I’ve become less prolific when it comes to posting to this blog. It isn’t a matter of laziness – well, maybe that’s part of it – it’s because we’ve settled into a routine here in San Diego. It gets monotonous to post about daily activities without variety. Over the last four years, we’ve spent three or four months a year here at Mission Bay RV Resort. The big news this week is Donna’s back! She came home Tuesday night from her visit with her parents in Vermont.
One of the things I’ve noticed when we’re in California is the difference in the gasoline here. Not only is it more expensive than the rest of the country, it’s also a different formulation. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has its own regulations for gasoline formulation. I’ve noticed an increase of fuel consumption of about 15% when we’re in California. This was true with the 300cc four-stroke engine in our Kymco scooter and also holds true with the 998cc four-stroke engine in our Can-Am Spyder.
The CARB regulations are supposed to reduce air pollution. It seems counter-intuitive to me to think burning more fuel reduces pollution. If every vehicle in the state burns 15% more gasoline due to the formulation, that’s a lot of extra fuel being burned. I understand how oxygenate additives can result in more complete combustion thus reducing the amount of unburned hydrocarbon in the exhaust. But I have to wonder about the additional resources required, the additional refining steps for one market only – while the rest of the country utilizes fuel made to federal standards – plus the need for transportation of 15% more fuel and so on. What’s the real overall impact?
About 10 days ago, I made reservations for us to return here in October. I wanted a site for two months. Karen in the office couldn’t find a site I wanted that would be open for two months. I refused to take a couple of the sites available – one would put our bedroom window next to the entrance to rest rooms and another had a large tree that I knew would block satellite TV reception and also results in a large quantity of bird droppings. I settled on site 112 for five weeks then a move to site 117 for the remainder of our stay.
I received an e-mail confirmation for site 112, but I didn’t get one for site 117. The next day I stopped by the office to see if the reservation was made. Karen told me she was having a problem getting the reservation into the system but would continue to work on it. I still didn’t have a confirmation so yesterday I inquired at the office and found out that she had done a lot of work to make site 112 available for us for the entire two-month stay. Yay – no move required. I got the confirmation e-mail in the afternoon.
We usually stay here in the fall and leave in mid-January. We stayed here in May a couple of years ago to attend my daughter’s graduation from Cal-Western School of Law. On Wednesday evening, I shot a photo of the sunset reflected on clouds. As I watched the sunset from the western end of Mission Bay RV Resort, I noticed how far north the sun was compared to the sunset shots I took in the winter months.
The first photo below was taken on December 20th. Notice how the sun is nearly directly over the boat dock at the Campland Marina. Click on the photos to enlarge them.
Sunset in December – see the boat dock
The sunset on Wednesday evening, March 26th was far to the north – the boat dock isn’t visible as it’s out of the frame on the left.
Sunset April 26th
The occupancy here at the Mission Bay RV Resort is about as low as we’ve ever seen it. During the Easter week, the park was nearly full. Now about two-thirds of the sites are vacant. Donna met one of our neighbors yesterday. There are two women here in a small Fleetwood Flair – a class A motorhome less than 30 feet long. They have a pet pig onboard! It’s a large potbellied pig.
Zoey the RV Pig
She’s called Zoey the RV Pig and you can find her on Instagram.
Last night Donna made roasted garlic and lemon chicken thighs and served it with sauteed peppers, asparagus, zucchini and onions. Sini joined us for dinner. No frozen pot pies for this guy while Donna’s cooking!
Roasted garlic and lemon chicken and sauteed veggies
I played pickleball four days this week. Donna joined me on Wednesday. Today I’ll pass on the pickleball and run a few errands this morning. The temperatures have been a little cooler this week and humidity unusually high. The forecast calls for low 70s today and the humidity will be near 60%. Tomorrow’s forecast says we’ll see the upper 70s with humidity at a more normal level for the area – less than 40%.
Back in the 50’s and 60’s (before CARB) the smog was terrible in SoCal…..we had dozens of smog alerts per year, and most days in the summer yours eyes would burn, and lungs would hurt from the smog. By the 80’s (after CARB) we now had 0-1 smog alerts per year, and air quality had improved dramatically. We reached the point of diminishing returns a couple of decades ago, and yet CARB continues to promulgate new regulations as a cost of billions with almost immeasurable results……bureaucracy must justify its existence. The result is what you describe, and gas that runs 50-60 cents more per gallon than Arizona and Nevada. I rarely every take on diesel when in California. Here in Carson City diesel is $2.29-2.35/gallon compared to California where I recently paid $2.87/gallon for diesel which gives me fewer miles per gallon.
Yeah Clarke, I grew up in San Diego and remember the smog of the 60s – we always blamed it on LA. I agree CARB is reaping diminishing returns and has over-regulated.