There are three general routes that I take on my lunch hour walks, though I try not to take exactly the same path twice in a week. Yesterday, I chose the eastern route, intending to walk through the two green belts in the Serrano Park neighborhood of Lake Forest. I just missed the light at the cross walk at Cape May so rather than wait three or four minutes I continued north on Bake, thinking I would have less of a wait at the next light. About half a block later this classic-looking old white Rolls Royce appeared, travelling south. When it passed, there as a scraping noise coming from it, so I turned and watched as it approached the intersection of Bake and Irvine. It pulled over toward the curb, like the driver intended to stop, but did not slow down. Twice it actually touched the curb, the passenger side of the car lifting a few inches each time. Finally, it turned right and went out of sight, quickly followed by a sickening bang and crunch.

I stood motionless for about 15 seconds. If I had left my desk about a minute earlier, I would have been across the street into the business park and likely would not have seen or heard anything. If I continued on my walk, I would not have to get involved still. But it seemed to me there was something wrong with that car so maybe I should get involved. I started walking south. I had not gone very far when a short man with black hair and a mustache emerged from between the trees near the intersection and began running toward me, not sprinting, but not jogging either. As the distance between us shrank, I realized that he looked like the Rolls driver. I thought about whipping out my camera…hmmm, might be perceived as hostile. Instead I tried to read the label on his uniform shirt as it moved up and down… “R & S Auto”.

After a few seconds, I turned and looked to see where he was going. He continued at a steady pace north. I later learned that R & S Auto Care is a little European car repair shop about a half mile north of Irvine Blvd. on Bake.

When I got to the place where the car had disappeared from view, there were some black marks on the sidewalk and tire tracks on the lawn that covers an embankment between the street and the parking lot for the Emerson building near the northwest corner of the intersection at Bake and Irvine. It looked to me like the little mechanic had purposely turned there, short of the intersection, when it became clear the car wasn’t going to stop gracefully. A tree had done the trick that the brakes apparently could not. I doubt that Rolls will ever move again under it’s own power.

There were already five or six people milling around talking about it. Shortly, the Orange County Sheriff cars began arriving. Then a fire engine and paramedics from Station 38 (just a block away), followed by more and more Irvine PD units. Must have been a slow crime day. I started talking with one of the Sheriff officers. He had just taken my name and address when an Irvine officer approached and asked who was going to take this. West of Bake is Irvine while the east side is Lake Forest, which is patrolled by the Sheriff Department. They were no longer interested in my 2 cents.

I stood around for a few more minutes, then headed back to work. As I was walking through the parking lot, here comes a maroon Honda Accord with the little mechanic driving. Really made me glad I wasn’t in his shoes.

Lake Fuller reappeared, as is customary whenever there is more than about half an inch.

Remember this President? He lost the election after this appearance at what was billed as a Townhall Meeting in Torrance, CA, which I did see for myself. He went on to be a much better human rights champion than he ever was a President and also won a Nobel Peace Prize. So maybe if George Bush had lost the election, he could have won … naw, I don’t think so.

Our good friend Terry made his weekly trek to Disneyland, with his cousin Tom and not us, on Thursday. It was reportedly quite busy with a good many of the Saddleback Unified School District students whose schools were closed. Patty and I were working on our blogs: she transferred some content from her old website while I was learning about Google Adsense and WordPress upgrade procedures.

Most of yesterday (and into the wee hours of this morning) was spent on upgrading this site to the newest release of WordPress. It is amazing how things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. I thought I would be able to upgrade faster than the initial installation. For that one, I downloaded the WordPress zip file to my computer, expanded it, and then spent the better part of an hour uploading the resulting hundreds of files to the server via Windows Explorer’s FTP. This time, I wanted to upload the zip file to the server and expand it there with the Webshell provided by my webhost’s control panel. But for some unknown reason, the Webshell refused every logon attempt. (It’s working fine again now that the sun is shining .) So I proceeded to do it the the slow way again. But then Explorer’s FTP kept stopping with unknown errors part way through the upload. I finally resorted to comparing the contents of my local copy with what was shown on the server, one directory at a time, and uploading any missing files. Time to get Filezilla!

Sunday morning’s newspaper retrieval from the driveway revealed more clouds and much less smoke in the sky. I decided to try to read it on the back patio again after staying inside the previous two mornings. About an hour into it, I heard little hopping feet on the patio cover. Looking up, I see not one, but two scrub jays! A month ago, that would not have been surprising, but I have not seen Jay and Kay since October 2. These two were interested in the peanuts I held out, but not enough to take them from my outstretched hand. I dropped one on the patio and tossed one on the table. They each took one after a good deal of hesitation and sneaking up to them. After watching their performance, I think they might have been Larry and Maggie. (If you are unfamiliar with J, K, L, & M, their story is available here: A Scrub Jay Affair.)

The newspaper News section was dominated with fire coverage, including a story and pictures of the black and barren remains of Limestone Canyon/Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park. The park will be closed “a minimum of three months” according the Orange County Register article. After some watering (and fixing a couple of those clog-prone micro-sprinkler heads) I was itching to see if indeed the park was closed.

We drove north on El Toro Road then west on Glenn Ranch Road so that the park would be on the left. Sure enough, the gate was closed. Then as an after-thought we cruised on over to Foothill Ranch Elementary School where Patty’s good friend Carol works. The school sits on the southeast edge of Borrego Canyon, at the bottom of which is the main trail into Whiting Ranch.

View Larger Map

From the maps and stories in the newspaper, it appeared that the fire had burned throughout the park, but no structures had been lost. Up close and afterward, I couldn’t imagine how disaster had been averted. These photos, taken from the west and south side fences of the school grounds, tell the story better than I can.