On the Road « Matthew A. Gilbert, MBA Presents "Doctorious: My Adventures in Education"

Archive for the ‘On the Road’ Category

Wild Winter Storms: Missed ‘Em By “That” Much! (Plus Photos from the Road)

December 18, 2008

Adverse weather is not something we experience very much of here in Southern California.

Usually, whenever there is the slightest hint of moisture in the air our cadre of well coiffed weathermen, meteorologists (I forgot they have advanced training in meteors), start proclaiming armageddon and calling it the “Storm of the Century.”

However, the past few days have actually brought some wild winter storms to the area (see KTLA, KNBC, KCBS, The Signal and Los Angeles Times).

Weather has been a mess elsewhere too — across the country temperatures have plummeted as we seem to be deluged by some kind of nuclear winter (fortunately, without the nuclear part, but the result seems similar). Even Las Vegas is dealing with its biggest snowfall in 30 years!

The California Highway Patrol (CHP) has now closed the “grapevine” portion of Interstate 5 (Castaic through Lebec) and also, quite surprisingly, the Antelope Valley Freeway (14) from Soledad Canyon in Santa Clarita through 10th Street in Palmdale. Several other major freeways have been shut down as well.

It’s been a wild few days.

Fortunately, I quite literally just missed getting stuck in this storm. I was teaching at DeVry in Bakersfield on Tuesday, December 16. In the afternoon, when I drove to campus, there was a light dusting of snow atop some of the higher points in the Grapevine. However, there was no immediate danger or impediment to my progress.

Here are some photos I took that afternoon with my Palm Centro and sent them to my Twitter account using a service called TwitPic. (Note: My orginal desire was to embed the images from my TwitPic account into this page and avoid duplicating them. Unfortunately, that only worked for a short time before the image seemed to expire — so I’ve gone ahead and uploaded the photos to WordPress):

Snow on the Grapevine (Interstate 5) @ Pyramid Lake: December 16, 2008

Snow on the Grapevine (Interstate 5) @ Lebec: December 16, 2008

Snow on the Grapevine (Interstate 5) @ Gorman: December 16, 2008

Later that night, after finishing my classes I headed home. As I approached Lebec at roughly 11:30 p.m., the steady rain that began 30 minutes earlier in Bakersfield transformed into sleet. By the time I reached the Tejon Pass (elevation: 4,144 feet), I was driving into a steady flow of snow.

It got fairly dense at one point, and I became slightly concerned as I was driving my Scion xB and had no chains. Mercifully, the snow began to dissipate once I made it through Gorman. I continued onward and made it home without any problems.

Photos from that adventure follow (taken, as before, with my Palm Centro):

Snow on the Grapevine (Interstate 5) @ Tejon Pass: December 16, 2008

Snow on the Grapevine (Interstate 5) @ Gorman: December 16, 2008

Hopefully my luck will continue the next time a big storm blows into Southern California! Either way I will be sure to post some pictures and/or video from the experience. Stay warm!

Posted in Career, On the Road | Tagged adjunct professor, Antelope Valley, Bakersfield, California, California Highway Patrol, Castaic, CHP, DeVry, driving, freeway flier, Gorman, Grapevine, Highway 14, ice, Interstate 5, Lebec, matthew gilbert, Palm Centro, Palmdale, photos from the road, roads scholar, santa clarita, Scion xB, snow, storm, winter | 2 Comments »

New Content Notice: Webcams & Weather

December 16, 2008

As an adjunct professor, a great deal of my time is spent on the road. In fact, two of the more common nicknames for adjuncts are “freeway flyer” and, my personal favorite, “roads scholar.” One of the biggest challenges I face in my travels is weather and traffic.

Although this is the case with most people who commute, for some of my drives, especially Santa Clarita to Bakersfield and back, I have to negotiate the arduous and unpredictable “grapevine” portion of Interstate 5. Earlier this year I drove through the grapevine in the morning en route to Bakersfield during a light snow that eventually grew into a snowstorm that shut down the freeway for two days.

To facilitate my commutes and to help others driving similar routes, I collected links to webcams, weather reports and road conditions for the areas through which I most frequently drive. I then compiled this information and added a new page to this blog titled “Webcams & Weather.”

All of the links on the page are organized by the freeways, highways and interstates on which I drive to the schools where I teach (all are in the Southern California area and parts of the San Joaquin Valley). I have also identified the city in which the webcam is located and provided a link to a current weather report for it (in parenthesis).

Where available I also provided links to road conditions for a specific area (you can also visit the California Department of Transportation website and search for conditions ona route of your choice). If the webcams below don’t provide information about an area in which you are traveling, you might want to take a look at one of the numerous webcams throughout California operated by Caltrans.

I will add more links as I discover them. Please contact me at doctorious [at] generative [dot] com if you have any suggestions or notice a cam is no longer working. In the meantime, have a look at the “Webcams & Weather“ page.

Posted in Career, Education, On the Road, Resources | Tagged adjunct professor, Bakersfield, CA, Caltrans, commute, Doctorious, driving, Freeway, freeway flyer, Grapevine, Highway, Interstate 5, Lebec, matthew gilbert, road trip, roads scholar, San Joaquin Valley, santa clarita, snowstorms, Southern California, storms, traffic, weather, webcam, winter | Leave a Comment »

Junk in Your Trunk: Car Engine in a Honda Civic Trunk on Highway 99 North Near Bakersfield, CA

November 6, 2008

Frequently being on the road driving to and from the classes I teach gives me the opportunity to occasionally see some fairly odd things. Most often I observe people with strange items in their trunks, on their cars or otherwise in-tow. I’ve learned to never underestimate the creativity (or, in some cases, stupidity) of people when it comes to their cars!

I decided to start documenting as many of these “moments” as possible and aptly (and, I hope, humorously) title them under the heading of “Junk in Your Trunk.” I will randomly post images as I take them or discover images I took earlier that seem to fit the bill. I am also willing to post photos anyone else takes and sends my way — so feel free to “shoot and send!”

The photo below was taken on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 while I was driving north on highway 99 en route to Bakersfield (where I was teaching at DeVry University later that afternoon). It is a bit hard to see, but there is a car engine in the trunk of the silver Honda Civic in the foreground! I am unsure why there is a car engine in the trunk, though I was certain it was not the engine powering the car, but there it is!

Note: Unfortunately, the camera in my Palm Centro is adequate, but not always ideal. However, you can click on the photo to see a larger, and slightly clearer, version of the photo.