Earthquake – The ExhaustNotes Blog

There are photogenic people in Wenchuan. One is the Wenchuan man I described in a previous Phavorite Photos blog, and another is the young lady shown in the large photo above. For lack of a better name, I’ll call her Apple Annie. Some of you folks my age or older might remember the 1961 feel-good film A Pocketful of Miracles, in which Bette Davis played a character named Apple Annie.

Bette Davis has nothing on our Wenchuan Apple Annie. After Gresh and I got out of the Wenchuan police station (we had to register as foreigners), we were walking along a main street through Wenchuan. Apple Annie was selling fruits and vegetables on the sidewalk, and somehow her bushel full of apples tipped over. Before you could say “Oh, no!” in Mandarin, apples literally rolled into four lanes of busy Wenchuan traffic. That’s when our pocketful of miracles occurred: Traffic absolutely stopped, Gresh hopped into the street before Annie or I realized what had happened, and then we jumped in, too, along with a bunch of other Chinese good Samaritans. As traffic patiently waited (not one horn honked), we recovered every one of Annie’s apples. She gave Gresh and I one as a small thank you, along with the beautiful smile you see above.

In 2008, Wenchuan had one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history (a magnitude 8.0 quake), and between 65,000 to 80,000 people died. Something like 80% of the buildings in Wenchuan collapsed.

Some of the damaged buildings were left standing as a tribute to Wenchuan’s victims. We saw those. People are resilient, perhaps even more so in Wenchuan. You can read more about what we saw in Wenchuan and elsewhere in China in Riding China.

Earlier Phavorite Photos? You bet! Click on each to get their story.

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Back to back earthquakes in the last two days…that’s what’s been happening here in So Cal. A 6.4 and a 7.1, to be precise, and they occurred in an area I know will. Both were centered near Ridgecrest, which most folks have never heard of, but the adjoining Navy base is China Lake Naval Weapons Station, which most folks have heard of. And that area is near Death Valley, which every knows about. It’s about 150 miles from where we live.

On the road near Ridgecrest and Death Valley, California. There’s not too much out there.

About 8 years ago good buddies TK and Arlene, and I, rode in a one day scooter endurance rally, in which we racked up 400 miles on the California Scooter CSC-150s. One of the towns we passed through was Trona, the epicenter of yesterday’s 7.1 quake.

TK and Arlene out in front on the CSC-150 Mustang replicas.

My old Baja Blaster CSC-150. It was a good-looking little scoot. I rode it to Cabo and back.

Trona, the epicenter of yesterday’s shaker. It’s a mining town…a small, desolate spot out in the Mojave Desert.

Trona is a town in the middle of a stark landscape just outside the western edge of Death Valley. It’s a place I’ve thought of visiting again just to grab a few photos. There’s not much out there, and the desolation and jagged edges would make for interesting pictures, I think. But this is not the time to go.

I was reloading .22 Hornet ammo for an upcoming blog on a cool and very vintage Winchester Model 43 when the first quake hit two days ago. I felt dizzy and nauseated for an instant, and than I realized the world really was swaying around me. That quake, the 6.1 centered near Ridgecrest, went on for perhaps 15 seconds. I could see things moving around and that’s a weird feeling. It’s like being out in the ocean on a small boat. Dry land is not supposed to behave like this. Usually earthquakes don’t last that long, and many times, our So Cal shakers are sharp cracks (almost like a detonation) that last for but an instant. But not these recent shakers. The second one hit yesterday evening while we were watching television, and it went on for even longer. It was 7.1, which is pretty significant in the earthquake business. Again, there was no sharp crack, and again, the rocking and rolling lasted for perhaps 20 seconds.

We came through both quakes just fine, so mark us safe here in So Cal.