John & Anne Wiley

As you know I especially enjoy looking at rock formations, freeway traffic jams, and designs while flying. No cause for alarm, because I’m not posting rock formations tonight. Nor do I have any automotive bottlenecks to share, because although SoCA provides plenty of those on most flights I seem to be the only person cruel enough to enjoy them. 🙂

No, tonight I’m back to architectural and landscape design curiosities in upper Montecito, plus a mystery object. First up, an old manse that reminds me of the place a rich distant relative used to have in Beverly Hills. I only went there perhaps three times in my life, but the memories are strong. As a small child, I recall playing with their expensive toys like a stamped metal gas station that had a cool ramp with upstairs parking. I also remember the manicured estate grounds with lawn and junipers in perfect balance.

7470 Old Monte Manse

I like this one’s subtle pink with white trim, the manicured grounds, and the swimming pool going native in front of the little colonial poolhouse. Those round wings are way cool too, though given a gazillion bux I’d have topped them with domed turrets with lots of windows that open so I could sit up there and take in the vista while counting $100 bills.

Quite a contrast with this one not far away. Check out that “pool” (actually a small lake) on the left and its attendant poolhouse. The ostentatious promenade between the rows of junipers. The little lawns with symmetrical hedged edges. The vine-encrusted Grecian columns out back. What else do you notice?

7472 Stately Estate

Take your time. Have another look. Anything unusual? Something stand out to you?

OK, so I got curious about that bright red object above the poolhouse. Check this out.

7472 Mystery

At first I thought it was something on the ground, but it’s in front of the water hose and casting no shadow. Now we were about 3,000′ altitude so I thought maybe it’s an especially high-flying kite. But something that shape wouldn’t fly very well. Besides, what shape is that?! Does it look to you like a small garden trowel or maybe a shovel or some sort of paddle? If it was say two feet long, how far away would it have been on this relatively long telephoto shot? How high would it have been? Biggest mystery of all: how the devil did it get there?! Unless someone shot it from a canon, it must have fallen from another plane. I do dimly recall ATC having pointed out a plane higher and going in the other direction, but what is this thing and how on earth did it manage to fall out? Any other ideas on what it is, or how it came to be in this pic?

After we flew over Ojai and landed in Santa Paula, our return flight that day was via Ventura. It was a lazy meander over football practice where eager kids were working to perfect their game.

7459 Ventura Football

We saw three different football fields that, from the air, were close together. I guess to some of those burly jocks the school rivalry made them seem worlds apart. Tomorrow morning I’ll send Edhat pix of all three fields and a look back across them all toward Camarillo, so tomorrow you can click the Edhat link here if you’d like to see them.

The downtown shopping area of Ventura is fun to wander, though I confess to a strong preference for Santa Barbara’s “Altered” State Street. It struck me how different the Ventura downtown looks from the air as in this pic.

7463 Downtown Ventura

It’s of course several blocks longer and there are many other interesting parts of that city, but the storefronts that you see from the street are such a small part of this view. I guess before we’d flown Our Town so many times, it must have looked dramatically different from the air too. Now our brains somehow combine the air and ground views so that from either vantage point we see a combined view in our mind’s eye. How vastly enriched our lives are from flying in Tripp, where we are still intimately connected with the earth and the works of nature and humanity! The realm of dreams.