Signage

Signage

   It seems to me that California has a problem with its signage. Highway signs mostly. I’m not saying they flat out lie, but they do get confused sometimes.

   Coming across the mountains from Paso Robles out in the middle of nowhere is a huge bridge across this really deep valley. From the midpoint of the bridge t must be two to three hundred to the valley floor below. It’s a dry valley, no river, creek or anything, just dirt. At both ends of the bridge are signs that say “It is illegal to jump from bridge”. Those signs have been there long before the base jumping craze hit so if someone did jump, they’re dead. Question to me is, Why the sign? What are you going to do? Give them a ticket after they jump? That seem kind of like putting an open other end sign on the bottom of a beer bottle. Wait; there have been times when the open sign just might come in handy. Anyway, you see what I mean, it seems to me to be a waste of signs and the labor it takes to put them up.

   Highway 395 through the Owens valley is a small two lane road through mostly desert. There are a lot of places without shoulders or any other place to pull off the road yet when you get close to Bishop there is a ditch on one side of the road. I’ve been up and down that road many, many times over a twenty five year period and I have even seen water in that ditch at least three times. What does that have to do with signs? There’s a sign on both sides of the road that say “No fishing from roadway”. Now Okies are a little weird when it comes to fishing but even a dumb Okie know better than to plop his chair down in the middle of a road and try to fish in a ditch with less than three inches of water in it. But the state put the sign up so I guess they know their citizens better than I do.

   It seems to me that California likes to brag on itself with some of their signs. There’s another one on 395 that says “Elk for the next 15 miles”. When you’re driving a truck sometimes your mind wanders so I figured this one out (yes I had way too much time on my hands). The average Elk is less than two and a half feet wide but if you allowed for three feet, then with them standing side to side fifteen miles of Elk would be 26,400 or 1,760 per mile. Even if you put them end to end and figure the average would be about ten foot that’s still 7,920 or 528 per mile. Now Oregon has a lot bigger Elk population that California does and they only have about 63, 00 in the entire state. Seems like they might want to word that sign a little different.