Soy Milk

[Pat]

Blue, Oh Gee, lets don't get started on USED TO BE! Pomona California, the birth place of drag racing (PVTA, Pomona Valley Timing Association started it all at an abandoned air strip) used to be a nice place. San Diego, California USED TO BE a nice place to live and continues to be a nice place to visit. It used to have quite a small town feel even though it was way more than a sleepy little Navy town. Now San Diego county has more residents than the state of Oklahoma and contributes way to much to the collective changes that have earned California the title, LEFT COAST.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[BlueRidge]

Well, I could talk about growing up in Orange County when it was still mostly orange groves. Our house had working groves on 4 sides of our little three street development. We had orange fights and dirt clod fights in the groves, and ran from the farmers when they chased us out. I can still remember getting a line drive (as a grade school kid) from some high schooler, right in the back of my head. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] (Hmmm. Maybe that explains a few things.... [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] )

I remember the smell of the orange blossoms in spring, and the singing of the pickers at harvest time - all Mexican laborers, of course.

Now there's not a commerical grove to be found. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Blue, North San Diego and south Riverside counties are getting a lot of their too steep for anything else hill sides turned into avacado orchards.

San Bernardino county, home of the Orange Show, used to have really vast expanses of orchards but many have become homes and strip malls. Still during the heart of the bloom the air is sweetly scented with orange blossoms in spite of smog you can cut with a knife. When my sis first moved to Highland (3 blocks from San Berdoo line) you cold see the mountains up past Running Springs to Big Bear and Arrowhead most of the time but now it is rare to see any of the surrounding hills.

And oh by the way... the soy milk machine came a couple days before Christmas but hasn't been tested yet. As we will not be adding preservatives we thought it best to use up all the "store bought" first and them crank out a batch.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[BlueRidge]

I have met many transplants to Southern California who moved in during the summer, and were shocked to find mountains close by when the first clear day came.

Folks, Pat knows this is true, but for your sakes, I'm telling you that this is NOT an exaggeration. I'm talking about 8000 foot mountains only 10 miles away, and you can't see them for the smog. On a bad day, if you look straight up, the sky is brown, not just the horizon.

I know about those avacado groves, Pat. Between that and vineyards, there are a lot of millionaires in North County and in Temecula.

[Pat]

Blue, When my sis first moved to San Bernardino just every so often there would be a bad day and some of the mountain view would be obscured. When she left there were just a once in a while clearing that would reveal a view of the mountains. She had a cabin at Running Springs and her daughter lived at Big Bear. Getting above the majority of the smog you could look down and see the GUNK and wonder if it would leave a dirty brown ring around the horizon.

I have flown in the LA region when the 3 mile visibility requirement for VFR (Visual Flight Rules) as opposed to IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) was pretty liberally and imaginatively applied by the FAA. After a close call where I had to take extreme aerobatic measures to avoid a midair collisiion I tried to avoid the area as much as was practical. I would transit the LAX area up close to 10,000 feet but down at patern altitude (typically 800ft AGL, Above Ground Level) I considered it to be an unwarranted risk around the many small airports like Orange County, John Wayne, etc. That is just me, I'm sure some folks do it a lot and survive. I'm sure some folks walk across the street without looking for traffic and survive too, but I don't think it is prudent.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]