1. The traffic reports refer to highways as "the 101", "the 304", etc.
2. Lack of exit #s on "the 80".
3. There are bike lanes everywhere - we even saw them on the highways in LA.
4. Many gas stations charge a fee of $0.45 to use a credit card.
5. K precedes radio and TV station call letters
6. An indescribable [East Coast] grittiness is missing - things here are eerily "nice".
7. The DMV is clean, courteous, and quick (what is wrong with these people?!!)
8. Road rage against bike riders is rampant within the city of Davis. This is especially confusing considering Davis holds the self-declared title of "most Biker friendly town"
9. Signing up for a bank account was painfully slow and aggravatingly friendly.
10. The words "Hella" and "Hecka" are used to emphasize something. (That concert was hella/hecka good.) Hecka is often used as a replacement for a swear - used if trying to be polite, in the presence of adults, or if one is extra-religious.
11. The streets are paved with oranges... Yard trash is piled in the street awaiting town cleanup. This "trash" often includes trimmings from orange trees with plenty of oranges attached. Sacrilege!
12. Bikers must follow traffic laws or they will be ticketed by police.
13. Bikers must have the lights on their bicycles on at night or they will be ticketed by police.
14. There are funny looking birds here!
15. People here do not tend to meet or know their neighbors. We wonder if it is because many people hang out in their backyards, not their front yards, or possibly because people have lawn services mowing and caring for their lawns? Our neighbor said today that he had not met, nor known the names of, the previous 3 groups of tenants living in our apartment!
Disclaimer: This list is most certainly incomplete. . . We will addend it as we learn more about our Western compatriots...
Confession: I stole the picture of the magpie off the web.
4 comments:
As an initial comparison between the west and east coasts, I'd say this list is hecka good.
See, I thought exit numbers were weird when I moved to the northeast cos we never had them on "the 5" - which was my 'local' freeway in San Diego.
And yeah, grittiness. It's not really a California thing. Maybe like in Compton or East LA or the Tenderloin district in SF...but even still. You need old mills and factories for grittiness. And if there ever were those things in CA (which is sorta doubtful, at least not as old as in MA or something), they've long since torn them down to build some condos!
Oh and is that a scrub jay in the first photo? In Arizona we saw Mexican jays (similar to scrubs) and at first we were like oooh! oooh! what's that cool-looking bird?! Then it turns out it's...a jay.
yes, they are scrub jays. We have one that loves the suet birdfeeder. We are used to seeing woodpeckers feed from the suet. It's funny because the scrub jay doesn't attempt to perch on the feeder, it does a sort of peck-and-fly routine. It visits the feeder daily and we're pretty sure that it's the only bird that eats it. I find it beautifyl still. . . i still think 00h 00h! Recently there is a tree in the front yard with tons of berries. We have hundreds and hundreds of birds feeding from it - then flying to another tree on the property and going to the bathroom all over the house and walkway. It's dangerous to go outside - we fear the bird doo!
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