Going South Smiling

As I watch the unsurprising results of electing an inexperienced and relatively left-leaning president come in much faster than I expected (and no I haven't forgotten that Bush kicked off this particular debacle by forgetting the economic principles he probably never understood -- or just as likely, he simply didn't care anymore and went along with the ideas flowing out of the initial panic), I decide not to worry about it and pay attention to what matters: Never mind the Educational IRAs being cut in half, we probably have enough equity in the house to send the boys to college anyway. Well, so long as our lending institution thinks so. I guess nothing's guaranteed.

All the same, Skzx and I had a look at UCI and UCSB. Once it stopped raining (and snowing in the high passes), the weather was beautiful. I've never been a great fan of Southern California, but that is largely my petty Northern California prejudice talking. I have to admit, oftentimes the winter weather is gorgeous. Hell, all year, what do I know. There is some scenery I haven't seen yet. Some nice plants here and there ...

Okay, look, I'm trying, okay? Point is, the kid took this trip with little intention of actually moving down there, but seeing the places for himself opened up some possibilities. Maybe he'll go down there after all. We'll see.

We spent the first night across the street from John Wayne Airport. I enjoyed the wafting aromas. Jet fuel always smells like going places. We had a free evening so we went up into Huntington Beach to see The International after eating at Islands. Pretty good: A slower pacing than Bond or Bourne, a more contemplative and realistic movie. Plus it was cool to recognize a tile floor in Milan I've walked on (you may now roll your eyes). Next morning the fact that the hotel soap looked like a slice of cheese was not nearly as annoying as the three bottles of ... whatever they were. One, shampoo. I understood that. But I couldn't figure out which of the other two bottles was a hair conditioner and which a conditioning cleanser for the skin. To a rube like me they just weren't clear, and I really didn't want to put skin lotion in my scalp. Pissed me off.

UC Irvine is mere blocks from JWA but it is also in Orange County so it took me over half an hour to find it. That place! There are freeways every which way, the boulevards are continually curving in different directions, and somehow I couldn't get my compass bearings (didn't have a detailed enough map either). There's a lagoon or something and we wound up on the wrong side of it and had to go around. It was nuts. But what the hell, the weather was nice. Once there we got some coffee and walked around until it was time for the tour to start at the Visitor Center.

"Are you interested in taking the noon tour?"

"Sure, or we'll take the old tour, either one, never been here before anyway."

Sometimes having rock-and-roll-and-firearms hearing makes me such a dork.

UC Irvine was built in the 1960s during those flush times when California had a top-notch educational system and the growing aerospace industry was paying for everything from exhibits at Disneyland to freeways and subdivisions. The architecture shows it. Most of the buildings have a late-60s concrete-future look to them. They're not at all unaesthetic. Just somewhat quaint, in that way buildings are whose architecture is about halfway between ugly out of style and cool retro. I don't mean to criticize. The place is a park. Lovely, green, full of trees and sculpture and sunshine. And students, duh, full of energy and promise and mischief. It was a very cool thing for Skzx to see. Plus one of the housing sections is named Middle Earth, which is sort of dorky but sort of cool. We were only disappointed that it was run by "Administration" and not by a High Council.

The late afternoon drive across L.A. and into Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties wasn't bad at all. Never really hit what I would call bad traffic. Can't account for that but not complaining. It was neat to see the famous names on the exits -- Sepulveda, Wilshire, Hollywood, Beverly Hills. Some day maybe we'll check them out -- yes, I've never really been there. But just as every other time, we had somewhere to go. Enjoyed the drive along the coast. We were pretty impressed with this palm-studded island out there on the end of its own pier. Thought, damn, someone's got some MO NAY. Only later learned it's a dressed up pipeline terminus built by Richland Oil in the 50s. Okay, whatev.

At UCSB I dropped Skzx off to hang with a couple high school friends going there and found us lodging and hung around the room feeling brain-dead. Not from the drive. I just wasn't as energetically creative as I thought a free evening would inspire me to be. Funny how we get. At least I didn't watch TV. Next day he audited a couple classes (well, visited) and met me for the noon tour. Same deal, different campus. Santa Barbara is weird to me. It's its own little world. There's really nothing out there but ocean and students. Not much in the way of a local town. This makes it a very pleasant cocoon and to someone whose idea of a university sits smack in the middle of Berkeley and in view of San Francisco it is kind of weird. But hey, great school, all that. I liked the trees. Oh, and apparently Blu-ray technology was invented there. That doesn't impress me, and I doubt it anyway, but that's the sort of selling point a smart university puts out in front of its prospective freshmen. Maybe the consortium funded a little research. It's all good.

Majors? Engineering or Physics, that sort of thing. Watching me grow into an embittered old man for dropping the various arts I was good at in order merely to make a living doing the weird and incomprehensible things engineers do apparently didn't scare him off it. Besides, he wants to save the world. Alternate and inexhaustible energy development inspired me at first, why not him a generation later. God knows we need some good people working on that stuff and this kid, if he doesn't lose the vision, will make a difference.

So: It's all good. The same applies to my snarky comment up top about current political events. Whatever mistakes our new president makes now, I -- this is hard to admit but it's true -- I trust the guy. I trust him and his abilities and his intentions. Weird, iznit? So it's all good, selling half the house back to the bank to pay for a child's college degree notwithstanding.