San Clemente North (Huntington Beach) 2016

Our annual summer vacation to the beach took a course change this year. Since Poppa passed away and Becca and Megan bought a house in Huntington Beach and wanted us to stay with them, we went there. We called it San Clemente North.

They have a very lovely house about a mile from the beach just barely off of Brookhurst. We had a somewhat smaller contingent. Sarah and Sajid didn't come and the Taylors were in Europe. But, Ameer brought two friends Corey and Marshall. Ailsa also didn't come because she had already spent six weeks in Orange County doing an externship and was back working at the bankruptcy court in Salt Lake.

We also didn't go for quite the whole two weeks. We arrived in the afternoon on Wednesday and didn't go down to the beach until Thursday. And then left a week and a half later.

Megan is the Director of Research and Development at the Orange County Water District. Her workplace is actually quite close to their home. It just so happened that our Saturday there they were having and open house for families. So, we went and received a custom tour.

It was quite interesting and I learned some things:

The end product waste they dump into the ocean is still less concentrated than sea water; Desalination (evaporation or otherwise) is still more expensive and energy intensive than their process; The end product purified water is not directly consumed. (In some other places in the country it is.) But, is pumped to holding ponds where it is allowed to filter into the aquifer; and Ground does not filter out salts. Thus, the need for their process.

I only took my road bike (no tandem) and only rode six times for a total of 194 miles. But, I enjoyed myself a lot. I rode down to Dana Point the first day in town. I had forgotten how much up and down this ride is. A total of about 2000 feet of climbing. I also rode the river trail into the Anaheim Stadium and the back bay into Irvine and Bushard and PCH going north into Seal Beach and the San Gabriel river trail. The one I liked best was this last one.

With my cycling this year I had two main goals: break 20MPH pace for the year and do the most miles. At this point it's pretty certain I won't make the first. I tried putting on a lot of miles in April-July. I thought I would eventually start picking up speed. My pace suffered in June and I think I am just too old to do that much training. I might have made the pace goal if I hadn't piled on so many miles in June. So, my strategy now is just do moderate miles. That's why I didn't go nuclear with riding in California. But, I don't have enough year left to recover what speed I lost in June.

I usually enjoy watching a lot of the Olympics when I can. This iteration, it was a little problematic. The Smiths aren't that keen on watching sports. Although we did watch some. And NBC's coverage wasn't very good. They only showed select events and would waste lots of time in inane special interest stuff so that you really only saw a little of the actual sport. We did have fun though.

Some of the other evenings we watched some movies. Some were very good. A couple were horrible (Dan's taste).

I only surfed a little. I should have gotten up early and gone down to Doheny or Old Man's on that last day. But, I went for a bike ride instead. If I had people to go with me…

Ameer and his friends did surf a couple of times. But, they left on the Tuesday so we only overlapped a couple of days.

I did a little bodysurfing in San Clemente. But, I was surprised at how easy it is for me to get winded and run some risk of getting into trouble. So, I decided I have to really be careful at my age. The waves did pick up the last two days, and 30 years ago I would have been all over them. Water temps were good the first few days and then went fairly low. Also, not inviting.

One thing we noticed about the difference between north Orange County and South: at San Clemente the beach is a little protected from wind (maybe because of the cliffs?) and so the water is not horribly blown out as it was a couple of days up north. However, that wind also makes it so you can lie in the Sun for quite a while without getting overheated.

Stuart and Kendra, and Toni came over the first Friday evening and we had a really good time visiting with them.

Maddie Porter got married 12 August and we missed the sealing and the reception in Utah because of our travels. But, there was a reception in San Clemente the last Friday we were there and so we were able to make that. It was at a lovely house just up from T-Street and it was fun to see everyone, especially Julie and Blake LeSueur. I haven't seen them in probably at least 10 years and had forgotten how much fun they were.

A fun picture from the reception with a comparison from several years ago (you have to click back and forth.): Here

We went to Kim's ward on the one Sunday we were in town.

Rather than only go to Huntington Beach, we went one day to San Clemente, two or three days to Newport (here at 61st street) and the rest at Huntington.

Megan and Becca have purchased a number of cruiser bikes so people can ride to he beach. It was fun and convenient. And, most days we used them.