John & Anne Wiley

2011/07/16

The Other Day

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 05:29

I wondered as a kid exactly what that meant: “The other day.” Clearly not today or even yesterday or tomorrow, but some other day. So the other day as we flew out to gawk at the royal polo gathering, we saw paragliders at Ellings Park near Hendry’s (aka Arroyo Burro) Beach.

1723 Hilltop Launch Area

1723 Hilltop Launch Area

This is reputed to be one of the best launching sites in North America because the soft grassy slope is just right, there’s usually a steady uphill breeze off the beach, and it’s fairly easy to glide across the street (out of view at the bottom) to the Wilcox (aka Douglas Preserve) and soar the updraft along the beach bluffs until you tire of that and land near the road where your chase car conveniently picks you up. This next pic was taken a moment later with more zoom, and I like how it shows the stages of takeoff.

1724 Ascent Of Man

1724 Ascent Of Man

I’m hopefully no more sexist than the next White Male, but if you click to view the largest version maybe you can tell as I kinda can from the full-size original that they’re all men ascending into the breeze. Anyway, coming back from the polo thing we saw what we’ve been told is Tom Cruise’s place near Oprah’s, and in the full-size of that one Anne can tell four women are in or sunning next to the pool – so maybe it is his place?

1791 Tom Cruise?

1791 Tom Cruise?

Then we climbed up to visit Tooth Rock (aka Cathedral Peak), and I caught one of my fav pix of this fav local rock.

1797 Tooth Rock

1797 Tooth Rock

2011/07/12

Hope expanded

Filed under: Aviation,by Anne,Flying,Has Photos,Nature,SB Region — Anne @ 20:40

John showed some of Hope Ranch in his last bog post, and I’m adding a photo I took the same day.   These were on 7-9-11, the day royals William and Kate came to the Santa Barbara Polo Club in Carpinteria, and we took a flight to see what we could capture.

When on the east coast, the homes and properties in the area around White Plains, in Westchester county, NY made these places in Hope Ranch seem small…

1552 Hope Ranch

1552 Hope Ranch

As we continued our flight toward the polo grounds, I enjoyed this view taken back across my, co-pilot seat, right shoulder

1555 Harbor & Wharf

1555 Harbor & Wharf

So, the places at Hope Ranch are lovely, but in terms of overall space, I think Oprah’s mansion in Montecito outdoes them all.  The spout in upper photo is actually a tall fountain on a lake in her back yard, and you can see how the property extends further out of sight at the top.  Well, there is another lake, unseen in this photo, that would be further below the photo, thus her front ‘yard’ is quite large.  It looks out across an expanse to the ocean, of course, something the Westchester folks don’t have!  Oh, and the pool on the right side of this photo is not someone else’s place – it is at Oprah’s poolside Guest house.

1559 Oprah's digs

1559 Oprah's digs

Pretty amazing place. What do you think?

~by Anne

All Kinds

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 03:12

One of the things we love about SB is the way cultures and classes mix more readily than in many other communities. On our 7/8 flight we got an aerial glimpse of that. Goleta Beach near the airport & UCSB is popular with a wide variety of people from across the spectrum.

1646 Goleta Beach

1646 Goleta Beach

Just a mile or two away, most homes in Hope Ranch are owned by gazillionaires, and we got a rare directive from ATC to fly relatively low over it for this closer look.

1652 Hope Ranch

1652 Hope Ranch

In between though, we enjoyed again one of our fav local sites just past Goleta Beach. Does this look like a scene from Maui?

1648 Maui, CA

1648 Maui, CA

So lush and “beachy” looking. I like to imagine sitting on the veranda sipping a mai tai listening to the tropical birds and gentle surf, watching a small plane slide past offshore.

2011/07/10

Mamarazzi

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 08:34

My little royalty junkie wanted to fly over Kate & William’s charity polo match near Carp today, so being an aviation junkie I quickly agreed. We got some great pix of other stuff, and flying around the area provided a bounty of glorious views. But in case anyone else share’s my better half’s fascination, here are a couple of our event pix. First, the scene from offshore.

1729 Polo Field

1729 Polo Field

The white flat-topped awning on the left edge is probably where the VIPs watched, and you can see the horses leaving the field (top-left) just as we arrived. I think the “cheap” $400 seats were on the right side. Presumably residents of the condos at the top and their guests got to watch for free.

Here’s one that we think is Kate (see the larger view on my Photo Page for Notes).

1785 Kate?

1785 Kate?

Completely impossible to tell from the air, but this maximum zoom snap from half a mile away does look like her. Maybe someone who was there can corroborate.

2011/07/09

Uptime

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 00:12

Back when I used to work on computers, uptime meant how long a machine would run without shutting down to restart. These days it means flying!

Today we took our friend Sky for a ride, and being an avid hiker he relished the chance to see all the roads and trails on private property in the hills, that are behind closed gates. One of the things I enjoyed was spotting interesting rocks that are new to me, like this “hot dog” near Carpinteria.

1661 Hot Dog Rock

1661 Hot Dog Rock

Nearby are two others I like, and the lower one looks to me like the head of a frowning old man (not me, I’m happy flying!).

1663 Frowner & Friend

1663 Frowner & Friend

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