2003-11-17 - 8:53 a.m.

A New Governor

In a few hours California will have a new governor. Whatever people have to say about recall, here are two observations of recent events from a Northern Californian's eyes.

First, a new suspension bridge over the Carquinez Straits has been under construction for a few years.

Anyway, the bridge was schedule to be completed in a few weeks, certainly by the end of 2003. The engineers and construction crew have been doing a wonderful job.

When the date for the swearing in of Schwarzenegger was settled, Davis used his powers of Governor to move the completion date to Nov. 8, 2003. Now he didn't care that the bridge wasn't ready for regular traffic. A completion ceremony only requires that a car can drive over the bridge after some dude tells everybody about how hard it was while he worked on the bridge. And of course, when building a bridge construction vehicles will carefully drive across the bridge all the time.

What sucks is that the traffic along 1-80 has been backed up for miles (read hours), because the interstate was temporarily changed so Davis could drive across the damn thing and this the interstate was changed back. The end result is the interstate lanes are all fucked up now, because they�ve been moved back and forth so ONE dude can have his jollies.

Schwarzenegger probably is just as petty. Though his swearing in will begin in a few hours, I've never seen so many police on the streets except for when the President drove by my house as a kid. In Houston, I lived between the Air Force base and NASA. Several different Presidents would drive by my house on their way to and from NASA. It was a sight to see all the motorcycle cops and helicopters.

Today as I was walking to work, there were CHP officers on nearly every street corner. I can understand why they'd do this. The rest of the world is now interested in an event that nobody cared about before. All it takes is one wacko with a gun.

And yet, why isn't this inauguration on a Sunday? Schwarzenegger didn't pick today, somebody else did. So I guess I shouldn't blame him. But whomever picked a Monday didn't think about the people that use the capital on a daily basis to actually run the state.

It isn't that bad though. I am afterall in my office and about to continue work by looking over some stage (water level) data. But it is a media circus just outside my office. I'm sure I'll pause a few more times today to reflect upon that.

-=-

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