37 parks and a roundabout: the rusty-dubenko team aims to tick off green spaces in stockton

the ace of all accomplishments it will be. the top dog of all triumphs rusty will be. the vixen of all victories (and more!) will i be, when i finish drawing circles around the green spaces on my map of stockton.

it was rusty's idea. he said woof, and i said how high?

okay, to be fair, he actually said howl, growl. get your bum out of bed, get over your jetlag and take me to all the parks in this city. arf. i had no choice but to leash up and follow amok, tailing behind the tail of the park-nazi.

what's more than a story of us running, is us being nearly run over, more than several times... and i'm pretty sure the white man flashing *feels wrong to say* at the crosswalk is equally for dogs as for their humans but NOT for cars turning right. am i wrong, oh reader? (yes, you. you're the only one, if you recall.)

seriously. what's with stockton? what's with half of america?! what's with driving dunderheads who get in their car to go to the end of the driveway for mail? what's with assuming that the driver is master of the road? what's with believing NO ONE walks across the street... because no one walks! so many people don't realise how close they come to a jail sentence for manslaughter. i keep failing to strap on a pair of crampons for a round of tire-gashing for anyone who forgets that life prevails, surprisingly, outside of metal machinery. crosswalks aren't there just to make the cement pretty! blink your eyes and get out of the zone. watch out for people who can't go 50 in a 35 because nike hasn't invented that shoe, yet. who knew that running wasn't condusive to life? i've never felt so unsafe on the sidewalk.

ranting aside, the weather is lovely in these parts. the sun shines... and shines... and shines... it shines all over the shiny, metal cars. sigh. and all over the trees. there are trees here. maybe almost as many as the shiny, people-eating cars.

so, speaking of green things... stockton has a bunch of parks. they usually have grass... almost always a few oaks... the oaks are ancient and so lovely... sometimes they have people in them. (in the parks, not the trees.) rusty and i like to go visit them. (again, the parks, not the people.)

why do we, the rusty-dubenko team, do this? ...to be blunt, stockton is impressively flat. there isn't a hill within miles of home. no trails to truly boast of... no impressive natural landscape to run past.

wise in his ways, rusty could see this problem brewing when i moved in... and instantly set a map before me. i learned the closest thing to a nature hike in stockton was wading through the grid to get to the green. we haven't counted up all the parks in town yet, but so far we've hit 34. 35, if you count the really, really big roundabout on oxford circle. yes, a roundabout. feels rather sophisticated to have one, in that european sort of way.

there are plenty more circles still to draw, since stockton is a large place. it has 289,000 people and is the 13th largest city in california. it's 56 square miles big and 54.7 of those miles are land. (thirsty, anyone?)

central connecticut state university published a survey for 2006 that ranked stockton as the most illiterate of all U.S. cities with populations of more than 250,000. it is home to the stockton massacre. before becoming incorporated in 1850, it was called 'mudville'. stockton was ranked 2nd worst out of 331 worst-ranked metropolitan cities because of its high unemployment, crime and low educational attainment. in 2005, stockton has the 7th lowest (of 150) density of bachelor's degrees or higher. many grand theft auto fans probably congregate here, since in 2006 it had the 3rd-highest auto theft rate in the nation.

in the late 60's, there was a popular tv show called the big valley mythically set in stockton. it's a big valley alright... of miles and miles of flat fields! all the filming- especially the outdoor landscape shots with dense shrubbery and big canyons, were taken elsewhere in california.

i'd better change directions before i get kicked out of my family's home. and... to be fair, there are many nice things in stockton. jamie lee curtis and chris isaak are from here. it was the first community in california NOT claiming a name with a spanish or native american origin. (i think that's commendable, if not at least unusual.) it was named BEST TREE CITY for 3 years, by sunset magazine for having over 100,000 trees. it, uh... has a rowing club... and at least 2 christian radio stations... the number 40 bus which travels into town is currently FREE because of some delay in installing a few payment kiosks along the route and i like that a lot. and the buses are new. and clean. so far.

anyhow, that's stockton. oh, and i really must mention the port- the delta flows pretty deep inland making stockton the proud owner of the furthest-inland port in california. i think. and if i could redeem myself at least slightly, stockton IS on its way up.

weber point and the sprouting businesses around it help earn the city a better reputation. and speaking of sprouts, i would fail you if i didn't mention the asparagus festival...

and there it is, dear reader. the scandal of settling in stockton. so... you ponder... has svetlana crossed the great atlantic only to come home to this? yes. i do love california.

california is a land mass giantess and stockton is just one town. i'm learning, once again, that pockets of various cultures will abound all around and they are God's way of keeping me on my toes. **granted, traveling just 2 blocks in leith had me hearing a different dialect. the pockets in america are bound to be more spread out- in hundreds of miles, if not by state. or coast.**

of all the things to bang out as i begin to write again, i didn't intend to dump on stockton, please believe me. (but, blogger freedoms claim good with the bad, no? and impacted family members will understand, yes?)

besides, rusty says getting ticked off isn't always bad. you could be a park. or a roundabout.
arf, arf.