Irvine – Page 2 – Geoff Fox: My Permanent Record

Sunsets: California Photography’s Low Hanging Fruit

Shooting sunset photography here is like shooting fish in a barrel! Four out of five days the sky is ablaze with color. With little horizon blockage the results are easily obtained and still spectacular.

My new spot is up Portola Parkway toward the toll road. There’s wilderness on both sides and a nearly uninterrupted path to the setting Sun. Thank you highway planners for leaving a place for me to pull over that’s just right.

Oh — and sunset is in the afternoon. Much easier than the East Coast’s sunrise!

This picture shows office buildings near John Wayne Airport (approximately 8 miles) and the distant mountains on Santa Catalina Island (around 46 miles distant).

All the pictures are clickable for larger version.

A Walk Through Hicks Canyon

We walked a lot this summer. We’ve slacked off. Bad. This afternoon Helaine and I headed to Hicks Canyon Trail.

This area has loads of preserved land. Much of it is mountainous wilderness. Some open space with commanding views of the Pacific. Not today.

Walk Hicks Canyon and the ‘burbs are on both sides.

A headline in the Orange County Register said,

Hicks Canyon trail good for beginners and their dogs

That’s our speed. We brought Doppler too.

Hicks Canyon Trail is a long, thin sliver of parkland. For most of the way there are two paths, one paved, one dirt. The trail runs alongside Hicks Canyon Wash.

Easterners might find this concept foreign. Most of the rivers and streams here run intermittently. They’re dry more than wet. A dried riverbed that floods after rain is called a wash.

The wash is dry today.

On either side of the trail are nice homes, moderately large, very tiny lots. We approached one. Dogs began barking. Then these two guys came to the fence.

I’m not sure you can find a cuter sight than this!

We Live In A Boomtown

I just came back after driving to the store. Look left or right, construction is nearly everywhere. We are living in a boomtown. It’s such an unusual situation, I’m not quite sure how to deal with it!

An elementary school planned for this part of town has been pushed ahead by two years. The Orange County Register reports:

Portola Springs Elementary will be the district’s 22nd elementary school and the second of six school’s the district plans to open by fall 2020.

The demand is crazy–as are the prices. Million dollar plus homes on postage stamp lots don’t merit an eye blink! Neither do developers who only entertain cash buyers.

Before we closed on this home our real estate agent was offered money for our place in line!

Construction in our development is nearly complete, but a half mile away 726 additional homes are going up. There are literally thousands more in the planning stages in this very planned city of 230,000.

I drove through “Pavillion Park,” a few hours ago to take some photos of the works-in-progress. It looked like Black Friday at the mall! There were people going through model homes as if they were the last homes on Earth.

I understand the appeal. Irvine has excellent schools, plenty of shopping and an exceptionally low crime rate. Oh yeah–no winter either.

I worry. Boom can bring bust. It wasn’t long ago this city was in the doldrums. There were plenty of short sales and repos.

Memories are short. Builders don’t want to slow down while there’s so much money to be made. It will be interesting to watch.

A Trip To The Farmers’ Market

Since we’ve been in SoCal (and probably a little before) we’ve heard about the Farmers’ Market held Sundays at the Orange County Great Park. The Great Park sits on what used to be El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

It’s 1,400 acres, bigger than Central Park!

We were excited when we headed out this morning. Among other things, we’d read how the Farmers’ Market is dog friendly… and it was… until last weekend.

The health department says pups and food don’t go together. A citation was issued. A ban is now in place. That’s sad, especially when you consider most of what’s for sale was grown in close proximity to animals.

We kept Doppler off to the side and, with my Irvine cousins, explored the market section two-at-a-time.

It was magical. Lots of fresh fruit and other farm products. Lots of cut pieces to try and taste.

It’s good to come hungry.

Helaine came home with a bag of produce. It all looks beautiful.

Here’s a little slideshow with some of what we saw.

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Blogger’s addendum: This is one post where I could use an editor! Is it Farmers Market, Farmer’s Market or, Farmers’ Market? All three are represented on the web. I’m going with plural possessive, “Farmers'” but I can’t be sure.

A Night Of Italian Food

We were taken out for a really nice dinner tonight by Jeannie Luong, who helped us find our new home. Jeannie is physically tiny, not five feet tall. She’s a dynamo in every other respect!

Jeannie escaped Vietnam as the US withdrew from Saigon. She came to SoCal, got her law degree and now sells real estate. There are lots of immigrant success stories here in Orange County.

We were joined by a friend of Jeannie’s and our Irvine cousins, at Il Fornaio. It is a spectacular Italian restaurant nestled amongst the office buildings that flank “The 405” in Irvine. There are twin bocci courts out front.

Our party was seated directly in front of the left half of Il Fornaio’s split kitchen. We got a meal and a show!

I ordered, Linguine Mare Chiaro:

Thin flat pasta with clams, mussels, prawns and scallops; seasoned with tomatoes, crushed red pepper, garlic and Trebbiano wine

Helaine had, Capellini al Pomodoro:

Angel hair pasta, chopped tomatoes, garlic, marinara sauce and fresh basil

Dinner was very good as was the service from a color coordinated, uniformed staff. I did sense a little disappointment from the waiter when no one ordered wine.

This was a special place, not the kind of Italian food you’d get on a whim. We will be back. Very impressive.

Thank you Jeannie.

Things You See While Shopping In SoCal

I’ve been involved in more shopping over the last month than any other time in my life. I’ve been in stores of every shape and size. If it can be bought, it’s crossed our sights.

That’s given me the opportunity to look closely at the stores themselves.

Winner of the coolest display goes to this miniature tent city from Coleman. When I first approached it I had no idea what I was seeing. Then it dawned, these were scale models.

I’d like one for Doppler, please.

I bought a bike. Stef and I looked at a bunch of stores where bikes are sold before settling on one at Dick’s.

I walked into one specialty store, looked at the bikes hanging from the ceiling and told Stef the price wasn’t too bad.

“That’s four numbers,” she replied.

I thought the bike was a little over $200. Oops.

At one store there were bandages in a first aid kit at the base of the bicycle display!

Finally… Maybe I’m missing something, but I thought squirrels were a scourge? We found one store with a large display of squirrel food.

Seriously? More squirrels? Pinch me.

We are in a neighborhood with a large bunny population. They are all over the place at night

It’s California. Even the wild animals are adorable.

What Kind Of Sex Toy Is This?

The text message I got this morning was a little cryptic: “Morning meeting crew eta 0900.” It was from Mike Hughes, our mover. Helaine found Mike’s “Working Robots” through Angie’s List.

It’s a out of the norm to use a local guy to move you cross country, but it was obvious as we packed, Mike was the right choice. We followed his solo journey from Connecticut via Facebook.

He took all the scary curves we took with Helaine’s SUV. It had to be scarier for him up in the cab.

At 9:00 AM Mike’s truck rolled up with my little car following on a short trailer. He brought muscle in the form of two guys supplied by a local OC mover.

Box-by-box they moved everything off the truck and into the house or garage. With each box a number was called and Stef checked it off the manifest.

Mike and the guys worked hard and fast. In two hours they were done! There were a couple of small scratches as might be expected, but everything is accounted for and we’re happy.

The final price was at the very low end of Mike’s original estimate. He said that made him happy. It certainly made us happy.

Over the past few days our house had begun looking like a home. Alas, we’re loaded with boxes and clutter again.

This is where Stef comes in. I’m not sure how she got this skillset, but she took charge of the unpacking… and discarding.

As much as we threw away before leaving Connecticut, it’s obvious we didn’t toss enough.

“What kind of sex toy is this,” she’d ask while holding up some kitchen implement which should have been tossed in Connecticut, but wasn’t.

We are not at the hoarder level, but there’s been plenty of accumulation over the decades. Doing without for four weeks has shown us many possessions are expendable.

As a team, Stef and Helaine emptied boxes and organized the kitchen. My guess is the kitchen will be the most difficult room in the house. It’s full of one-of-a-kind stuff, each of which should be stored with similar items.

My job was breaking down boxes and occasionally carrying items to the garage. I had it easy.

It’s tough for Helaine to part with stuff, but when you’ve got four or five of something, decisions must be made. “What kind of sex toy is this,” and away it goes!

Roxie and Doppler looked on through it all. There has been no growling for days. They have learned to share the space. Sure, Doppler wants all our attention, but she hasn’t done anything bad to make that point.

This is more than a one day job. Unpacking will continue on Monday. And we’ll be joined by a guy coming to hang ceiling fans and perform other minor miracles.

We’re moving right along.

City Streets At 60 MPH

I’m probably dwelling on this a little too much, but I’m blown away to find city streets with 55 or even 60 mph speed limits. How is that even possible? I haven’t been able to force myself to drive that fast yet. It still seems wrong.

After driving and looking and thinking the problem through, it’s beginning to make sense. This is part of the planning in a planned city you don’t think about.

Irvine has the advantage of coming into existence after the automobile. The car has always been king. Connecticut has lots of roads designed for wagons and livestock.

Here’s how they do it in Irvine.

The main arterial streets are limited access. It’s not quite as limited as an I-95, but it’s pretty restrictive. There is no parking. No homes face these streets. There is no driveway access.

Most of the streets within developments stay there. Only a few well placed secondary streets exit to the major arteries. If there’s no traffic light at the intersection, right turns only

The purpose of the major thoroughfares is to efficiently move people over moderate distances. They do.

Where two main roads intersect, each gets wider. We stopped for a light on Sand Canyon at Irvine Blvd. There were seven lanes. Not seven lanes curb-to-curb, but seven lanes in each roadway where it approached the intersection.

That’s three for through traffic and two each for left and right turns.

I don’t think there are any standalone stores in Irvine. These major streets are pretty sterile. Few distractions.

Everything is clustered in conveniently located shopping centers. None have entrances near the actual intersection.

Interestingly, the one road where this doesn’t work is I-5. It’s a very large Interstate with lots of traffic and slowdowns.

The center of West Hartford or heavy duty shopping like the Post Road or Berlin Turnpike could never exist in this city. The are lots of open air places to eat, but nothing like The Place in Guilford.

There is a tradeoff for everything.

About Our Unusual Concrete Hotel

Though we closed on our new home Friday, we won’t be moving in for another week. The washer and dryer were delivered yesterday, but we still have no refrigerator nor furniture nor any of the possessions we packed up in Connecticut. We’re staying in Old Town Irvine in a building with a history.

This La Quinta, squeezed between I-5 (“The 5”) and the Metrolink/Amtrak tracks, didn’t begin life as a hotel. It was built as a grain elevator, mainly for lima beans! That’s it in the 1957 photo at the top of this entry and on the left in a photo I just took.

Before Irvine became a city, this area was part of the immense Irvine Ranch–over 100,000 acres. Agriculture has been pushed aside by development gradually over the past few decades.

What makes this building so unusual is it’s constructed entirely of concrete. That’s my hand straddling an exposed wall, cut to make a connecting hallway between two silos.

Our room is a six sided concrete bunker with some small concrete inserts to round the corners. The doorways and windows were cut out of the previously solid concrete.

Sure, we’re near the highway and railroad tracks, but we hear little. Hello, it’s solid concrete!

Unfortunately, the floors which were added during the conversion from grain to guests are not concrete. We found out what that means around 2:30 AM when the people above us went crazy!

It sounded like they were wrestling or jumping up-and-down. Whatever it was IT WAS LOUD.

What a wake-up! Surreal. More noise by far than I’ve ever heard inside a structure. Helaine thought the ceiling might collapse!

One call to the front desk and the noise was quickly quelled, but not before we suffered through an hour of it. Very disappointing in a hotel we otherwise like.

This hotel, like all the hotels we stayed in during our cross country journey, offers a free continental breakfast. The menu is very limited. Did I mention it’s free?

I suspect there are people who go hotel to hotel getting these free breakfasts. No one checks if you’re a guest. No one has asked for our room key.

Who knew?

Connecticut and California — What’s Different

My Cousin Michael and I were talking about mountains yesterday. There are mountains just east of here. I keep wanting to say they’re west.

I grew up on the East Coast. Mountains were always west.

“23 Years here and I make the same mistake,” he said.

There are lots of differences between Connecticut and California more significant than the relative position of mountains or whether the Sun rises or sets over the ocean.

We have moved to Irvine. It is a planned city, one of a handful in the US.

In Connecticut things grew organically. Towns today still uses roads established before Declaration of Independence was signed! There are 169 cities and towns, because that’s what worked back in the day.

I have one friend whose family came over on the Mayflower. They’ve been a presence in Milford since there was a Milford–maybe before.

Irvine was incorporated in 1971.

The layout of Irvine was designed by Los Angeles architect William Pereira and Irvine Company employee Raymond Watson, and is nominally divided into townships called villages. The townships are separated by six-lane streets. Each township contains houses of similar design, along with commercial centers, religious institutions and schools. Commercial districts are checker-boarded in a periphery around the central townships. Source: Wikipedia

Our house in Hamden was on a one acre plot. Here in Irvine we’re on a tiny postage stamp of land. That’s part of the plan. Developers have to set aside acreage for parks, shopping and other businesses. You’re never far from anything, but you sacrifice personal space to get that.

Even if you are across town, the six-lane streets (usually straight as an arrow) often have a 60 mph speed limit with computer coordinated traffic lights that adjust to speed the flow! Please think about that next time you attempt to keep to 25 mph through the center of Cheshire.

All buildings have to ‘fit’ architecturally. Though the houses in our development are all different, they’re all very similar in style and color. It’s not right or wrong, just different than what we’re used to back east.

We’ve gone from oil heat, well water and a septic system to gas, city water and sewers. No overhead power lines either.

This is a politically conservative area, ironic because Irvine is a city where the government sticks its nose in so many facets of life! Want to change your house’s paint color or add an addition? Not so fast. Approval is necessary and not always easily obtained. The rules and regulations our home’s developer had to follow are epic.

Because of its good schools, jobs, and housing, the city was chosen in 2008 by CNNMoney.com as the fourth best place to live in the United States. In 2012, it was ranked in sixth place. In September 2011, Businessweek listed Irvine as the 5th best city in the US. In June 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that Irvine had the lowest violent crime rate among cities in the United States with populations of more than 100,000. – Source: Wikipedia

All these factors help make Irvine a desirable place to live. My significantly smaller house here has a significantly larger price tag than the one it replaces in Hamden!

That’s not to say this place is better. It’s just different… very different.

What Irvine doesn’t have are all the friends and acquaintances we accrued over 28 years in Connecticut. I wish I could have packed them up and brought them with us. Friends are irreplaceable.

You can’t plan friends. They grow organically.

My Weather Comparison

The rain is pouring down. This seemed to be a good time to look ahead to our soon-to-be home.

It hardly ever rains during the summer there. Brush fire season.

It rains less than Connecticut during the winter.

No snow. None. They kvetch at 40&#176. Fine.

The Party Has Moved North

The party has moved north. I wrote that on Facebook a while ago and confused a bunch of people. What I meant is I’ve moved from my cousins in Irvine north to the LA area–specifically Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley.

I am staying with my secretive, reclusive friend. Think Howard Hughes during the Vegas years.

He is sprucing up. A crew of workers with ropes and chainsaws are climbing high into an ancient oak to trim wood and treat the problems even trees see in aging.

This is a a wonderful home. It is right at the edge of a commercial district, but totally private. An oasis. In the back is a pool and a one bedroom cottage my friend uses as his office.

The drive up was what Californian’s kvetch about the most–traffic. It was mostly on the 405, the ‘Carmageddon’ highway. As you see, it runs fairly close to LAX!

I’ll be spending time with friends over the next few days. So many people I know have drifted out here.

The Foxes Of Connecticut With The Foxes of Irvine

We are in California. Yesterday was our day in transit. We’re staying in Irvine (in the OC) with my cousins Michael and Melissa and their 14 year old, flu ridden, son Max.

Irvine is interesting because it’s a planned community. That’s the exact opposite of Connecticut which grew unplanned–organically.

Our roads wind. Their roads are straight and wide. Communities are planned to have ample shopping.

I told Cousin Melissa this looks like a Stepford community. Each home is different, but not too different.

They’re kvetching about the weather. It was in the 50s today! They’re spoiled and readily admit it.

We do see snow, but it’s in the distant mountains. Snow is a no show in Irvine.

We’re here through Thursday, then I head to see some friends in the LA area.

Gate 5 LAX

Everything went smoothly. I wasn’t totally sure that would be the case.

As usual, I misplaced something (my Bluetooth earpiece) and had to search before I could leave. Even so, I waved to Cousin Michael (Melissa and Max having long since left) and headed out around my planned 9:00 AM departure.

The GPS was programmed with the out-of-the-way address for Deluxe Car Rental. This was an address that hadn’t been added before the trip and it took a minute or two to enter. Once again, it was like having a co-pilot.

I headed up the San Diego Freeway passing Irvine and Anaheim. A lot of people in those brand new, shiny office towers must be sweating it out today. This is ground zero for the subprime mortgage meltdown. Countrywide, in Calabassas went down earlier today.

Around 30 miles from LAX I hit my first traffic jam. From 65 mph, I slowed to a crawl. I then continued to crawl for the next 45 minutes! Suddenly the traffic was gone. I was moving again at the speed limit.

What was causing the tie-up? Nothing I could see. This is typical of Southern California.

At the airport, a medium sized crowd was waiting to check in and go through security. The Southwest agent who gave me my baggage claim check couldn’t have been nicer. All smiles!

Then I climbed a flight of stairs to the TSA’s special portion of hell. With all my electronics, I used three bins. I probably could have used four.

As I was standing in line, listening to Luna on the other side of the magnetometer yelling at us to remember our boarding passes, I realized what this whole process reminded me of: prison!

Thanks to MSNBC’s “Extended Stay” prison docs, I realize security at the airport is similar to what prisoners go through when they’re brought into the slammer. Who knew a documentary could be so practically useful?

I found some food to bring on the plane and Starbucks has brewed my first cup of coffee. Now I’m sitting in the waiting area, plugged into half the freely available power outlets I can find. My cell phone (connecting at old school slow speed and not 3G) is my link to the web.

Helaine says it’s quite foggy in Connecticut. Hopefully that will be gone by the time I land in Connecticut late tonight.

Live From The OC

The party has moved. Greetings from Orange County. I drove this afternoon from the San Fernando Valley down past Los Angeles, Anaheim and Irvine to Lake Forest.

I am learning to really lean on the GPS. What I’ve found is advance planning is a necessity. The downside is, the GPS demands attention. You can’t look at the road when you’re looking at the GPS.

Use the power wisely, Luke.

As soon as I-5 broke into Orange County, the entire feel of the landscape changed. It was as if a switch had been thrown. This is a land where nothing is old!

This town, Lake Forest, was virtual nothingness 30 years ago. Nothing here is ugly or ramshackle or unplanned.

My cousins live on a man made lake in community of single homes not far from where the El Toro Marine Air Station was. Looking out their back door reminds me more of Disney than a conventional neighborhood.

We to a quick stop for coffee at a gigantic mall. There is both a skating rink and Ferris wheel along with the stores. The mall is mainly uncovered with wide walkways

Everyone is stylishly dressed. Stef would love it here.

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