san diego - drive north!

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these are the last pics from san diego! alas, there aren't a lot because... well. TRAFFIC AND RAIN.

anyway. the next day i drove out of there. i stopped by my friend's new optometry practice, and as i was leaving from there, i snapped this great pic of the wide-open boulevards of san diego's suburbs:

From San Diego


big. sky.

alas, soon enough on the trip back north it started to rain:

From San Diego


now, on the trip south, it was dark by the time i got to this area. so at least i saw this in the daylight, even if it was raining! because -- yeah, once i got to irvine, where my trip-south photos ended, i was caught in traffic so long it basically turned pitchblack. but regardless, i just really really wanted to take a picture of THIS:

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look to the left side of the freeway there. that's probably the most infamous landmark on the stretch of I-5 between LA and SD. now, this stretch of road is one of the only gaps in the nonstop socal urban sprawl -- this gorgeous, wild section where the freeway runs by the sea, passing estuaries and mountainsides.

however, this is also where, in their infinite wisdom, the state decided to put their nuclear power generators. and this wouldn't be so bad, except these things need shielding. and THAT wouldn't be so bad, except in the interest of not making these generators giant and fugly blocks of concrete, they opted for domes instead.

domes with little peaks on them.

that look EXACTLY like gigantic boobs.

so that's what these are called. "The Boobs". if you mention "the boobs on the I-5" to ANYONE who's lived in san diego for any length of time, esp if they've driven to LA at least once or twice, they will absolutely know what you're talking about.

here's a closer look:

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BEWBS.

after the adolescent snicker i got out of that, it was onward to irvine again. it stopped raining for a while, but the sky got more and more ominous as the traffic got thicker and thicker.

https://picasaweb.google.com/112865310833252467406/SanDiego?authkey=Gv1sRgCIyAks_91_jT_wE&feat=embedwebsite#5597950890369097170

...and then, inevitable, ground to a halt:

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this was seriously a perfect storm. it was 5pm. i was in LA. it was raining. it could not possibly get worse than that.

to fully understand my predicament, you have to know this: socal people cannot drive in the rain. i don't really get this, because SD actually gets a lot heavier rain than the bay area. we get more rain overall, but san diego gets torrential downpours. so you'd think they'd be used to it! but i guess the fact that they get infrequent but very heavy downpours just means they get even more panicked when it finally happens.

i saw SO MANY CARS do this:

1) slow down in the pouring rain
2) slow down more
3) slow to a crawl
4) turn on high beams
5) TURN ON EMERGENCY BLINKERS

every time, it cracked me up. driver in distress, due to rain!

but yeah. socal people are afraid of rain. LA traffic is always bad, but the LA rush hour is legendarily bad. and just... yeah. it was a weekday, it was rush hour, and it was raining. that stretch of road in the picture above -- the interchange right there? from my position in that picture to the end of the interchange -- the last merge of that highway overhead into the I-5 -- literally took me 45 minutes to get through. 45 minutes for about... maybe a quarter mile.

i almost went out of my mind. i ended up watching avatar on my phone while creeping along. and it wasn't like that was the end of the traffic. this was still the south side of LA, and i had to get all the way through it >_<

this is the last pic i took in socal:

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and it's of me still stuck in traffic. i was in westwood by then, almost out of LA. it was horrific. hours had gone by. it took me something like 5-6 hours to get from north san diego to the grapevine -- a trip that SHOULD take about 2 hours.

it was insane going over the grapevine. actually it was insane all the way home. not because there was traffic -- because there wasn't -- but because it was just pouring rain the whole way. it was actually a little harrowing going over the LA mountains this time. just ... drenching rain. tons of Drivers In Distress Due To Rain. and then ... yeah. all the way up the central valley too.

but! eventually! i made it back to the bay. and thus ended my trip to SD :D

last thing! while i was digging for pics of my parents' place, i found some pics of my dog :] i talk about him all the time, but here he is:

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see the metal pot thing? that's an old old pot my parents had, that eventually got relegated to dogfood duty. we used to feed him in little dogfood trays, but... yeah. it became easier to just slop his noms into a huge pot *LOL*

btw, that was him in our backyard in san diego, looking unusually calm and thoughtful and well-behaved. he was a remarkably intelligent dog, and i'm almost sure he knew how to pose for photos. however, this was how he usually looked:

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i think it was exceptionally windy that day. i made him sit for a portrait, but he did not enjoy this. *LOL* i think he was like. protesting and making little low howly noises in that pic.

aw, dog. :]

this, honestly, is how i remember him best:

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i wish that picture wasn't so blurry :] that was him on his little bed that my mom made for him. the piece of wood behind him is to protect the wall from getting all dirty because he tended to roll against it, sit against it, kick it, etc.

he always looked so peaceful when he slept :] i remember once i was jetlagged and couldn't sleep, so i went downstairs and slept on the couch with my hand in his fur. best sleep ever.

:]

aw, dog.

san diego - penasquitos, my high school, poway mtns, homeward bound!

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agh! i just realized that if i link from picasa, when you click a picture it just takes you to the picasa page rather than the raw image. man, that's really annoying. well, alas, i'm not gonna change it now cuz it's so much easier for me to post it this way. sorry! but a lot of the pics really are worth looking at full-size, so... yeah! click and then maximize window :]

okay. so! these pics are of san diego's north county suburbs, where i grew up. honestly these pics aren't as pretty as the ones from the previous two posts, and probably only mean stuff to me. nevertheless!

i decided to head to my old haunts in penasquitos, where i spent my formative teenage years. san diego's north county freeways are beautiful: big belts of asphalt (...and construction, alas) across these immense landscapes.

the thing about socal is that it has no trees. it's all scrubland. and while we definitely have mountains, we also have a lot of mesas and canyons. so when you're soaring over a mesa, the sky seems absolutely huge. after a trip to socal, the bay area usually feels weirdly enclosed and claustrophobic to me for a while.

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eventually i got off the 15, went down the 56, got off in PQ and found my way to my old school. it was amazing how familiar these roads i learned to drive on still were. mt. carmel had undergone a serious facelift though:

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that is pretty much the exact streetcorner where my parents used to drop me off in the mornings. actually we'd drive in the opposite direction, so if the light was green my parents would swing a u-turn and drop me at the curb, but more often than not it wasn't so they'd just drop me across the street and let me wait for the crosswalk myself. i was eternally late, so usually i'd end up sprinting for school.

back then that entire lawn leading down to the school was an ocean of juniper bushes. there was a path through them, which sloped down and then up, creating a "bowl" at the bottom. one year it poured torrentially for a week on end and that bowl collected a huge amount of water. when i ran through that to get to class because i was late, i ended up soaked to my waist.

that was memorable >_<

when i went to school here, the whole school was kinda crappy looking and painted the weird peachy-pink color as the gym in the distance there:

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it was a good school and all. it was just... built in the 70s. but they totally renovated it. i mean, it's still not swanky, but it's a lot nicer than it was.

actually that main gate there is where the more side-ish gate used to be. most people entered through the gate to its left, which was closer to the street.

going through the gate, you see this:

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they moved everything around so much! the library had moved to where the student center used to be; the offices moved to where the library was ... it was really weird!

i was surprised to see it was still called the mount, though. oh, the dirty jokes we cracked about that one.

i was really sad to see this:

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...because back when i went to school here, this area contained a huge oak tree surrounded by these benches that were kinda set with their backs in this hill. it was awesome, and my friends and i used to have lunch there every day. memories! i can't believe they chopped our tree down to put in a goddamn MC logo and a patch of concrete :[[[[

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this is looking left from that same spot. that door in the shade there? that's where the teacher lounge was (is?), and where my super-hot french teacher would come sashaying out every day at the end of lunch to our great delight. what began as chipper teacher's-pet-ish "hi mademoiselle!"s in sophomore year turned into a whole chorus of horny adolescent male "HEEEY MAAAADEMOISELLE!"s by senior year.

it's pretty weird to think that she was like... 26-28 when i went to school there. we totally thought of her as an adult! nowadays i'm like pfft, 26, that's a baby.

this is the theater!

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it got hella nice too. that used to be this huge pinkishpeach ... clod of a building. my parents made me play violin as a kid, to my great dismay, but after one semester of it in high school i put my foot down and quit. i was always a much better pianist anyway!

leaving the school, i took a pic of the parking lot. i learned to drive here! also, that patch of lawn there? yeah. juniper drown-trap.

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from there i actually drove over to check on my parents' old house, but the tenants were home so i felt kinda weird snapping pics :[ in case you're interested, though, this is a pic from several years back that the parental units took:

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standard socal mcmansion. LOL.

anyway, after PQ! i went into the mountains. poway's east of PQ and it's usually considered a sort of suburb like PQ, but poway's actually a pretty big place, and much of it is rural. as i drove into the mountains, i could actually look back and see the ocean in the distance:

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(it's that hazy horizon bit.)

pretty soon, though, the scenery turned to this:

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once you're over the mountains, you're in this highland area that seriously looks like something out of ... i don't even know, wyoming.

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then if you go past THAT, you end up in just wild scrubland:

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that was getting pretty close to ramona and julian, which are tiny little towns up in the northeastern san diego mountains. i swung back from there, though, and headed west toward escondido. i ended up cutting pretty close to the san diego zoo's safari park -- or, as it used to be called, the wild animal park. it's pretty awesome -- just this huge patch of wildland that they groomed to look like the african savanna, and then turned a bunch of savanna animals loose in. you can actually go there and see HERDS OF WILDEBEEST IN THE DISTANCE.

tiny herds, but still!

i didn't go there though. it was getting dark by that point, and i snapped this gorgeous sunset pic up in the mountains:

From San Diego


on my way through escondido i found this hilarious little church parking lot sign.

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in case you can't read it, it says: THOU SHALT NOT TRESPASS and then goes on to talk about not parking in their lot unless you were attending the service.

and thus ended my last full day in SD!

san diego - old town, balboa park, border beach!

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so the next day, after finishing Srs Biznz, i went to the oldest parts of san diego to run around and see stuffs. first stop was old town, which bills itself as the birthplace of not just san diego but all of california. it's kinda neat if you like knickknack shops and 150 year old buildings, but it's actually quite small -- really just this one town center plus a small stretch of street.

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all around that central grassy area are old west-looking shops and whatnot. the white maypole-looking thing is actually a flag pole that's been wrapped in ribbons. no idea why. a bunch of kids were there on a school trip, and were tearing around yelling. a hundred fifty years ago, they woulda had to go here:

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-- reputed the first schoolroom in san diego :]

also there was the first wells fargo bank and a cigar shop or something:

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though mostly i was trying to take a pic of that big old tree there. beautiful :] i'm not sure what it is. i wanted to say oak, but then i generally think any large broad roundleafed tree is an oak *LOL*

after old town, i went over to balboa park, which is probably the cultural center of san diego (although the symphony etc are more downtown). this is really close to the zoo, but i didn't get a chance to go to the zoo this time :[

to get to balboa, you generally park across this big canyon that the highway 163 runs through and then walk across the bridge. this stretch of highway is one of the most beautiful in san diego, esp with balboa park's bridge arcing gracefully overhead, but alas i couldn't get a pic. road too winding, didn't wanna crash!

this is what the bridge looks like looking toward balboa park. the tower in the distance is pretty much where balboa park begins:

From San Diego


balboa park's renowned for its old-looking spanish architecture (though really everything was built in the early 1900s) and its gardens. it has a lot of museums too, but in all honesty they're not that great. as you're walking toward the bridge, you see the first of those many gardens to your left:

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on the bridge itself, you can look down over the 163. no barriers on this bridge, man! apparently san diegans don't suicide very often.

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looking the other way, westward, you can see downtown san diego. SD's a small city; not a very impressive skyline :] very beautiful at night from coronado, though -- but i didn't have a chance to go there this time.

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it was hella stormy in san diego, by the way. actually it was rainy/stormy EVERYWHERE when i went down. february's one of our wettest months in california. while i was running around balboa, a huge storm blew in off the ocean. you can see it coming in the pics here.

eventually i got to the gate:

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i forget what this building actually is. it almost looks like a mosque, but i think it's some sort of museum. maybe san diego history? i really can't remember. here's a better look at the gorgeous detail on the facade:

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just behind that mosquey thing is san diego's old globe theatre, reputedly based on shakespeare's old globe theatre:

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looking back, the sky was getting doomier by the second.

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this is another shot of the mosquey building from the backish side, across a lawn. i love this juxtaposition: the really bright red modern art thing, the dome and spire, and the grey sky:

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if you walk in farther, you eventually get to this sorta central fountain in balboa park:

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you can see a tourist trolleybus to the left :] behind the fountain is one of the world's largest outdoor organs. i have another, better pic of it later when i come out the other way. also in that central fountain area is the museum of art:

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there are also several paths branching off from that point, leading to various gardens, nature walks, international cottages, and the like. i didn't have time to see them, though :[

past that fountain, balboa park becomes pedestrian only. continuing onward down the main path of balboa park, you pass into this arcade:

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it's a lot nicer than the one that stretched between the mosque thing and the fountain. i didn't bother -- okay no, i took a pic of that first one, but i didn't bother showing it *LOL*

this is the visitor's center:

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NGL, all the lush greenery, the tropical-storm-looking sky, and the spanish architecture totally made me think of hilaran *LOL* i had such geeky urges to play scenes while i was at balboa park.

a little farther, and you get to the botanical gardens. pretty much all of these sit at various locations down the central drive of balboa park. there are lots of koi in that reflecting pool:

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here's what it looks like inside. this is looking from one of the ends toward the center. what looked like a fairly solid structure outside is actually completely open-to-air on the inside:

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and these are flowers. though kai would call it "a" flower.

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coming out of the botanical house, looking the other way, you can see gardens through the arcade:

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...also, a japanese schoolgirl tour group. later on i ran into their male counterparts *LOL*

i left the main road for a bit and wandered through the various buildings and gardens on the side. i eventually went into one with a central atrium and courtyard:

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and yes. that absolutely and completely made me think of hilary-in-mexico, and i desperately wanted to RP *LOL*

eventually i got to the end of the main drive, which terminates in this plaza a few steps up from the street. the natural history museum is to the left and the science center is to the right in this next pic. neither building was remarkable, so i didn't post pictures. there's another fountain there, a little more modernistic than the central one:

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and lo and behold! the japanese schoolboys were found.

looking back, you can see the main gate way in the distance:

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behind the fountain is a bridge across a wide (but oddly empty!) boulevard, and then a desert garden:

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i think this actually connects to the desert garden part of the SD Zoo, so if you're a member you can just enter this way. i'm not sure, though. it was big -- i just took a pic at the very top of the area and then went back.

i meant to take a walk through the various gardens on the way back, but the storm finally broke and it started to rain. i just snapped a few pics along the way. it's still pretty astonishing what a wide range of gardens there are, though. the very first one outside the gates was vaguely asian-influenced; then there was the desert garden. there was also this patch of almost-wild forest:

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and just a few steps later, a french-style hedge row:

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passing the organ pavilion, i stopped just long enough to grab this picture. it was really coming down by then! i wanted to get closer so i could get a pic of the scale of the thing, but i was getting drenched :[

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and here's the main gate again. by this point i was FLEEING THE RAIN.

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...but i still stopped long enough to grab this pic of a flowering tree in the rain :]

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after i left balboa park, i briefly entertained the idea of going to tijuana. however, i realized i didn't have my passport with me, so i just drove all the way south to the border and turned back. it was pretty interesting; traffic dropped off precipitously as you got closer to the international border. by the last mile, the freeway was almost empty. when i got off at the very last exit, i think of all the cars in this pic, only one continued on:

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i saw on my gps that there was a state beach at the very border, though, and decided to go there. after driving through successively more barren country roads...

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...i eventually had to park at a gate and start walking. google map lied to me! the road was blocked about 2 miles from the beach! so it was dirt road from there on out:

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the landscape was really interesting. most of san diego is all mesas and canyons. as you neared this beach, though, it really flattened out into this coastal plain. that picture above looks like something out of y tu mama tambien *LOL*

finally, after a whole lotta walking, i ascended a little hill and ended up on a beach. this beach was nothing like the one in la jolla. it felt pretty wild. there were nesting terns and other waterbirds everywhere, and not a single other human to be seen. the stormy weather made the ocean slate-grey, the foam white. it was freezing cold.

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i took a series of pictures in a 180-degree arc, and then just roughly slapped them together into a panorama. in google's infinite wisdom, i'm apparently not allowed to have a 5000-px wide picture, so it SHRUNK IT for me >_< but. yeah. it was pretty awesome.

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it really felt like i was standing at the end of the world. on the left side of the picture you can literally look across the border. the cliffs in the distance are in tijuana. other than that sign of life -- which curiously felt very far away because my passport-less ass couldn't get there -- i couldn't see any other mark of human habitation.

so i felt compelled to leave my own human trace:

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-- though i deliberately left it close to the waves, so that the high tide would wash it away. it felt right that that beach stay abandoned and empty.

on the way back, it was getting dark. i found wildflowers :]

From San Diego