Charger Day Freeway Blog

The last week has been rough in some ways. My office was closed for the week because of the wildfires ravaging San Diego County. The fires have really affected everyone, and though I was fortunate enough that no members of my immediate family were evacuated or lost their homes, I do know several people who were evacuees. I work for a large company, and I'm sure that when I get back to work on Monday, there will be some bad news regarding co-workers, I know that many people I work with live in Encinitas, or Campo, or Poway.

The time off has given me time to reflect, and to make signs. My good friend Kate the Freeway blogger (see San Diego's Newest Freeway Blogger) and I spent a lot of time this week hanging out, and Friday I brought over a big pile of my signs, and Kate and I combined efforts to complete both mine and the ones she had made (mine are the ones in Jester Font). She has a great system of putting gromets near the corners and edges of the signs, and using zip-ties for attaching them to chainlink fences. This works much better than bungies (though we still use bungies for salvaged signs and to reinforce if there is wind). The signs with gromets are harder to take down without tools, but it still doesn't damage fences.



Sunday seemed perfect for blogging. The Chargers and the city of San Diego evicted the evacuees from Qualcomm Stadium so that the all-important football game could be played on schedule. This happened sort of low-key after most of the TV cameras had left, and I'm sure that Mayor Sanders and the Governator were careful to take credit for the good job that they didn't do with keeping evacuees safe and warm. Our friend Barb suggested that we go out on game-day morning to make sure that all the fans driving to the Q would have the benefit of our hard work.

Sunday morning at 5:15 we met at a parking lot somewhere in San Diego County, and set out. The first sign we set up was a large "Arrest Bush sign on a berm overlooking Highway 8. The previous week we had set up a similar sign, but it either blew over or was taken down by someone. We staked the new one into the ground, and later, after the sun came up, got a couple of good shots of it from across the freeway.




Barb brought some big chalk pieces, and she (and we) had fun with those as well.




After that we headed to one of our favorite pedestrian walkways, and hung another sign. It was still pretty dark so some of the shots came out hard to see, but we came back later and got some good ones.




Throughout the rest of the morning we hit all the best spots, some in old territory and some in new as Barb says (she absolutely knows most of the best blogging spots all through the greater San Diego metropolitan area).






We even did a bit of train-blogging.



One set of signs was still up from two weeks ago, we will keep track of those moving forward - week 3 and counting!



We had some trouble with a few of the signs.

A few signs were torn down (probably by some neo-con football fans), and we came back, repaired the damage, and hung them right back up. The first sign from early in the morning on the berm overlooking Hwy 8 had been staked into the ground. Someone pulled up the stakes, and used one of them to stab into the sign several times. One stake was thrown about 30 feet away, and the sign was tossed down the embankment (does someone need anger management classes?).

We salvaged the sign, and took it across the freeway, and hung it up facing the other way. This picture was taken while I stood at the place the sign originally stood. The holes that were stabbed into the sign actually made it easier to hang.



We had salvaged the sign we put up from 2 weeks ago at the berm that had come down, and this weekend we put it up on the College Avenue overpass, which is right on Hwy 8, on the way to the Stadium from east county. It came down after only a few hours, but with the traffic on game day - easily several tens of thousands of people saw it.




After that we drove around getting a few better pictures of our signs, then Barb dropped Kate & I off by my car. We went to breakfast (coffee and eggs always taste better after a morning of freeway blogging). We talked about the day, and then just had to go back and get (just a few) more pictures of the day's work.




All for now,
Peace,
Dave

P.S. Our friend Jeff missed hooking up with us this morning, but posted this sign by himself. I just got the info, here's the pic:




Now that's really it...
Peace,
D