Caltrans Keeps an Eye on Signs of the Times

A tourist might think he’s entering sand dune country when he comes into San Diego County on Interstate 5 and sees that huge yellow warning sign near San Onofre: “Caution: Possible Dust Clouds Next 17 Miles.”

Actually, the sign was erected by Camp Pendleton Marines because of concern that helicopters, tanks and amphibious craft--including the ultra-new hovercraft--might kick up a lot of dirt along the freeway, impairing motorists who might, without the signs, be caught off guard.

The Marine Corps asked Caltrans to put the signs up, but Caltrans declined. “We told them, in effect, that we didn’t post warning signs for hazards that people could see coming up, like fog and dust. We post for things like ice and slick conditions--hazards that motorist can’t see,” said Bill Thompson, the head of signs and striping for Caltrans in San Diego.

The Marines aren’t the only ones who don’t get their way with Caltrans when it comes to erecting signs.

Private, “storefront” universities and medical clinics--versus full-fledged universities and hospitals with 24-hour emergency rooms--are always asking Caltrans for signs at the appropriate freeway off-ramp--and they routinely get turned down, Thompson said. So much for a little free advertising.

Caltrans did give in to the San Diego Wild Animal Park by erecting a directional sign on Interstate 15 in Escondido, even though technically the park only should have gotten a directional sign on California 78 in the San Pasqual Valley because that’s the state highway closest to the animal preserve, Thompson said.

One day the San Diego Unified Port District folks asked Thompson if directional signs could be put on downtown freeways to help motorists returning rental cars at the airport. “I suggested that they do what other airports do--give their customers maps when they pick up their cars so they know how to return them,” he said.

Caltrans’ concern, he said, is that if the freeway shoulders are populated with too many signs, then the really important ones will be overlooked by visually overtaxed motorists.

Among the signs we probably won’t be seeing, Thompson said, was the one suggested by a San Ysidro businessman, to be placed along interstates 5 and 805 near the border:

“Watch for Illegal Aliens.”

All-Weather Service

If you don’t mind listening to a commercial plug for an airline that pays for the service, you can now call a San Diego phone number to get the current weather report for any of 180 cities in the United States and 55 foreign cities.

San Diego last week joined 18 other cities around the country to get the service, called WeatherTrak by its originator, Blake Barker in Dallas.

You simply call the local number (444-4444 for San Diego) on a touch-tone phone and, on cue, punch in the area code for the city you want (or, if it’s a foreign city like Rome, Berlin or Acapulco, the first three letters of the city’s name).

In fact, you are prompting a computer to give back to you, in a digitized voice, the current and prospective weather for that city. The weather reports are updated hourly, based on the National Weather Service.

So if you’re having a blue day this winter and want a pick-me-up, call up the service, punch in, say, 716, and listen to the weather report for Buffalo, N.Y.

NBC Fumbled the Ball

There we were, a television audience glued to the tube Sunday afternoon with the Chargers down by a point to Kansas City with just two minutes left in the game and what do we get? A hand-off to the NBC Nightly News with Chris Wallace at 4:30.

Fumble!

“Our on-air operator in the studio was just as surprised as everyone,” said Penny Martin, a program director for KCST-TV Channel 39, which carries the Chargers broadcasts.

It seems that someone at NBC in Burbank, thinking that all of the West Coast network affiliates had finished their pro football coverage by 4:30 and not realizing that the Chargers and Chiefs were still slugging it out for an exclusive San Diego audience, switched all the stations to the network news.

It took three minutes and 40 seconds to get the Chargers back on the air--just in time to watch the Chargers lose on a missed field goal with 28 seconds to go.

Puppy Love

The folks at Edgemoor Geriatric Hospital in Santee know the value of pet therapy, which is why they have acquired a couple of black Labrador puppies to pick up spirits at the place.

“We’ve seen dramatic behavior changes in some of our patients because of the dogs,” said Jeannette Olinder, chief of rehabilitation services at the county-run hospital.

“We have one patient who was catatonic; we hadn’t seen a purposeful movement from him in months. But when we brought him the animals, he reached out and touched them. It showed us that he can make a brain connection.

“And we have patients who haven’t made any sense in their speech. They talk in word salads--garbled sentences that didn’t make any sense at all. Now they ask appropriate questions about the dogs--’Where are the dogs?’ ‘Are the dogs being fed now?’ ” Olinder said.

Last week, a contest was held to name the dogs. The winning combination: Hope and Joy.

Among the other name nominees, Olinder said: Kate and Allie, Peaches and Cream, Chocolate and Chip, Inky and Stinky, Florence and Nightingale, Edge and Moor, and Geritol and Poly Grip.