Editor's Note: Safer on Pebble Beach Drive

The oceanside boulevard has been resurfaced, and fresh paint identifies bicycle/pedestrian lanes on both sides from Hemlock Lane to the northern terminus at Washington Boulevard. Unlike the other sections of Pebble Beach Drive, it’s clear where everyone belongs, and there’s elbow room for all.

For safety’s sake, and for tourism’s sake, the rest of the road needs upgrading as well. One remaining section is in the county, the other is in the city. Both have narrow stretches where pedestrians really have nowhere to go when vehicles are passing. It won’t be easy, because widening the road is going to shave the edges off some yards.

Crescent City doesn’t have a lot with signage to direct visitors to Pebble Beach Drive. Thus many Highway 101 sojourners only know about our urban corridor and South Beach. Someday, when the road is safer for all users, that should change.

AN EXCUSE TO PLAY

My ticket to doing so came in the form of a visit from one of my sons last weekend. We played catch with a football on a beach walk until a warm rain drenched us. We played some hoops at an outdoor basket within saltwater-smelling distance of the sea.

But this fact reinforces what Inez wrote: I really had to do some digging to find those balls in the garage. It had been awhile.

The visit provided a pleasant reminder of how easy it is to access the old-growth redwoods from here. David had already driven all the way from Seattle, so I didn’t want to inflict a lot more mileage on him. Instead, we drove out Howland Hill Road, which made his camera shutter-finger itchy, then walked the loops at Stout Grove and Simpson-Reed Grove.

The real epiphany came when we trudged out to Battery Point Lighthouse. I hadn’t done so in more than a year — sometimes it takes the task of showing around an out-of-towner to remember what you’ve got in your own backyard.

Tourists were certainly aware of the place. Dozens, some obviously residents of other continents, were traipsing around the raised grounds of our signature landmark. It was late on a sunny Sunday afternoon before the tide lowered to allow access, and the lighthouse itself was closed. But the real show swirled and crashed around us.

I’ve yet to find a better view of a vast field of sea stacks than that seen looking north from Battery Point. Unless it’s looking south toward the lighthouse across the same rocks from Pebble Beach Drive.

I hope I don’t wait a year to walk back to Battery Point. And while they’re already back in the garage, I’ll try to keep that football and basketball more accessible as well.

CARTOON  COMPLAINTS

I wrote awhile back about the challenges of choosing editorial cartoons to print. Occasionally readers complain, generally when they interpret a cartoon differently than I did.

Tuesday’s cartoon depicted Jeffy of the comic strip Family Circus before and after hearing President Obama’s nationwide speech to students. In the “after” picture, Jeffy  is decked out in communistic gear.

I appreciated the sarcasm of implying that a speech about the importance of students doing their best could turn kid into socialists — a claim some of the president’s critics seem to have made.

Whether they got the sarcasm or not, some folks took it as feeding into the frenzy of polarization on the national political scene these days.

Perhaps a better choice would have been the cartoon in which a mother evacuates her child from school as the president says, “Stay in school and study.”

The mother’s line: “I’m not letting my kid listen to that crazy Nazi socialist propaganda.”

Or maybe it really is true that sarcasm is the least-effective form of communication.