What’s Boring? Oh, School

“I want to do exciting things, for ever and ever and ever,” Seb said one summer’s eve, as we were preparing to complete his nightly check list. This proclamation followed, “But I don’t want to do boring things” like the items on his check list, which include taking a bath, brushing teeth, story time, and sleep. “Taking a bath is boring,” Seb said.

“Then either you take a boring bath, where you sit in a tub of lukewarm water up to your elbows, or you can take an exciting bath,” I said, as I turned on the shower head and hot water rained down into the empty tub. “An exciting bath is like a rainstorm, where you are taking a bath in the midst of a jungle, a rain forest. Seb, step into your own, personal rainstorm!”

Home is our platform for concocting and carrying out exciting activities. Once we organized the house, we were able to focus on weeding out the boring things from our everyday lives.

Now that Seb is differentiating between boring activities and exciting ones, to help us make the best use of available time, Seb and I are compiling lists of exciting things and boring things. We limit boring things to a simple necessity, and we create a schedule rock chalk full of exciting things.

A few boring things:

• Watching grown-up channels on TV,
• Brushing teeth,
• School,
• Playing inside,
• Time outs,
• Sleep.

Several exciting things:

• Going to the YMCA Kidzone,
• Playing Outside,
• Watching Cartoons on PBSKids.Org,
• Free Play at My Gym,
• Belmont Park, and
• Rainstorm Bath.

Across the street from our house, a park, a frequent destination of our many excursions.

The most exciting thing for us is exploring the canyon wilderness, home to bird, rabbit, lizard, snake and coyote. We have seen them all. Because our house is situated on the canyon ridge, trekking through it has proven to be very accessible. To reach the canyon, we walk out our front door, down the steps, across the street and around the park to the canyon trailhead. The way into the canyon can be a very invigorating gallop down a steep trail to a ravine, where a fork in the road leads us to our first important decision: shall we venture through the tunnel of trees or into the fur ball forest?

Seb directs my attention into the canyon, as we preview today’s pathway. Today’s trip logged a duration of about an hour and a half.

The canyon is like a beginner’s training course for future large scale hikes. We can complete a trek in less than 30 minutes in an evening, or we can hike for a couple of hours on a weekend. In the canyon, we walk along rolling foot paths or jog up short, steep foot hills. One trail leads across a stream and demands its followers to bound over rocks and across precarious concrete balance beams. Another path dead ends in a scramble of bramble thorns and thistle. And another bounds over a puddle environment for scattering pollywogs. Along the way are places to stop and catch our breaths while snacking on food items, like apples and granola bars.

Seb stands at the canyon trailhead at the edge of the park. Though we know many ways into the canyon, we established this as our favored starting point.

On one afternoon hike, Seb told me to wait down at the bottom of the ravine, that he was going to climb up one of the hills by himself. I stood down there and watched, as Seb climbed up the hill. He made it up the hill pretty well, but near the top, I noticed he was struggling. He would climb straight up the hill a short way and then slide down again. He did this several times and started yelling to me for help. His yells transformed into cries. He cried for five minutes before I climbed up to reach him and then directed him to the side of the hill for an easier way up, and he reached the top on his own. Once he made the adjustment, it was an easy trial. Since that day, during every trip through the canyon, Seb commands a moment for a similar hill-climbing exercise.

While we are shuffling down steep dirt trails and across rocky paths, I am envisioning a time when we will be together on the other side of the world. In Nepal, home of the highest peaks on earth. There we will hike through and over the Himalayas with our friends from Dang and Deukari Valleys and into the welcoming gardens surrounding the Village of Shakuma. Traveling together through Nepal would be the pinnacle of our achievement, but we know that to get into real shape, we will need to tackle depths more than a hundred times those of our neighborhood canyon. I mean, seriously, where we will go, girls Seb’s age run down and up ten canyons every morning just to fetch a couple buckets of water.

Seb walks up ahead adjacent to the Home Depot Canyon. This canyon was named for Home Depot, which was built on an adjacent ridge.

New Home, New Horizon

Friends, we are a tad beyond the halfway point through the end of the final year of the most popular of Mayan calendars. If the world as we know it would end later this year, as is widely anticipated by even quite a few who have only cursorily studied the prophesied impacts of said calendar, Elia and I would feel satisfied that we had reached one of our lifetime goals: to make our home in San Diego.

Cousins Seb, Jonathan and Hannah climb the meandering sidewalk together on a warm afternoon in Rancho Del Rey. This sidewalk straddles two shallow canyons, a wilderness preserve in Chula Vista known as Rice Canyon.

San Diego, sunny every day and a steady 21 degrees Celsius from January through December; San Diego, where countless activities abound for families with children of all ages; San Diego, one of the friendliest cities for commuters in Southern California, where, instead of the middle finger, drivers give each other the thumb–up; San Diego, which requires that more than 80% of its water to be imported from the Colorado River and Northern California via purchase agreement between San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District; San Diego, in the end, maybe not such a bad place to be, where in even the most blighted of neighborhoods, a stranger is friendly enough to host a spontaneous stoop talk.

Seb relishes a moment in the Skyfari Aerial Tram at the San Diego Zoo. Aunt Sally, a dedicated volunteer at the Safari Park, shared a few zoo passes she had earned from her work and invited us for a day of animal gazing.

We are settled in Rancho Del Rey, a sprawling borough planted across a ridge separating two canyons in the North of Chula Vista. Highlighted on the map just east of I-805, the neighborhood of Rancho Del Rey is one of the most surprisingly beautifully landscaped suburbs that we have ever seen. Prior to the development of this master planned community, which includes tracts of housing, green ways, churches, schools, upmarket strip malls and Olympic training facilities, this land was a coyote wilderness and a thriving coastal desert ecosystem. Chula Vista’s namesake is a term of endearment that translates literally into English as a pretty view–though, as the bitter fox shrugged off the grapes that might as well be sour, this place is commonly derided as Chula-Juana or Cholo Vista. In fact, it is as if a clearing crew made way for suburban neighborhoods by wielding power machetes and hacking cactus plots to clear space just large enough for a house, street and sidewalk. Much of the natural habitat has been preserved, as green brush, stalks of fur balls, scraggly weeds, and cactus flowers light up under the year-round sunshine.

Seb and Millie catch a glimpse of the evening sun as it sets. While picnicking at a nearby park, we caught the moon nibbling at the sun during a partial solar eclipse on May 20, 2012.

As a result of the compelling beauty of its nicely planned neighborhoods, a frenzied demand exists for housing here. After tendering my resignation at the water utility in Los Angeles, Elia and I spent two weekends poring over Craigslist advertisements and MSL blurbs and driving all over San Diego, from Scripps Ranch to Carmel Mountain to Otay Mesa. Before we signed our lease agreement, we visited over twenty prospective houses, each of which was promptly rented within a few days of its initial listing. Frankly, we toured more than a few potential duds on what were otherwise great streets nearby elementary schools, which boasted of high test scores. Once we happened upon this place, we hurried to submit a rental application, expedited its approval, packed our belongings and arranged to move in only a few days time, faster than the landlord could clean up all evidence of prior inhabitants.

Grandpa and The Little Baby relax after the day’s adventure, which included furniture restoration and assembly and grilling. Grandpa and Grandma visited for couple of weeks and helped us settle in.

Since arriving in April, with our family, friends, and neighbors, Seb and I have been wandering and exploring the meandering sidewalks of Rancho Del Rey. Elia has landed a part-time job teaching music to young children all over South Bay. Elia and I feel fortunate that the house we are renting is cozy and located across the street from a park and down the street from a decent school. We are nearly, completely unpacked. Our furniture has been located in a practically permanent configuration. Some boxes just need to be tucked away into one of the many built-in hidey-holes of this house. What’s more, once we have finished, we will invite everyone to Rancho Del Rey for a home-warming celebration!

Moving In

Every night, I kneel down beside Seb’s bed and ask him what he’s going to dream about. As he ponders the question in silence, I make suggestions: “You could dream about playing an unlimited number of games at Chuck-E-Cheese. Or, how about walking through the rain forest with your best friend, Shane. Or, Seb, you could dream about stepping onto the summit of the world’s tallest mountain and afterward you could take a victory ride through the valleys on top of a bus.”

I try, but no matter my suggestion, Seb inevitably replies, “I’m going to dream about moving to Mexico!”

Well, Seb, your dream will soon come true–well, almost. Since Elia and I were married more than seven years ago, we have been talking about the potential of a move to San Diego. We certainly like the idea of living in San Diego. San Diego, where the weather is beautiful all of the time. San Diego, the paradise of Southern California. San Diego, the place we long to be. San Diego, last stop on the road to Playas de Tijuana, the home of Seb’s family. And, of course, after all that, San Diego, where the cost of living is quite high. I think we would be there now if it were not for that infamous, persistent, economic slow-down, the Latest-and-Greatest Depression.

With savings to last maybe a month without a job, our destiny was to remain in Corona, while my position as a water utility engineer was stable. Unlike many companies, this utility had zero layoffs during the past five years, and, now that I think about it, actually has never had a layoff, ever, in more than 75 years. Eventually, after working for a while and keeping my eyes peeled, I might secure lasting employment in San Diego. One can always hope.

Elia, while demanding a move, would never let me forget the one I let get away. It happened in 2008 that I had an interview at a water utility in Otay that led to a job offer, yet the timing of the opportunity was not quite right. Okay, I was only two quarters from finishing a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management at Cal Poly. Despite declining this offer, resting assured that I would be more marketable with a higher degree, the four years that followed consisted of constant job hunting. With my burgeoning resume developed at a water company serving both the San Gabriel and Cucamonga Valleys, I subsequently submitted approximately two job applications per year that merited a total of two interviews in four years, neither of which resulted in an offer, since the one that got away. Two per year may not seem like a constant job hunt, but with the bottom falling out of the land development industry, I was competing with hundreds of civil engineers of all degree of experience for a handful of advertised jobs.

Interestingly enough, if I had not stayed in night school, I would not have this opportunity that is now leading us to move. A simple school project has eventually turned into a full-time job. Over the past three years, after completing a cost model, assignments became more and more numerous and interesting, the company moved from Santa Monica to San Diego, and there we go. The movers are scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, and we are nearly packed. After a week’s grace period, I will begin work on project siting and management of a growing energy research and development firm based in San Diego. Naturally, what is most important is that Elia, Seb and Millie will be within a fifteen-minute’s drive of the beach and of countless family members.

Conversations of the Afterlife

There is so much news to share about my family, experiences and work, that it may be difficult to begin, like when I am gripping the phone to my ear, waiting to speak to an old friend I have not spoken to in months, or years even. What am I supposed to tell him, when he asks what’s new? What is the priority topic?

For Spring Break, my family and I visited Grandma and Grandpa in Florida. My mom is the resident park ranger at Cayo Costa State Park, an island located just off the Florida Gulf Coast, where we stopped one day.

Well, I just got home from the store and need to unload a few grocery items. I am about to head with Elia and the kids to attend a family doctor check-up. After the doctor, I need to replace a few burnt out light bulbs and then tighten a few loose screws on the mini-crib. So, how about them Royals? Oh, hey, I hear that the eclectic band with the distinct musical style is touring again this summer. I haven’t been to a rock concert in ages.

Grandpa recently replaced his sailboat with a fishing boat. While he says it was done to save him time spent on boat maintenance, I think it was done to further his enjoyment of the ocean breeze as he races from island to coast.

Of course, plenty of exciting moments can be shared with everyone at the right time. I just decided that I would wait to speak with certain people until we both have a few days to go backward and forward in time, until we are all free to talk without reproach, until we have a chance to thoroughly explain exactly how we made it to this point. In other words, it might be a few decades. I mean, we could simply wait until retirement, while on vacation on a houseboat in the middle a clear lake somewhere in Nevada. Or, we could wait until the afterlife. Then we will have plenty of time to catch up.

Cayo Costa is an island with numerous meandering trails slashing through the tropical wilderness.

There are people I would not mind catching up with, but I would be happy to wait until after retirement. I have actually been thinking of several conversations I would like to have with some people who had a sort of influence on my life, but I can wait a lot longer. I refer to these future chats as conversations to take place in the afterlife. Because, you know, it would really be too much of a challenge to schedule a time to speak with them before then, whenever we would both have a moment to spare, be at the right place at the right time. For all I know, they are already waiting for me in the afterlife.

Teen Idol of Dubious Qualification

I am actually looking forward to talking to some people I never got to talk to in life, like Mr. Glen Danzig. I went to a concert of his one night during my late teenage years. I would like to run into him in the afterlife, perhaps over a cup of coffee. I will ask him about the time, during his performance of Twist of Cain, when he looked out into the mob and made eye contact with an enraged teenager, shrieking, scowling and smoking himself hoarse. I will ask him if he thanked God for reaching yet another soul and connecting with the passion of defiance, anarchy and insanity? You never know. I also wonder if maybe he will seek me out for feedback on what I thought of the performance. We will have plenty of time to discuss it.

Middle School Bully

You know, actually, I have, relatively speaking, a lot of patience. I can wait until the afterlife before talking, for example, to my grade school bully, should we both occupy the same territory within the afterlife. When I have a chance, as in whenever I have an infinite number of moments to spare, I will seek him out, remind him that he gave me quite a difficult time in middle school. In the afterlife, I imagine we will all have a perfect memory, whether we like it or not, as we will likely be held accountable for each decision we ever made. My grade school bully will remember that morning when he and 10 of his cohorts surrounded me in an empty hallway before school, smelling of cigarettes and lacking in bathing experience. And then I will add that if it would have just been him alone, I still would have told him that I did not want to fight him. But if my grade school bully had insisted in a fight, I certainly would have crushed him, as he was several inches shorter and significantly weaker than I. I am sure he would have to agree. By the way, his scrawny come-along’s attempt to trip me as I walked away was pitiful. Where is this pitiful pal now, anyway?  I suppose it could have been a lot worse (Bullied Kid Guns Down Classmates).

And then I would ask him what was going through his mind when he and his fellow toughie agreed to challenge my friend and me to a game of tackle football, a game that he never played, a game my friend and I had been playing since we were out of diapers. I wonder, especially after both of them were body-slammed into the dirt again and again. We will both have a good laugh then, and that will be about it. Well, I will probably admit that I might have appeared to deserve being picked on to a certain extent, and I might say that what I put up with helped me later in life to be react more quickly, decisively, forcefully, and with justice.

Driver Who Cut Me Off

Some of these conversations will be very interesting, though short. There are countless apologies I will have to make to people I cut off while rushing on the freeway to what will have ended up being an overwhelmingly insignificant destination. I misunderstood that in the apparent absence of courtesy on the Southern Californian interstate, I was not actually licensed to be a jerk. It was my fault, and I now realize that my actions, even if they had been more respectful of the space of my fellow drivers, would not have had even the slightest ripple effect that would have made much of a difference, as we are all here enjoying the afterlife now.

By the way, here is an interesting story about one driver who was rescued by another driver who probably cut her off (Woman Rescues Driver She Cut Off).

The Road Less Traveled

Probably many of the infinity of conversations will take place with my family and friends, playing what-if games and exploring scenarios to their various possible outcomes. For instance, remember that rainy evening when we were 9 years old? What if we had taken that idea of creating a ding-dong ditch video game by typing a program on my Atari 400, and, right then and there, made it a reality… instead of giving up after 10 minutes of brainstorming and 2 minutes of thumbing through the programming manual. We might have invented a novel, entertaining game that we could have refined, marketed to our friends, and eventually sold to hundreds, maybe thousands of kids, across multiple platforms, namely Atari, ColecoVision, and Nintendo. And then, later, we could have rolled out an adventure series, DingDongDitchQuest for the PC. We would then, in the afterlife, be discussing our early retirement as young gaming corporation tycoons.

Or, we could have been truck drivers, really, owned trucking companies and commanded fleets of big rigs, speaking to each other in CB code. You got your ears on? Good. Let’s talk for awhile about how we would have been the most bad ass of truck drivers.

Seb is at the age now where he is considering several possible career paths: professional candy taster, pancake chef, trained model builder, and, now, professional quad racer. I am sure Uncle Kyle will also have some suggestions on which field to consider.

Learning to Wander

Stand, wobble, balance and step, milestones of a toddler learning to walk. Like most toddlers, after taking my first steps, I was soon waddling pathways to new places. At the age of one, I was also learning to wander. Life was new, the world yet to be explored. Without a guide to show me the way ahead, I was fortunate to wander into precarious predicaments and escape unscathed.

On a crisp autumn morning of my earliest year, I embarked on my first adventure through suburbia. With my family’s black Labrador retriever companion, Snuffy, the adventure began at the family homestead, a modest ranch house in a master planned community of similar ranch-style houses in Leawood, Kansas.

Grandma was visiting from Seward, Nebraska, a town of about 3,000 in the center of corn country. She proudly shared child care duties with my parents. Both my parents commuted 10 miles to Kansas City to work at the federal building, my mom for Social Security Administration, my dad for Housing and Urban Development. My brother, Kyle, attended the 5th grade of Corinth Elementary around the corner from the house.

With most of our neighbors away for the day, the block was quiet. Surrounded by a fence, Snuffy and I, shoulder-to-shoulder, crunched through a thick blanket of dry oak and maple leaves covering the zoysia of the 1-acre lot. Beneath an overcast sky, we paced rough circles around the backyard. Meanwhile, Grandma completed her crosswords and let her last cup of coffee cool on the table.

Except for the weeping mortar coated powder blue, the house was plain and the amenities few: no swing, no slide, and no sandbox. Only mature trees, whose leaves were changing from the color of fire to burnt brown and falling all around us. Snuffy and I casually passed the morning kicking up clouds of dust. I ran my hand across the fence and felt the chilly bumps of the chain link crisscrossing. Snuffy sniffed a path to the backyard gate, where our adventure began.

The gate was latched without a padlock. Snuffy simply set his nose beneath the latch, tossed it upward and then leaned into the gate as it swung open. Our way was clear. The gate opened to a gently sloping hillside, and we raced downward to a creek that cut a secluded path through the neighborhood. Its deep banks abutted backyards of the single family dwellings set up on their large lots. I ran alongside Snuffy with my hand planted firmly on his back, as he panted and lapped the fresh air.

Our freedom run was at once exhilarating and awful, for a one-year-old should not be left alone to toddle and wander, neither through wilderness nor suburbia. Grandma’s mindset, perhaps, needed to adjust to a more metropolitan way of life. The yards of her youth were surrounded by several strands of barbed wire intended to keep the horses corralled inside the pasture, whereas the yards of mine were enclosed by fencing that was at once ergonomic and aesthetically pleasant. As Snuffy and I galloped toward the woods, Grandma unwisely assumed that the boy and his dog were confined to the roost.

What Grandma did not realize was that Snuffy was well known to the local animal control authority. He had found his way through the gate before. My parents had to hold onto his collar and hold him back every time the front door opened. Sometimes the grip was not strong enough, and Snuffy would shake loose, bolt through the door and run off.

Snuff senses the front door about to open. Whenever someone was near the door, he could be found nearby, waiting to bolt.

Once through the gate, Snuffy and I experienced freedom together for the first time. Gaining momentum, we broke through the tree line at the edge of the creek, waded across the shallow water of the creek bed and grappled up to the pavement of the Prairie Village Public Works Department storage yard. The area was shaded and vacant, except for a dirty white semi trailer.

The Prairie Village Public Works Department parking lot is like a playground for a one-year-old. I was happy enough to be toddling anywhere on two feet.

After noticing our absence, Grandma panicked. She called my mom, who told her to call the police. She then called the police. Her grandson was missing. He must have got out through the open gate and walked off. She last checked on him a half hour ago. He was with the dog. Grandma set the phone down and opened the back door to the house. She searched the yard and scanned the tree line looking for a sign of the boy and his dog. She did not see them. The dispatch responded that an officer would respond immediately.

From the public works yard, Snuffy and I journeyed onward. We padded forward across an adjacent lot, an empty parcel covered with tall grass, and on toward the intersection of West 83^rd and Mission Road. In the distance, a rapid stream of passenger vehicles and delivery trucks hurried through the intersection. As we approached the intersection, traffic signals arose into the daylight like gigantic bean stalks. We trotted ahead toward an imminent confrontation with suburban commuters.

Suddenly and without warning, a Leawood Police Officer knelt before us and blocked our way. “Where are you going, little boy?” he said, and that open-ended question halted the day’s adventure. Instead of riding home in the back of the dog pound cage, Snuffy rode home with me in the back of a police car. The police officer transmitted us a quarter of a mile home. After administering to Grandma a fierce scolding, the police officer delivered us safely home.

As time passed, this would not be the last time Snuffy and I wandered away together under Grandma’s care. On another day, again during school hours, Snuffy and I sought out my brother and wandered away from the backyard to Corinth Elementary. A teacher let us in the front entrance. His fellow classmates laughed and cheered as we walked through the classroom door and found that, in his embarrassment, Kyle had buried his face in his hands and put his head down on his desk. This time an administrator called Grandma to come and pick us up herself.

For these childcare transgressions, personally, I do not blame Grandma. No, for this excursion, I blame my dog, Snuffy. My youth was founded on these adventures, and I owe it to Grandma for letting me learn to wander. That Grandma trusted Snuffy and respected me enough—even as a one-year-old, to let me play outside on my own, I will forever remember and love Grandma.

Side Trips through the Desert of Southern California

We live in the area of Southern California kindly regarded though seldom derided as the Inland Empire. It’s an area known more for its tracts of rooftops and a prevalence of strip malls than for any attraction. A benefit to living in the middle of Southern California is its central location to many activities.

With the addition of a newborn, our excursions are somewhat limited for now, but we anticipate embarking on future adventures, most within a 60 mile radius of our home in Eastvale. Elia and I have lived in the area for several years and still are exploring to discover nearby activities for our family. We have been almost everywhere from Palm Desert to Los Angeles looking for new sights and landmarks. Although we’ve had to search, we’ve discovered something in just about every city of the desert valley east of Los Angeles.

In the mountains of Big Bear, one can ski, snowboard, mountain bike, and boat. In the winter, one can also make a snowman in any of the several public parks.

With a focus on affordability and non-obvious attraction, the following are some of the places we like to go as a family in or near the Inland Empire.

Palm Springs: Living Desert (http://www.livingdesert.org/) is a desert-themed zoo, home to animals, including several kinds of cats, native to deserts all around the world. Probably the best part of this zoo has nothing to do with animals and their habitat, rather it is the most amazing, gigantic, outdoor model train set that is about the size of half a city block.

Papa and Seb stand amazed at the edge of a vast model train landscape.

Redlands: Pharaoh’s Adventure Park (http://www.pharaohsadventurepark.com/) is a water park and theme park with medium-sized roller coasters. The Redlands Bowl (http://www.redlandsbowl.org/) is a place of frequent live entertainment throughout the summertime, including performances from a variety of musical groups and acting troupes.

Big Bear Lake: Big Bear Lake is a fairly rugged playground for mountain biking enthusiasts, skiers and snowboarders. This place is also a scenic destination for families. In the summer, on the south side of Big Bear Lake, a couple of boat tours cast off, one a normal boat tour with a presentation on the history of Big Bear Lake, and the other is a pirate themed boat tour. On the north side of the lake, there is a nature trail that leads up the mountainside from the Big Bear Discovery Center (http://www.bigbeardiscoverycenter.com). In the winter, huge snow hills are made for tubing, or your could opt to make a snowman at one of the public parks.

In one afternoon, we learn the history of Big Bear and the FMV of numerous lake houses.

Rancho Cucamonga: Victoria Gardens is a shopping quarter designed for the entire family. In the center of the shopping district is a park with an open garden, which frequently has live entertainment. In the midst of this upscale mall, a great place to sit and enjoy the sunshine with a draft beverage, the Yard House beer garden is in view of the central garden area. During summertime, there’s a synchronized outdoor splash fountain, where kids can play in the water for free. There’s also a $3 mock train ride that our boy loves. An outdoor playground around the corner from there is also nearby a fast food court, where we can find a frozen cherry lemonade.

Here comes Seb in the caboose of the Victoria Gardens mock train.

Riverside: The Mission Inn (http://www.missioninn.com/) is an old hotel–and, I mean, a really old hotel for Southern California, established in 1876. Aside from its architectural splendor and elegant accommodations, its claim to fame is that several of the POTUS have stayed the night here. Before Seb and Amelia were born, Elia and I had stayed here on a couple of occasions. Now that we have little ones, we visit the Mission Inn every winter for the Festival of Lights and an outdoor Christmas market featuring a small ice skating rink and fresh mini-donuts.

Grandma and Grandpa stand with Grandson in the driveway of the Mission Inn.

Ontario: A Rainforest Cafe restaurant in Ontario Mills Mall is a fairly cool
place to spend an hour or so. And if you go for drinks only, you don’t have to spend
a lot of money.

South Corona: Tom’s Farms (http://shop.tomsfarms.com/) is like an old style town with an assortment of cheap activities for small children. If you like Classic Rock and motorcycles, you’ll especially feel at home here. There is a large scale train ($2) that families can take their kids on, a carousel ($2) with bobbing horses and sleighs, small scale tractors ($2) kids can drive, and occasional carnivals that operate giant inflatable bounce obstacle courses. A full-time farmer’s mart sells countless varieties of fruits, nuts, soda-pops and fresh veggies.

Tom's Farms has a train loop featuring a covered bridge and crossing. On occasion, Tom himself has been spotted engineering trainloads of families around his farm.

Central Corona: I have always wanted to take my boy to the Fender Museum
(http://www.fendermuseum.com/), home of the Fender guitar. But he’s a little young for it yet. A place we have visited is the Citrus Park Splash Zone. It’s free fun in the summertime. My boy has finally embraced water and is manning up to brave new splash challenges of shooting water from squirt gun turrets and running through water gauntlets
(http://www.splash-pads.com/citrus-park-splash-zone/).

Old Town Temecula: This is another old style town with a variety of shops and
eateries. It’s home to Penny Pickles Workshop (http://www.pennypickles.org/), the Temecula Children’s Museum, a place where kids are allowed to run around, touch everything and explore science-like exhibits. Our boy has enjoyed his visits and usually gravitated to the player piano.

Eastvale: Eastvale, like many other communities in the Inland Empire, is home to
an abundance of families with small children. Public parks are all over the
place. We take our boy to a different park almost every weekend, and we meet
new kids and new families during every visit.

A traveling carnival set up a few blocks away give Seb and Chloe a chance to play.

Chino Hills: Chino Hills also has a somewhat smaller outdoor mall that is a bit
cozier than Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga. There’s a free splash
fountain for kids and canvas-shaded outdoor tables and cushion chairs for
families. The parks in Chino Hills are the most magnificent of any we have visited in the Inland Empire.

Chino: We have uncovered a number of airport cafes in the vicinity of where we live. An airport cafe is a food establishment adjacent to the runway of a local airport. Our family has dined in the D&D Airport Cafe in Riverside where we witnessed a personal aircraft take off and the Flabob Airport Cafe in Rubidoux where we saw a personal aircraft land. Our next stop is Flo’s Airport Cafe, where we will endeavor flight training.

Inside the Lines

And, of course, there are pricier, more obvious places to explore that are within a morning’s drive of the Inland Empire.

Beaches: Driving to the beach from the Inland Empire requires planning. While we do not need to spend a lot of cash to enjoy the waves and the sand, we might need to spend quite a bit of our precious time getting there. On a weekend day, we are sure to leave early, like around 8:30 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. If we leave our place much later than that, we expect to spend more than 2 hours in traffic going less than 5 mph and then we might have trouble finding a parking space whenever we finally arrive. The beaches are very popular, needless to say. To save some time on the drive home, we recently acquired a Fastrak account (http://www.91expresslanes.com/).

On a trip to San Diego, Elia and Seb wait for the next train at the Solana Beach Station.

Anaheim: Disneyland and California Adventure (http://disneyland.disney.go.com/) speak for themselves.

A dazzling light display helps us pass the hour we spend waiting in line for Small World.

Buena Park: Knott’s Berry Farm and Medieval Times are worthy recreational investments.

Irvine: Pretend City (http://pretendcity.org/) is an educational excursion for a toddler to learn the fundamentals of building a community, including earning and spending play paper money.

Pasadena: Griffith Park (http://www.griffithobservatory.org/) is vast and full of secrets.

Long Beach: Aquarium of the Pacific (http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/) is one of many aquariums along the Southern Californian Coast.

Santa Ana: The Santa Ana Zoo (http://www.santaanazoo.org/) is quite cheap, but needs upkeep.

Los Angeles: The Getty Center (http://www.getty.edu/) is an art museum that could be considered a work of art in and of itself. Universal City, Hollywood Bowl (http://www.hollywoodbowl.com/), and Center Theater Group (http://www.centertheatregroup.org/) all add character to the LA area.

Every aspect of the Getty Center is a work of art, including its structures and gardens.

San Diego: We could spend almost every weekend basking in San Diego’s perfect weather while strolling through Balboa Park (http://www.balboapark.org/), exploring the Safari Park (http://www.sdzsafaripark.org/), and learning about the world of animals at the San Diego Zoo (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/).

San Diego's Wild Animal Park is now known as Safari Park. However, wild animals--and wild children are plentiful here.

Many families call the Inland Empire home, so there are actually quite a few things for us to do here. The only catch is that we either have to pay to play, drive across town to get there, or both. It seems to have taken awhile for reliable entertainment to become established to support the massive housing boom that peaked here in 2007. Every time we find a new place, we experience a eureka moment. Maybe one of these weekends, we’ll share one with you.

What is the Meandering Sidewalk?

The meandering sidewalk is the wavy sidewalk that veers back and forth at the side of the road.  No matter how straight the street, the meandering sidewalk always wanders to and fro, never quite encroaching into a neighbor’s yard and never allowing the pedestrian to land a foot the gutter.  You will likely find the meandering sidewalk constructed in suburban neighborhoods where ample parkway exists for landscaping.   The community planner uses it to break up the monotonous alignments of straight-edge city blocks.  At about six feet in width, a meandering sidewalk can handle a mom and a dad walking side-by-side, each pushing a baby stroller.  Dual meandering sidewalks often straddle collector roads or greenways, allowing neighbors to amble and rove about their neighborhood.

Like the meandering sidewalk, I have wandered aside the straight and narrow path through life, fortunate to be protected by a master plan.  These stories I will tell here of family, friends, strangers, colleagues, inspirations, triumphs, lost causes, past, present and future, I want to share with you.  At times, I have found myself struggling to avoid the gutter, but I have also had countless stoop talks away from the path at a neighbor’s door.  Let us try and take a walk along the meandering sidewalk, and perhaps we’ll find a place along the way to stop for awhile, chat and enjoy life.

This is sidewalk was built with a revolutionary non-meandering option.

Meandering sidewalks are implemented best where pedestrians are expected. Do you notice the truck dealership?

A true meandering sidewalk will allow you wander away from your neighborhood and ramble on like a hobo on an after dinner walk.