19 Jun 08 22:34, Cindy Haglund wrote to Roy Witt:


 CH>>  Hi Roy. Good. I did a Gooogle recenlty. One hit was " ARE there any
 CH>> cities without subburbs? I think only thoe very old ones.

 RW>> Where I grew up, there are no suburbs. City of 28,000. There are
 RW>> many more like it in that area.

 CH>  I think it's great that way. Even with the 'nearby shopping areas'
 CH> for suburbs now , it's not the same because you often have to cross
 CH> big highways to get there.

Not there. They converted the downtown area to a giant shopping mall. Old
buildings were torn down to make way for the parking lots the city fathers
anticipated. Some streets were even closed to thru traffic for parking. It
worked for a while, but it soon died. Shopping malls grew out of the corn
fields on the edge of town and that spelled the end for the downtown area.
I enjoyed the downtown area before they did that. It was a 6 block long x
6 block long 'one way' two lane circuit seperated by two blocks. The
cruise nights in the 50s and 60s were awesome.

 CH>>  Vancouver BC is like the city described where you can just walk out
 CH>> your door and a few blocks away there's a coffee shop, a bakery, a
 CH>> farmer's market... ah.news stand... and in the other direction , the
 CH>> beach. :)

 RW>> The Vancouver beach isn't as nice a place to sun bathe as the
 RW>> several beaches in So. California.

 CH>  heh true but in July it's good! July is their official summer.
 CH>  Sometiems it extends into August a bit. The area is terrific for
 CH>  hiking and walking. I was so amazed we took a three mile hike and I
 CH>  didn't break out in sweat! It was only in the 70's.

I lived in Seattle from June 1966 to March of 1967. The weather was always
cold and raining. When the sun came out, it was even colder. I had to
order oil for the furnace in July. By September, we were suffering the
high humidity and heat. When it snows there, it's a wet blanket that
contains more water than actual snow. (if there can be such a thing)

I never put foot in the sound or lakes there, but I'll bet it was cold.

OTH, we did have some great times on the lakes and back country.

 CH>  (This was last July. We were livingin FW at the time and you know
 CH> how Texas is in July. The funny thing about that is when we went up
 CH> there, we took the wather wit us for one day. 91 degrees. Warms up
 CH> into the 80's normally for a little while there, but dow to the 50's
 CH> at night. Doesn't stay hot at night like it does in TX and other
 CH> places south.

This morning we woke up to some very nice cool temps, 68F. It's supposed
to be hot today, near 100 again, but right now at 10am, it's 82F. Very
refreshing morning as I went out early to open a few more cars. Since I
was already in the neighborhood, I stopped off at my favorite Tex-Mex for
breakfast afterwards.

 RW>> I get two weekend days off the first of August. we're gonna check
 RW>> out Corpus Chrisi on those two days.

 CH>  We had thought about visiting there, but ended up in Florida
 CH> instead.
 CH> :) We did go see San Antionio the year before last. The riverside
 CH> /canal area is so nice!

Really!? I thought it was a tourist trap and way too expensive.

 CH> The Alamo looks smaller in real life, we thought..
 CH> ........................

Some people have this exagerated idea of it's real size. On one of my
first trips to SA by Greyhound, we drove right by it and I too thought it
was bigger than it really is. Maybe the movie where John Wayne plays Davy
Crocket at the Alamo exagerated the size. Of course, the area surrounding
the Alamo was a lot bigger in 1836 than it is today, making it look
bigger.

 CH>>  Ah Texas. You can drive 12 hours in almost any direction from DFW
 CH>> or the center and still be in Texas.

 RW>> 8 hours from San Antonio to El Paso...the longest stretch of road
 RW>> I've ever been on.

 CH>  I've been on I-95 from let's see... where you get onto it in NYS to
 CH> Titusville, FL ..and we were on rte 10 from where we got on it in LA
 CH> to where ever we got off of it in FL (Pensacola I think).
 CH> Yup. LONG way! those roats are. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG LONG way..

I meant in one state. It's only 16xx miles from San Diego to San Antonio
and I've driven it in less than 24 hours, taking naps along the way.

 RW>> If I could, I would have brought San Diego's weather with me. But,
 RW>> one

 CH>  That would have been nice and I would have brought the ocean  BUt
 CH> some say the way the east coast is eroatind , just wait a few
 CH> centuries.
 CH> .........................

I don't have that much patience. ;o)

 RW>> can't have everything in San Diego as cheaply as one can get it
 RW>> here. The cold of the one month winter here is bearable, the heat of
 RW>> summer is too, as long as you take a 'time out in the AC' between
 RW>> 4pm and 7pm.

 CH> Yup. Those blue northers in November are somethin' aren't they? It's
 CH> sumemry all day and then about 4 PM... it comes. The Cold. And boy
 CH> does it drop fast.

San Diego usually didn't get very many of those. It's just out of reach.

 CH> 2006 was our first experience with 100 degree weather for more than a
 CH> few days on end. 90 degrees at 10 PM. And you know you could feel the
 CH> heat radiating off cars in the parking lot. SO it was a treat that
 CH> the stores were so cold with a/c. You'd get popsicle cold then step
 CH> outside and before you stepped into the parking lot you'd be
 CH> sweating. That's somethin'.

Try changing a tire in that heat. :o) Been there, done that on several
occasions.

 RW>>  RW>> early in the year with reservations being made last October
 RW>> when the  RW>> campgrounds closed for the winter.

 CH>>  How was that in August of 06 btw.

 RW>> Not as bad a it was in 07. Last year there was so much rain, people
 RW>> were being flooded out of their campsites along the river.

 CH>  Yeah it was mighty wet! That is for sure. In fact I was telling
 CH> hubby, you know? It feels like FLorida. (Last spring was very
 CH> humid... We were getting practice! :)

LOL!

 CH> I had started a small garden out back under the back eve, outside the
 CH> big window at the kitchen. THis is when we discovered we had no rain
 CH> gutters up there at the back of the house (two story)... I can still
 CH> see the ittle pepper plants in my minds eye.. as the rain came down
 CH> off the eves. Should have transplanted them. I was busy dog sitting
 CH> at the time and forgot about it.

During all of that rain last year, as I went from the house to the car, I
kept telling myself that I need to install a rain gutter over the garage
entrance. I finally did and it was nice not getting soaked by the run-off.

 CH>> I have a picture of a sign near a dried riverbed that says, "NO
 CH>> Swimming". Seriously the lakes in the DFW area went down quite a
 CH>> bit! Bad for the tourism trade.

 RW>> Last Monday, the powers that be put a ban on watering the lawn,
 RW>> except for certain times of day and only on certain days. Those
 RW>> lawns without

 CH>  We had that going onin 06 in the FW area. But funny thing was the
 CH> CITY watered whenver it wanted to and it is so vexing when they do it
 CH> during the day as the SUN broils the water away. They don't realize
 CH> this but that is what happens.

They must realize it, as our watering rules state that there is no
watering allowed before 8pm or after 9am. That's without the watering ban.

 CH> And it scorces the topsoil. Why they do it during the day is nuts. I
 CH> think it was new growth or something.. but stil its ad to water in
 CH> hot weather during the day. hmm. Don't plant during drought then I'd
 CH> say.

I have a patch of grass that is brown, even though I water it the same as
I do the green part. The differenceis that the sun shines on the brown
area all day while the green in in plenty of shade most of the day.

 RW>>  RW>> Hmmmm. Did he rent or own?

 CH>>  No idea. I bet he rented though. Just a hunch.

c

 RW>> Probably so.

 CH>  I figure if he really wasn't keen on it, just wanted to try it out-
 CH>  he'd rent. Probally a good idea to do that, then buy outright when
 CH>  you're not sure you'll like it. I've seen those big campers .. must
 CH> admit they are nice! You can go out and hike/canoe; and rough it..
 CH> and then relax in the comfort of 'home'... nothing wrong with that.

Except that it isn't 'real' camping, where you pitch a tent and don't take
a bath or shower for a week.

 CH>>  WOW! I like that. If we move to one of satilites of Orlando that is
 CH>> how it is there too. Small town. Big yards. Mature landscape.

 RW>> I lived in the big city for 38 years. It's nice to have a small town
 RW>> atmosphere and the big city and all of it's conveniences twenty
 RW>> miles away.

 CH>  True. That is how it is where my sister lives in Vancovuer. The
 CH> immediate area is like a small town, inside the city. Gosh you can
 CH> walk jsut about anywhere for waht you want/need, there.

I lived in a small city in California called Poway. It used to be out in
the country, then San Diego and Poway began to grow together. Today there
is no difference.

 RW>>  RW>> All that's right across the freeway from here. Unfortunately,
 RW>> you  RW>> can't get there from here.

 CH>>  A boat? Would you like them in a boat? Sam I am.

 RW>> You have to drive there, you can't walk there. If you try to walk
 RW>> there, it's a long journey that will take you way out of the area.
 RW>> You're
 RW>> familiar with Texas 'turn arounds' - I live between two of them.

 CH>  Yup.. oh.  IN Orlando there's sidealks almost everwhere along the
 CH> mamor roads between subdivisions and shopping ares but some are
 CH> rather a long way.

There's a sidewalk along the frontage road by the freeway, but the
sidewalk doesn't turn the corner to enter my area. You just keep on moving
up and down the freeway.

                R\%/itt



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