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Note 409.1 Laguna Beach afficianados??? 1 of 4
MORO::THORNBURG_DO "DTN 535-4569 Irvine CA" 39 lines 14-FEB-1991 12:12
-< Y&N; Townsend was right, y'know! >-
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It used to be my favorite place in OC. But then,I used to be young &
beautiful, & now I'm not. Laguna used to be the shining bastion of
non-conformity, cooperative madness, and benign neglect of standards
(moral and otherwise). It has now become the Port of Irvine, complete
with Design Police to tell homeowners that they cannot move into their
homes because they used the wrong shade of beige on their ($1,000,000+)
new home.
I don't go there any more. It's too much like visiting the
grave of a friend. But of course I spent a lot of my childhood (ages
0-25) there, so it suffers from my having grown up, I suppose. And
I can't afford to park there, let alone eat or shop...
All the eating places are pretty good, and they are all either on PCH,
or within the (?) 6 blocks of "downtown". You can reasonably ( &
enjoyably) walk almost anywhere in the main part of town, between
Bluebird Canyon in the south, Boat Canyon in the north, and the
festival ground to the east. This is the only walking city in OC; I
envy the people of Boston for thier ambling ambiance.
I don't know specifically about bike rides per se; You can put a bike
on the back of the local bus that goes to Top of the World, and ride
like a complete maniac all the way down, but if you lose it, it's gonna
be skin-graft time. Major burgers.
And besides walking around town, (my fav. activity: looking for as many
different architectural styles as possible - they're all here
somewhere) you can walk on the beaches from Main Beach south for quite
a ways, or on the rocks/tide pools just north of MB, or snorkle/ body
surf/ tan / oogle in any of the coves N. & S. of MB.
Damn. Now that you've got me thinking about it, maybe I'll take the
rest of the day off & go down there... Nah, too much fun. Just upsets
the system.
Ambiguously,
Doug
|
| I was just out there last week for some meetings. I managed to fit in some
vacation time on each end of the trip, so I dragged my bike along.
I was in Irvine, so the surroundings were not as nice as being in Laguna itelf.
Rides;
Either direction up or down Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) are nice, though heavily
traveled. (South is probably your best shot, though there's a great beach area
just north of Laguna Beach.
You can go up Laguna Canyon. I did a loop through there from Irvine. Out of
the canyon take Alton, to Jeffrey, to Univeristy, to Campus, to MacArthur to PCH
back to Laguna. (It isn't as confusing as it sounds.) Loop was around 30 miles.
Expect to see lots of traffic wherever you ride.
Have fun.
Jim
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