The X-Files – BAAA-RT Goat; Canada Hates Us, Too; And Teenage Coochie Coochie Coo

All in all, a pleasant if somewhat strained week in the 24/680 with life playing out as expected for the most part – with a few exceptions:

“O Canada, What’d We Do To You?”
Our line of work has left us largely inured to casual expression of dissatisfaction or worse by people who don’t like what we have to say. But we were wrong-footed when we received a fiery phone call from someone expressing displeasure with our “station’s” stance on a political candidate we’d never heard of and the dark promise of what would happen to us if we continued. As with most calls of the type it included references to “fake news” (always a favorite), our impartiality, our ancestry, and a threat to “find another news source” if we didn’t stop broadcasting the word of the candidate we’d never heard of. It took a while but we were finally able to determine the caller was from Toronto, Canada, that she’d confused us with a radio station and political race in her area. Finally impressing our identity and area of operations upon the caller had little effect as she ramped up the acid and vitriol and finished with the traditional “I don’t know how you can call yourself journalists” before hanging up.

Born To Be E-Wild
We ride and like bicycles and other 2-wheeled conveyances and we’ve taken note of the relatively sudden rise of E-Bicycles in our area, not always with happy results. For the uninitiated, an e-bike is a motorized bicycle with an integrated electric motor used to assist with its propulsion. They’re popular with kids and others but they’ve already been associated with the death of a Marin County man Aug. 31 and questions have been raised about their safety. A 2023 Consumer Product Safety Commission report found that injuries associated with devices like e-bikes increased 21 percent between 2021 and 2022, and at least 233 deaths between 2017 and 2022 have been associated to their use. Locals are advising us about “packs” of e-bike-riding kids buzzing pedestrians on trails and at malls. Several near-misses have been reported, so they’re on our radar and appear to be here to stay.

Goat Goes Off-Reservation
Living in a semi-rural environment means coming into contact with wild and domestic farm animals from time to time. Horses, bulls, llamas and the occasional emu have all made cameo appearances in the 24/680 in recent months, turning up in our yards and sometimes even our highways. But a BART train operator had a moment this week when she rounded a turn between Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill and came face to face with an errant goat – standing on the track and refusing to budge. Goatherds have become a familiar site in the area, used to keep grass low and… fertile. Their use is considered a green approach to wildfire maintenance but sometimes the participants go rogue, chewing through rose gardens or putting a crimp in our local mass transit rail link. We’re not sure exactly how it was done but the Hooligoat in question was eventually convinced to move along and train traffic was safe to resume once more.

High School Confidential
Lamorinda teens are generally considered to be smarter, faster, more worldly than others of their age group so it came as a bit of shock recently when it was learned a man was approaching local high schoolers with offers of money in exchange for videotaped sessions of them being tickled while bound. Now, we don’t know if things have changed since we went to high school (Campolindo, ’72) but we’ll just say there was exactly zero chance we’d allow some stranger to put us in so much as one of those Chinatown finger-trap thingees before sitting us on a bed and filming us while he went after our ticklish bits. The unidentified Teen Tickler has been offering local kids $600 each for a session, which he said was for his “personal collection.” The video offer is making the rounds at Miramonte and Campolindo and police are apparently investigating, though it’s unclear what crime has been committed or if they can be prosecuted. Currently, no charges have been filed and Mister Tickler’s identity has yet to be made public.

NOTE: As strange as our last file may seem, the tickling scene is not new and has, in fact, received widespread public attention in some quarters. Please visit HERE for more information.