As many of you know, we’re considering a move to California this summer. I’m in San Diego for work this week and decided to stay where we’re looking to move so I could get a better feel for that specific area, the commute, etc.

While finding my way to church Sunday morning and driving around that same afternoon, I made a few small observations about the transportation system in Carlsbad, things that stood out to me as someone who’s lived in the DC area for more than ten years.

Observation # 1: Unless you’re talking about The 5 or other major highways, streets do not have numbers. They only have names.

Before I left my hotel, I got directions from Google. According to the map, I should go on Palomar Airport Rd and then turn onto County Highway S11.

With directions planted firmly in memory, I took off.

Ten minutes down Palomar Airport Rd, I knew I had missed the turn. County Highway S11 couldn’t possibly have been that far away based on the map. So I turned around and stopped at a 7-Eleven, which conveniently doubled as a coffee pit stop.

“Can you tell me how to get to County Highway S11?” I asked the clerk.

He had no idea.

Now…don’t go there. I know you did already but stop. Some 7-Eleven clerks actually do know where streets are and how to give directions! I haven’t met any of them but they must be out there!! They must.

Turns out, there is a County Highway S11 but it’s called El Camino Real.

Don't ask where County Route S11 is!

By the way, the 7-Eleven clerk told me he probably could give me directions if I knew the name of the street.

Observation # 2: You can drive really fast on “residential” streets. The speed limit on the main four-lane street that runs through our Maryland neighborhood is 30 mph.

Drivin' 55 on County Highway S11...er, El Camino Real. Notice the houses on the other side of that fence?

Observation # 3: There are lots and lots of traffic lights! And they can stay red for a really long time. It’s an odd juxtaposition with observation # 2.

Too Many Red Lights! (courtesy of Nataraj Metz via flickr; creative commons)

Observation # 4: Most of the streets have sidewalks. But even streets that lack sidewalks seem to have bike lanes.

As an added bonus, you can actually turn right at red lights because there is enough room!

Next month, we’re going to visit San Diego as a family. I bet we’ll come up with a few more observations so stay tuned.

As Lana mentioned earlier this week, we’ve been working on a much-needed site update. While you’ll notice the design change first, we also thought you might like to know a few other changes we made as well as a few changes we’ll make in the coming days and weeks.

First, we are incredibly thankful that many of you have been an active part of our lives over the past few years. However, we recognize that new people come to the site and don’t know who we are or why we started this site. So we created a few new pages to give the basic gist of our story and tell a little about us and our girls Lauren, Carmen and Hope.  If you are new to the site or just want to learn more about us, feel free to click on the images on the right side of this page.

Second, we added the ability to share posts via Twitter and Facebook. When you click on a post, you’ll notice two buttons on the left side of each page. Feel free to use them or not.

Third, we cleaned up the sidebar, moving the categories and the archive to the top.

In the next few weeks, we’ll update the welcome page to depict our journey through key stages with Carmen: initial diagnosis, adjusting to life with a child with Tay Sachs, day-to-day life, nearing the end, loss and grief, and moving forward. Our hope is that this will be a useful resource for those who just found out that they have a child with Tay Sachs or for those who know children with similar diseases.

We’ll also tweak things here and there until we get it just right.

Let us know what you think!