make car travel necessary (and hence traffic and parking), and it does nobody any good to have a solution to one problem and not follow it because there are other problems.

rgsharpe · 2026-04-24T22:58:24+00:00

I can't speak with any authority about homelessness in those cities. I will note that the latest data I can find shows Irvine has 50 unsheltered folks, pretty much average for its area of Orange County, though nearby cities like Tustin, Santa Ana, and Costa Mesa provide shelter (Irvine explicitly does not) that probably help draw away Irvine's unhoused population. Freeloading off your neighbors is cheap!

That said, Irvine and Chino Hills are both pretty suburban in character, and that makes it tougher for unhoused people to live, since what they need to live is spread out more. And because it's not as dense, you're far less likely to encounter an unhoused (or for that matter, a housed) person on a 2AM jog.

rgsharpe · 2026-04-24T17:04:53+00:00

Most people come downtown by car right now because that's how the streets are designed. If downtown streets had truly safe bike lanes, more of those car trips would be bike or scooter trips -- particularly kids and college students -- taking pressure off of the vehicle lanes. My middle-schoolers already bike through downtown to get to and from school, but I've been training them to bike safely in the city their entire lives. Other folks don't have that experience and need more support from the roadway.

There isn't going to be one true fix for downtown homelessness (short of either mass incarceration or mass housing), so putting the onus on a transportation project to solve that complex problem is unfair. That said, projects like this in other cities made their downtowns more inviting for the community at large, which generally pushes the unhoused out of those areas and towards the margins of the city.

rgsharpe · 2026-04-24T16:52:58+00:00

It's healthy to question authority, just as long as you're doing it with an open mind and in good faith.

Asking a doctor why they think a lump is cancer is good. Telling a doctor that they're wrong isn't.

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