On The Preserve

I ran again today, this time on the trail next to my house, not the street. This trail is on the edge of the campus preserve. At the top, it cuts west toward Newport Beach and to a promontory overlooking the 73 toll road. I liked being on the trail though at first I felt like a four-wheel drive in low gear. Still, I could move--and at times with ease on the flat sections. The run was my most enjoyable yet, and the farthest. At the top of the hill I sat for a while on a big section of rock, more or less flat, and gazed down at the six-lane toll road. I well remember the two-lane Newport Coast Highway that seemed more than adequate when we moved to UCI 18 years ago. Construction of the toll road was highly contested and protested at the time. Bison Road dead-ended at the highway. I have vivid memories of a graduate student I knew holding a protest sign at the intersection--to no avail, ultimately. I can't say that the six-lane toll road or the two-lane highway was obviously preferable, just as I could not judge that the now developed business park adjacent to the UCI campus was better or worse than having undeveloped fields. Each option--to develop or not--served different interests and different parties. Each involved choices and tradeoffs.