Guest Posting: What The Construction of Jamul Casino Could Mean to Local Cycling

I average around 200 miles per week on my bicycle, riding in and out of the city of San Diego. Many of those miles are spent on Otay Lakes Rd, Honey Springs Rd, Lyons Valley Rd and bits of SR 94 in Jamul because they are often the shortest and least hilly way for me to take to go visit Black Jack the perpetually hungry donkey, the adorable Beacon Hill llamas, all sorts of cool mountain birds and flowers and a particularly adventurous and friendly pack of house dogs along Mother Grundy TT. 

The mostly shoulderless Otay Lakes Rd at lower lake.

These roads are mostly sleepy (the busiest of them all, SR 94, is still pretty sleepy compared to anything closer to the coast), but they are all quite unforgiving when anything happens. The more traffic on them, the more chance of things happening, however, and since there aren't many (and in some parts of Jamul, 'any') alternative routes to get to and through the area, when something like a crash or a fire or a stuck giant super semi-truck happens, it really causes problem both for the local residents who are just trying to get home from work (or work from home) and for passing-through traffic like me. 

SR94 east of Jamul Butte.

With the current (and apparently not-very-legal) construction of a casino off SR94 in Jamul that would increase traffic through it and the nearby feeder roads, I have been eying this project with alarm. So many previously cycling-friendly rural roads have been rendered nearly unridable post-construction of a casino (Pala Rd into Pala Mission, Valley Center Rd between N Lake Wohlford Rd and Hwy 76, Wildcat Canyon/Borona Rd, Dehesa Rd in Sycuan area). I wondered what can cyclists like me do about such a project... and so I decided to ask Kim Hamilton, a Deerhorn Valley resident and the editor of the Antlers, the area's newsletter, for a guest blog post on the subject. Here is her response:

  ......................................................................................................  

JOIN WITH JAMUL & SAVE HWY 94 AND OTAY LAKES ROAD

A Chance For Cyclists And Drivers To Work Together

(...What A Concept!)

 

If you have ridden Otay Lakes Road or Rural 94 (Campo Rd) during the last couple of weeks, no doubt you have encountered large numbers of heavy-duty trucks plying the narrow roads. Double yellow lines are no deterrent to wide swings on tight (even blind) curves. In straight sections they push the 55 mph limit in a rush to dump off their tons of rock, dirt, and debris. And we’ve been told to expect this for the next 18 months.

Map of affected area.

The trucks are hauling excavated material from the Jamul Indian Reservation on Hwy 94 and Melody Rd (the Jamul terminus of Proctor Valley Rd). The tribe and their backers have launched a desperate attempt to construct a mega-sized Jamul Hollywood Casino on a tiny 4-acre parcel of disputed land. 

The problems for this big-city construction on this rural site are huge. Most serious for cyclists and drivers are the impacts on two-lane highway 94 (Campo Road) and rural feeder routes like Otay Lakes Rd. 

In a stark turnaround from normal protocol, Caltrans required no road safety improvements before it granted access to Hwy 94 for hundreds of daily trucks along two of the most popular and heavily used cycling routes in South and East County—part of the Great Western Loop that the Campagnolo Gran Fondo, the Olympic Training Center, and hundreds of cyclists use regularly.

One of the casino construction trucks was recently photographed having difficulties staying on the right side of the road on SR94 near Steele Canyon Rd. (Photo: James McElree)

Some history: Over the past two decades, four big-money corporations* bankrolled efforts to build a Jamul casino — to no avail. Tribal members collect monthly payments, but the legal, environmental, and safety issues are huge. The first three backers withdrew, losing millions in the process. The tribe itself is now more than $60 million in debt. A year ago Penn National Gaming came in with some (conditional) financing—and an in-your-face attitude. This is Penn’s first experience in California and they hope the Jamul’s proximity to San Diego might boost depreciating stock prices. So far Caltrans has made sure it hasn’t cost them much: a couple of flaggers and some caution signs. They approved the tribe’s Traffic Management Plan that included not one reference to cycling or cyclists. [*Lakes Entertainment, Station Casinos, Harrah’s Casinos, and Penn National Gaming]

So here lies an opportunity for drivers and cyclists to find some common ground—a chance to prove cyclists and rural drivers can co-exist and share the rural byways. The payoff could be in preserving access and improving safety for us all, and bolstering understanding that roads are for everyone. After all, they are shared public assets.

This Hollywood-themed Casino is no done-deal by a long stretch. San Diego County is suing Caltrans over their approval to allow hauling trucks such unrestricted access to Hwy 94, Otay Lakes Rd, and other feeders. The Jamul Action Committee (JAC) is filing a separate suit, and expects support from the Rural Fire District—with its concerns about increased crashes and a slowed response time to wildfire and medical emergencies. In fact the land itself, JAC argues, was never taken into “trust”— a vital pre-requisite for gambling, and upheld by recent Supreme and lower court decisions. That suit is due to be heard in federal court beginning March 28^th.

I encourage the cycling community to stay informed and lend their voice and actions to this fight.  Rural roads are already the most dangerous in California, and Hwy 94 stands at the top of the list for fatalities and crashes. As the lawsuits wind their ways through the court system, it will take some organized action to keep the public informed. A mega project like this has no business being built without the space and infrastructure to keep roads safe. Period.

Here’s how the cycling community can help:

1) Register for email updates at: http://jacjamul.com. They won’t share your info with anyone else. 

2) Contact your county and state reps and share a cyclist’s perspective about Hwy 94 and Otay Lakes Roads would be impacted by casino traffic.

3) Consider joining together with rural drivers, pedestrians, and others to demonstrate the implications of thousands of trucks, cars, and buses added to Hwy 94.

4) Check out JAC’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/JamuliansAgainstTheCasinoJac

 

This needs to be a shared fight with a positive outcome for all travelers, riders, and drivers.

 

Thank you for this opportunity to reach out.

December 2010

A weekend that was. Did some household chores,

walked a few pounds off the dog, 

and finding good chuckling instigators on Youtube...

Loud in its own way, ay?

Off the Main Road: An Oasis by Discovery Park

I'm a country bumpkin and living in concrete forest cities sometimes depresses me. Oddly enough, the best cure for that is often to go out and walk a skewed hike. How is a hike skewed? By looking where you wouldn't normally look, of course.

This is a little creek hiding in plain sight near Discovery Park in Rancho del Rey area of Chula Vista. I've been by there several times without ever giving the little out-of-the-way grove of palm trees a second thought (ok, I confess I was interested once but was discouraged by the graffiti on the retaining wall up the hill from it... It looks like a druggie's hangout).

Yesterday, however, I was walking back from the store nearby when I spotted a lone hawk being harassed by a pack of three huge crows. It was a weird sight! The hawk went crashing into the eucalyptus grove on the hillside and just sat on a limb, ducking its head as the crows kept diving in to buzz him. I sneaked around and had a look at Mr. Hawk from below just before he flew off again. The last I saw of him he came circling back to the eucalyptus with something furry and yellowish in his beak, deftly maneuvering between the branches as the three crows tried to get at his lunch.

Looking back down on the ground level, though, I was surrounded by little birds! They were hard to photographed with my low-tech low-zoom camera, though, hopping from one bush to another as if cheering for the crows to drive that big fat flying predator away. There were a bunch of red-headed house finches up in the palm trees eating palm fruits. And the bushes were quaking with hopping golden crowned kinglets.

A golden crowned kinglet

And behind the bushes, of course, was this clear watered oasis...

 

If you were paying good attention you might have spotted the one icky thing in the creek.... An overturned shopping cart from the mall nearby. Thankfully there was just one of those and it was sort of tucked into a corner. The whole creek is only about 20 yds long, starting from a pipe outlet on the east end and disappearing underground behind a lone palm on the west end. On the whole, it really isn't much. But as a contrast to its citified surroundings.... it's a welcoming peaceful oasis!

A Gray Trek Along Otay Valley Regional Park

A few miles to the south of where I live is an old river channel called Otay Valley. It used to be a legitimate river; funneling the water down from San Miguel and Jamul Mountains to the San Diego Bay and supporting the bustling grain farming community of Otay Mesa. That was until a dude named Babcott decided to dam(n) the Otay Lakes in 1891. A catastrophe if there was ever one. The dam broke the following January and wiped out the town and its surrounding farms, not to mention the lost of many native plants and animal species that used to live in the river valley.

Nowadays the river bed is mostly dry except for a few ponds that used to be mine pits. It is a protected area now, a joint nature-oriented project by the County of San Diego and the cities of San Diego and Chula Vista. I asked around about it, but none of my native San Diegan friends had visited... They all thought the place dangerous and 'full of illegal immigrants'. I don't know why since many of these friends have no qualms about going hiking down Tijuana River Estuary and Slough considering that Tijuana Slough is right up against the Mexican border while Otay Valley is a few miles further north and well into the United States.

Being a proud survivor (and lover) of the U. City Loop AKA Delmar Loop in St. Louis (my aunt kept warning me off against getting an apartment there while attending St. Louis University because it was a 'bad' area of town. Well, it had gotten much better since she last visited and I loved the place and its eclectic residents and restaurants), I tend not to take second-hand warnings seriously especially when they come from folks who hadn't seen the place first hand. So I printed out this 'trail map' from Otay Valley Regional Park's website last Thursday and caught bus 929 south to have a look.

The nearest bus stop to OVRP is at Beyer Way and Palm Avenue. My main attraction was to be Finney Overlook, somewhere off to the east. It was a very gray and overcast day, though, so I decided to head west first and make for the 'Ranger Station' before doubling back to Finney and hopefully the sky would have cleared enough for a good panoramic view then.

The OVRP website says that there is also a staging area with parking on the Beyer Way trail head. Well, I didn't see one. The trails are quite wide and well maintained, but are also quite devoid of direction posts. It didn't help that there are branches that don't appear on the trail map... And so I got to see the park a bit more thoroughly than I intended, pocketing 2 dead ends (one a fade into nothingness and the other, a rather dangerous cliff-y drop off), and never managed to find Finney Overlook before my turn-around time (I have a life, after all, and can't keep on walking the thing forever!).

Other would be hikers would be glad to know that the staging station with parking lot and working restrooms at Beyer Boulevard does exist, though there were no ranger there to give any guidance when I dropped in. There was an information post, though, with identical information to what you would find online at the OVRP website. I ran into exactly 2 people on the trail. One was cycling away on his mountain bike and the other was walking 2 very cute dogs... No illegal immigrant lurking about as far as I can tell, but there was a family of hawk on a tall tree by Heart Pond about 100 meters west of Beyer Way that took off as soon as I got my camera out (hawks! I swear these guys are the paparazzi's worst nightmares. They can smell a camera from a mile away!).

 They were very clever, mind you. The small and nearest hawk flew right off and did a bunch of tantalizing circles above a hill off to the east, drawing my camera with him so that I didn't spot the really huge hawk (the daddy hawk?) who went off in the opposite direction a second or two later. I turned to try to photograph the daddy hawk, and two more smaller hawks went off in yet another direction, leaving me spinning in place like an ill-coordinated top without catching any of the hawks in action with my slow-acting camera.

Come to think of it... The first and small hawk might actually have been a kestrel. Have a look at him. He's the first two shots in the panel above. The 'daddy hawk' in the third photo, though, is definitely a red tailed hawk.

They picked a good spot to hang out. Heart Pond is quite well reeded. There are only a couple of spots on the trail running the south side of it where you can get to the pond.

Le May Pond further to the east beyond Beyer Way is easier to get to. I intended to take the high trail out east to Finney Overlook and then come back on the pondside trail, but that was when I went dead-ended twice... And I'm actually not bad at trail-reading! They've got more trails than what appeared on the map, and none of them come equipped with sign post!

For what it's worth, the high trail that turned out to be a maintenance road that end at a cliff does afford some good views of the valley... It just so happened that the haze that was hovering over the ground never cleared that day. So the best shot I came up with is the one above.

I did drop by Le May Pond on the way back, though. Really nice and peaceful place with nobody else in sight (though the valley is a narrow one, so you can always see rows of housing at the northern and southern edge of it)... I sat there a while when this favorite bit of I Capuleti e i Montecchi popped into my head and refused to leave.

And here it is... And it has to be Kasarova as Romeo, too. With the voice comes the mood...

Ordinary Magic: Le Spectre d'une fleur morte

We've got ants. Well, I suspect they have always been with us. Though in the last month or so they've been with us a lot more than we welcome them to. Luckily, though, booming ant population also means plenty of food for formerly starving ant-eating creatures... like spiders.

 So, aside from having to make sure that there are no food scrapes left around for ants to find (or to compel them to redouble their ongoing invasion efforts of the cupboard and kitchen area), we are also regularly walking into spider webs of varying degrees of invisibility. There are some good sides to that, of course. 


How else can dead flower still be dancing in the wind, detached from its old branch, long after its natural demise?


The increase in the number of spiders and other ant-eating bugs also means the increase in the number of the birds that eat those bugs. I've seen more exotic birds in the wild in the last few weeks than I have in a long time. This American kestrel has been hanging out on the next door neighbor's roof almost every morning. 

He is a rather cool bloke (blue wings mark him as a male. Female kestrels have reddish rufus color wings). I think I also ran into him walking home a couple of weeks ago. He came gliding out of the park nearby and landed on the top of a lamppost and just perched there to people watch. I am endlessly aggrieved that my camera doesn't zoom well enough to have captured a good clean shot of him yet. One of these days!!!

LOST & FOUND: People & Pets (Aug2010)

A friend and I have taken to taking photos of 'lost & found' posters we run into on the streets of San Diego, California. The last couple of weeks yielded these. If you live or work or are visiting coastal San Diego area, keep your eyes out for them, would you?

MISSING PERSON:

Kasandra 'Kassy' Reyes: 16 years old. 5'7" (about 170 cm) tall, 135 lbs (about 61 kg). Black hair, brown eyes. Last seen in Eastlake area of Chula Vista on August 24th, 2010 with Jacob 'Jake' Gallardo (also pictured on poster). If spotted please call Chula Vista Police at (619) 691-5151. 

MISSING PETS:

1. Abby the female poodle in Rancho del Rey area of Chula Vista is still lost (since July 2nd, 2010). If found please call (619) 755-7771 or (619) 495-8284

2. Coco the long tailed white cat with small spots of black hairs on his head is missing in Rancho del Rey area of Chula Vista. If found please call (619) 307-1571

3. A nameless reddish brown puppy is missing in Heritage area of Chula Vista. If found please call (619) 271-8395 or (619) 781-3920.

4. Kenzie the brown Chihuahua mix is missing in University Height area (the corner of Monroe and Hamilton) of San Diego since August 21st, 2010. If found please call (858) 405-6747.

FOUND PET:

 1. A brown and white dog was found in Rancho del Rey area of Chula Vista. If you are looking for a dog resembling the one photographed on the poster, call (619) 869-7741.

Local discovery: a tree house in Chula Vista

You know how you can walk past something special almost everyday for months and never stop to notice it? I just had another episode of that a week or so ago. Indi, the roommate's Rottweiler look-alike (she has recently been DNA tested and turns up the penultimate mutt... an even mix of four different non-Rottweiler breeds. I'm not quite buying it considering that I can see no characteristic of a chow chow, but plenty of tendency to excessively salivate when exercising or when thinking foody thoughts), go out for a walk on most evening just before sunset. And we often pass through this park up the road... and sometimes we would veer off into the little trail into the brushes toward another housing community. Though... we usually only walk the trail in only one direction. This time we ran into a bunch of mountain bikers and decided to head back out, which was how I suddenly noticed something not particularly natural about this quiet little tree tugged to the north side of the trail head. 

I'm sure I've seen many types of tree branches, but not ones like these. So naturally I headed up to investigate and got to see the surrounding area from an unfamiliar viewpoint.






It isn't a full scale tree house per se, but a great little hide away place to sit on and watch over the park nearby... I'm not stating its exactly location, of course, lest some over-zealous city official finds out and try to have it torn down.


The next time you go out walking around the neighborhood, though, be sure to look around. You never know what fun places may be hiding in plain sight!

Clouds are the celestial spice

Southern California and its Mediterranean climate isn't all that hospitable to clouds, especially during the dry summer months. So, I indulged myself a bit while out walking around last week and enjoying its unseasonably cloudy cool sky.





Laid on the cushy green grass in a park and trying to sort out what sort of atmospheric conditions were happening up high to facilitate different types of clouds and even that hypnotic looking spectral ball on the western sky, an unexpected piece of music popped up in my head. It was unexpected because I hadn't heard it since over a year ago... the last time I popped the excellent CD set of Offenbach's Orphee aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) from the Opera de Lyon with Marc Minkowski conducting into my stereo. What you hear in this clip is a bit of the overture...


Addictively psychedelic, isn't it?