Tag: Orange County

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Today I went with a group from work to ride the Great Park Balloon, a.k.a. that big orange thing that’s been floating over Irvine for the last month.

After about a decade of wrangling, the city of Irvine has started converting the former El Toro Marine Base into, well, a park. It looks like it’s going to take them another decade to actually build the thing, but one of their first attractions is a helium balloon on a tether. Depending on wind conditions, they send it up anywhere from 250 to 400 feet, and visitors can get a 360° view of central Orange County and the park under construction.

Orange Balloon

Unfortunately, conditions weren’t ideal today. It was hazy, so visibility was only about 10 miles or so, and it was windy. In fact, when we arrived, they’d just tied down the balloon. The guy who organized the trip called back to the office to cancel, but those of us who were already there figured we might as well at least walk around and take a look.

As it turned out, they did start sending the balloon up again, though they limited it to 10 people per ride. So those of us who stayed ended up waiting about an hour, but we made it up.

Baloon view north
Looking north toward the Tustin Hills

Balloon view - south
Looking south. The Irvine Spectrum shopping center is just to the left of the taller buildings.

Balloon view east
Looking east toward the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. Note the hangars and other former MCAS El Toro buildings in the foreground.

I managed okay up until the point where I decided (foolishly) to look down through the center of the gondola. (It’s shaped like a ring, as you can see from the first photo.) The landing was a bit bumpy, and we suspected that they were probably going to shut things down a few groups after we left.

As nerve-wracking as it was after a few minutes, I’d love to go again on a clear day like this one (second photo) back in February, especially if the wind was low enough that they were willing to send the balloon up to 400 feet.

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Weird Al Yankovic: Straight Outta Lynwood album coverLast night we went out to the Orange County Fair to see “Weird Al” Yankovic in concert (the Straight Outta Lynwood Tour). I don’t remember how we managed it, but we got tickets for the fifth row, putting us about 10 feet from the stage. We were off to the side, maybe 20–30 feet from Al’s microphone, but still, it was the closest we’d ever been at a stadium concert.

(Being off to the side put us right by the speakers, which was an odd experience, as the drum beats resonated at the frequency of the human ribcage. On percussion-heavy songs, it was sort of like having an audio pacemaker.)

As always, he put on a fun show. If you haven’t seen him in concert before, all the major songs are done in full costume, with comedic video clips (mostly from his mid-1990s TV show) running between sets to allow time for costume changes. In the middle of the show, he always does a medley of other songs, just to get as much in as possible into a 2-hour concert.

As for being near the front, thankfully he didn’t come to our section for the audience-walk during “Wanna B Ur Lovr,” (a truly annoying song). We did get covered with red and white streamers at the end of “Canadian Idiot,” and (speaking of Monopoly money) fake $100 during “I’ll Sue Ya.”

$100 bill, Weird Al style.

One surprise: A couple of minutes into “White and Nerdy,” he suddenly stopped, said, “There’s no reason to do this song. Radio, Radio”—and the band proceeded to do a straight cover of Elvis Costello’s “Radio, Radio.” During the encore, he explained they’d had some technical difficulties, and did the song from the beginning (though without the costumes and the Segway).

Another surprise: He performed “Albuquerque.” All 10 minutes of it. *shudder*

After the concert we explored the fair a bit, then left to go to Borders to pick up Harry Potter, leading to the second part of this story…

For now, I’ll leave you with this final thought: We all have cell phones, so come on, let’s get real.

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It’s been a dry year for California. Water districts all over the state are geared up for drought conditions. The hills in the Orange County area are still golden-brown in mid-April. Last year at this time, they had finally turned green for spring.

Here’s a shot from the Irvine Spectrum area from April 6, 2006:

Street corner, facing a vacant lot covered with green grass, in front of green hills with a clutch of houses to the right.

That’s not a lawn behind that hedge, that’s a vacant lot. You can see it’s just as green as the strip of maintained grass along the sidewalk. Now here’s a picture taken about half a block away, taken last week, on April 6, 2007 (no, the timing was not intentional).

Same lot, from a different angle, all dry brown stubble. The hills in the background, a bit fuzzy, are also light brown.

This year, only a few weeds and flowers have managed to take hold in the vacant lot. Meanwhile, the hills are their usual golden brown. Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to see much in the way of wildflowers this year. Continue reading →

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On Sunday, March 11, a brush fire struck in the Anaheim Hills area. It was controlled relatively quickly, and by the next morning, the smoke had settled into a blanket of haze over Orange County.

Layer of haze in front of hills

For contrast, here’s a shot from a few weeks earlier (February 23), when it was unusually clear. This was taken from a park in the Quail Hill area of Irvine, looking across the Saddleback Valley from the south toward the same range of hills seen on the left of the picture above.

Quail Hill View

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A few days ago I was remarking on the signs by the side of the 405 indicating where to find the Cal State Fullerton El Toro Campus. This is odd for several reasons, namely:

  • The signs went up years after the city of El Toro changed its name to Lake Forest.
  • Having the two cities in the name makes it sound like “University of California, Colorado Campus.”
  • From what I could tell, it wasn’t even in El Toro/Lake Forest—it was in Irvine.

Today I noticed that the signs have been changed to read “Cal State Fullerton, Irvine Campus.” That takes care of 2 out of 3, and the remaining one is at least logical, even if it sounds a bit odd. I mean, it’s a satellite campus, what else are you going to call it aside from the school name plus the location?

As for why they started out calling it the El Toro campus: it turns out it’s on the grounds of the former El Toro Marine Base.

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Monday morning dawned foggy. By the time we left for work, most of the fog had burned off, but we looked out the car window and saw a huge, billowing gray cloud hugging close to the ground. If this had been the usual fire season, or if there had been no fog to start with (or if there had been time for coffee to take effect), I think we would’ve both immediately recognized it as smoke from a brush fire. The Sierra fire in the Cleveland National Forest had started just a few hours earlier.

Sierra Fire Smoke on Monday morning, blending into fog

There was still fog around, though. Continue reading →