#2 negative - smog

august will be the last month of the sky is big in pasadena.  

i have accepted a position at salford mennonite church in harleysville, pennsylvania.  we will be moving in september, so august will be my farewell month to the city of pasadena.  when we moved here from virginia i posted a list of the ten things i would miss most about harrisonburg.  i figured that would be a good way to end our time here, so each day i will be doing one final rundown of life in this great city.  i have prepared two lists - ten things i won't be sad to leave behind, and twenty of my absolute favorite things about pasadena.  i am going to start with ten positives and ten negatives, alternating back and forth each day.  concluding with my top ten things about life in pasadena.

#2 negative - smog
 

while it might make for a beautiful skyline, the pollution hanging in the air above pasadena is really pretty terrible.  i hear it is much better than it was even a few decades ago - and all i have to say to that is i am surprised people were willing to live in that.  when we moved here four years ago i had very mild seasonal allergies (almost none in fact).  after a year of living here i had to take off the shelf allergy medication to make it through certain seasons.  by the end of the second year i was taking those pills almost every day.  by year three i finally got a prescription product, and now in year four i can already feel that starting to lose its effect.  

simply put, there is just a lot of garbage in our air here.  this article ranks los angeles county as the second worst place to live in the usa based on air quality (second to bakersfield, ca...  wow).  needless to say, we won't miss this - especially as parents of a young child.  it is time to get her some cleaner air.

nasa's jpl

the jet propulsion laboratory sits in amongst the mountains - and as this photo demonstrates, looks much like its own city from a distance.

we breathe this stuff in??

this calm landscape image of the san gabriel valley shows just how much garbage we get to breathe in. los angeles county is working hard to clean the air, but click on the image and you can see a noticable brown smudge across the horizon. riding a bike, running or jogging, you inhale deeply, and sadly don't always get the cleanest mouthful.

but i hear it used to be much worse... like not being able to even see the mountains from pasadena.

above the 210

i like the irony of this picture. empty tracks, a busy freeway, and the constant summer haze over it all. i can't wait for the sky to clear a bit as fall arrives.

for now i'm heading out of town once again. flying east to once again be involved in a wedding (the third one this summer!!). this time my good friend steve is getting married in ontario. i'll be posting more from pasadena and may sprinkle a few from canada while i'm on the road, or once i get back. comments are always welcome, but i may not be able to respond as quickly as i would like to.

light on a hill

this picture was taken on a recent bike ride, on our way down camino san rafael - quite possibly the best downhill ride i've ever taken on a bicycle. you can see a very hazy downtown los angeles in the distance, and meredith and tim flying down the hill on their bikes.