UPDATE: Recent comments are back on the home page.

Caltrans will open both lanes of Highway 1 at Devil’s Slide on Friday, August 4, by 5:00am.

Repair work will continue after August 4, including drainage and electrical systems and erosion control. This may require lane closures, but there will be no lane closures during peak commute times:

   

• Monday thru Friday 7:00am to 9:00am

   

• Monday thru Thursday 3:00pm to 7:00pm

   

• Friday 3:00pm to 8:00pm

 

Single lane closures will not be implemented at weekends unless absolutely necessary. Caltrans plans to finish all work by the end of September.

Starting Monday, August 7th through Friday, August 11, 2006, over 220 teachers from Half Moon Bay, San Mateo, San Jose, Santa Clara and Morgan Hill will descend upon Half Moon Bay to attend a five day Reading Workshop to be held at Half Moon Bay High School.  Staff development of this caliber, taught by trainers from the Teachers College Columbia University is very rare and difficult to acquire outside of the state of New York.  The presenters for this workshop are all staff developers at the Teachers College Columbia University in New York.  Jessica Fairbanks, Enid Martinez, Christine Cook, Tiffany Davis-Nealy, Tom Marshall and Emily Deliddo will lead the staff development training over the five day workshop.

Highway 1 will be open in both directions during peak commute hours and weekends.  However, single-lane traffic controls may be used "as-needed" basis at other times—for example, to move a piece of heavy equipment. Caltrans is still working on its definition of "peak commute hours".

The SF Chronicle reported on Friday that the road will be one lane at non-peak hours, but Caltrans spokesman John Cunliffe assured me today that this is not the case.

The Cabrillo Unified School District (CUSD) has selected Dr. Mark Loos, previously assistant principal at Jefferson High School in Daly City, as the new principal for Hatch Elementary School. Dr. Loos is a resident of the Coastside.  No one was available to comment at the district office today.

Get a Coastsider.com bumper sticker for your car, and let you friends and neighbors know about our site.  Send your mailing address and the number of stickers you want to Barry Parr, using the email link in the top left column of this page. Please write "Bumper sticker" in the message subject.  We’ll mail your stickers back to you at no charge.

Much lower than normal populations of krill in the Pacific is threatening the bird populations in the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge, according to an AP story in the Mercury News.  Scientist say that changes in west coast climate patterns have reduced the krill populations near the Farallones.

Tiny Cassin’s auklets live much of their lives on the open ocean. But in spring, these gray-and-white relatives of the puffin venture to isolated Pacific outposts like the Farallones to dig deep burrows and lay their eggs.

Adult auklets usually feed their chicks with krill, the minuscule shrimp-like crustaceans that anchor the ocean’s complex food web.

But not this year. Almost none of the 20,000 pairs of Cassin’s auklets nesting in the Farallones will raise a chick that lives more than a few days, a repeat of last year’s unprecedented breeding failure, according to Russ Bradley, a seabird biologist with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory who monitors the birds on the islands.

The NY Times drove up the coast of California from LA to SF, tasting tacos along the way. They found a treat at Taqueria y Mercado de Amigos in Pescadero.

Halfway between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, we turn off into the rolling green hills of Pescadero, a tiny little blip of a town with a handful of general stores, a single bar and one gas station. I have been tipped off that there is a taqueria holed up somewhere in town, and that the ingredients are straight off the farm. I ask around. “There is no sign in the window,” a local offers, “but there is a taqueria in the gas station.”

Inside the gas station, it’s lunchtime and bustling at Taqueria y Mercado de Amigos. Mexican workers squeeze into booths, sipping hibiscus sodas and chatting over the sizzle of the grill and the rhythmic cha-ching of the register. Two cooks work quickly — grilling the shrimp just till the edges blacken, searing the al pastor and drizzling it with hot sauce.

Outside, the quiet of Pescadero is breathtaking. We head up Stage Road to the old cemetery and take the dirt road to the top of the hill. Sitting on the trunk of the car, tacos warming our laps, we find the most beautiful spot yet — the Kelly green pastures rolling and folding straight into the Western sky, the sun beaming down on all that open land. And just when it couldn’t get any better, we realize something else — we’re holding two of the best tacos this side of Mexico.

This the most-emailed story on the NY Times website yesterday.

The community of La Honda will be the host of an area wide Wildland/ Urban Interface drill this coming Sunday July 23. The drill will start at 9:00 am. Its scenario involves a fast moving wildland fire making contact with multiple homes simultaneously. The training will test firefighters’ abilities to organize, rapidly deploy and control an urban interface type fire. Over a dozen local residents have agreed to allow their homes to be incorporated into this drill. At each of these homes firefighters will be making critical decisions involving the appropriate actions to take and the safety of the public and their own crews. No live fire will be used in this training.

Wednesday, July 20, Back to Basics announced they’d raised more than $48,000 just five weeks into their Act Now Campaign to raise $100,000. All contributions up to $100,000 will be matched by a challenge grant. There are six weeks remaining in the campaign.

Coastsiders can make their at the Back to Basics website.