10/24-10/26 - Cal Versus Oregon and a South Bay Tractor Pull

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It has been a while since my last post for a number of reasons.

1. Life got a little busy to keep this blog current.
2. I was mightily de-motivated by someone I know.

However, I have been taking pictures along the way since that doesn't take very much time compared to blog posts. I am also motivated again to keep this going because:

1. Levi's Stadium did a pretty good job all in all during the football season of keeping litter at bay.
2. Levi's Stadium has gotten a little messy during some off-season events.
3. The creek and the bay to which it connects has lots of really neat wildlife to see.

Without further ado, this is the weekend of the Cal Vs. Oregon football game. This post is a bit long, because I haven't learned the brain photo filter technique, yet. The subsequent posts will also likely be as long. I suppose it is a photo-blog after all.

Here is the stadium before the game.

As you can see, the creek isn't spotless here, so that will have to be accounted for after the game.

More litter, but lets take a closer look at it:

This isn't Levi's litter, this is Great America's Halloween Show litter. It's disappointing that Great America, whose entrance is much further away from the creek than the stadium's entrances, still trek's trash to the creek. Now we have to wonder how many amusement park attendees are to blame for creek litter.

Here's Cal's big rig pulling into the back of the stadium an hour before kick-off.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but the stadium is fully equipped with garbage cans - note the three flavors: Landfill, Recycle, and Compost. That's 50% more flavors of garbage than most places these days, which on the scale of the stadium means quite a bit more people-power to maintain.

Here the fans are trickling in. Surprising (me) or not (probably everyone else), there were a lot more Duck's fans than Bears fans even though Berkeley is an hour away and Oregon is a bit further.

Here's the parking lot that evening, perhaps a little dramatized with a polarizer and HDR (at least it's a single exposure).

The stadium:

The stadium the next day:

Continuing up the road, this is where the San Tomas Aquino Creek bends back south and heads east towards Sunnyvale, where it becomes the Guadalupe Slough.

Here are some ponds next to the creeks and sloughs, slowly becoming restored to marshlands after decades of being dehydrated sea-water.

Here's a mixed feeling notice: "Do not enter, or else you will disturb the owls that are burrowing in our landfill." 

There was a recent rain, so the snails were out in full force, most of which were bleached from a summer hibernation perched on some sun blasted reeds.

Some more non-stadium litter.

And more litter - it looks old, but it probably  takes about one decent rain to saturate these things in sediment.

In case you were wondering the location of the above litter, it's under Great America Parkway - I haven't taken and posted pictures of here before.

Paint cans - these things really bug me.

Here's a drain pipe from the street catching some of the litter.

A black-crowned night heron enjoying a rest on some trash.

A crow on the gravel near the stadium bridges.

These things also a pretty bad, the good ole' strangle small animals with debris trick.

More debris under the bridges, again, likely from residents of the city and not visitors to the stadium.

Coots and trash.

Here is a picture of the trash after the game, and there's less than prior to the game. Yay!

It's a really pretty creek from a high level.

 But take a close look one day and you'll see this:

Take a close look another day and you'll see this:

 Take an even closer look under the bridge and you'll see the bridge is an effective debris barrier.

So, also that weekend, on Sunday, I took the boat out to see if I could find that toy tractor again in the Guadalupe Slough which means:

1. Go out just shy of peak high tide in the area to make sure you have plenty of time to get up Alviso Slough, cross over the Bay, and go down Guadalupe Slough, and still have some time to try and wrangle the tractor without getting stuck.
2. Make sure all your equipment is in order, i.e. backup motor, marine radio, life vest, warm clothing, camera gear, GPS/Charts/depth finder. Some form of everything listed except the camera gear is recommended for a south bay outing.
3. Always wear your life vest - good ones are pretty comfy and there is honestly no reason not to.
4. Tether yourself to the engine kill-switch if your boat has one in the event you fall out at high speed the boat won't keep going without you.
5. Let someone know where you're going, what the tide schedule is, and when you should probably be back - nearly every other time I go out to the Alviso park without the boat for a hike, the fire trucks are there because someone got stuck at low tide or their engine died. The firefighters usually have to go out instead of having the boater wait for high tide due to the risk of exposure.

That was a lot of to-do's, but this was a particularly adventurous trip.

Some great blue herons are out. Unfortunately, I think I startled this one even though I kept my distance.

So here is a truncation of the tractor pull. The sloughs being much more sheltered and a bit deeper, are much calmer than the open bay.

If you notice, I exit the Guadalupe Slough, and head pretty close to north straight for the channel marker, and then make a hard right to go back to Alviso Slough. If I didn't go to the marker and instead went straight across from one slough exit to the next, I would be going over water that's 2-3' deep at best on high tides. I know because I got off of the channel once and the depth finder said 1.8'. I stuck an oar in and sure enough it got gooey mud on it about two feet in. Fortunately, the boat draws about 10", and the motor another 16" - it was churning up some mud, so raising the prop a little helped.

FYI, the depth finder is mounted about 8" under the water and is not calibrated for those 8", so it's like a bonus 8" of depth. I was constantly monitoring the depth finder while up against the reeds where the tractor was. The back of the boat had about 6' of water under it, so I felt comfortable enough to do what I did.

 This the firefighter's new rig. Their current rigs are some 2-3 person inflatables they carry in the back of their heavy equipment trailer. This boat isn't operational yet, for it's still being equipped and going through testing. I imagine they'll have radar on it eventually, and maybe a kicker motor.

 Yay, I got it! Wait! Did I miss a wheel? Dang it! Only when I looked at the footage later did I notice the wheel was sitting there in the marshes. However, I wasn't in the mood to stay up against the reeds after fishing the tractor out, so I got out of there as quickly as I could once I got it. I will have to try and get it again some other day. (Exaggerated blue sky is mostly the polarizer.)

Back on shore, here's the UC Davis Fisheries Research vessel. They come out and monitor the quantity and variety of aquatic life. This, as far as I remember them saying, is helpful in determining how well restored the wetlands are, for the birds and other animals depend on this fish food chain. Last time I saw them, they caught some aquarium fish the species of which I don't remember, using a dragnet across the slough.

Somebody else thinking the same thing - if you look closely, you'll see a pair of kayakers in the middle. If I remember correctly this is a Sloughkeepers operation this day. There are a number of individuals who go out in kayaks and pull trash out of the bay. The Sloughkeepers are typically the ones you see going upstream as opposed to going out to the bay.

So there you have it, Cal Vs. Oregon and a tractor pull in the Bay. The stadium litter is pretty decent, and I'd say it was cleaner after the event than before possibly because the stadium staff cleaned up the litter from the Great America attendees.

There are at least 12 more posts in the back log, so stay tuned. I have also done a bit more research on the waterway management projects of the city, county, state, and US agencies, so also stay tuned for that.