Once a Reston resident

A World Defined by Construction

We traveled to Reston recently to conduct some business.  The changes in the area's infrastructure since our last trip in October of 2012 were pretty spectacular.

In October it seemed as if all of Northern Virginia was turned upside down.  This April the pieces seemed to be falling into place.  The Wiehle Silver Line Station looks the part and the new lanes on the beltway are just as confusing to a visitor as I thought they would be.

During those many years I worked in Reston I was convinced that residents operated on the theory that if you did not know exactly what lane you should be in at all times, that you had no business cluttering up the roads.

I was traveling from Southwest Virginia at the time on a regular enough basis that I could keep myself from being run over.  Now that our visits are more like every six months than every week, things are a little more challenging. 

The Toll Authority decided that I was not using my EasyPass enough so we had to send it back and they kept the money that was in the account.  Having to travel with quantities of quarters does not help the situation.

Still I am impressed with how the landscape has changed.  When I first visited the Dulles area in 1987, Route 28 was a congested two lane road.  I often wonder where it will all end.  After all the traffic jams do not seem to be disappearing only moving farther out.

We now live on the North Carolina coast, an area with almost no traffic. We are more used to land being shaped by wind and waves than man.  Here on our coast, buildings are constructed with the hope that they will survive the next storm not the pouding of millions of subway riders. 

We are actually lucky along the Crystal Coast, much of our construction is newer than what hurricane Sandy swept away in New Jersey.  When our house was built, it was constructed to the most current flood maps. We are a few miles back from the beach and are protected by Bogue Banks and its seriously strong vegetation.

Still mother nature manages to push around a lot of sand   Man's efforts at restoring sand that storms move is little more than a shell game.  In spite of that, we love the beach and do not want it to disappear so I applaud efforts to keep the inlets open and the beaches from disappearing. A lot of people benefit here from the beaches.  Also we are better protected because of dunes that are here. I am pleased that area officials value our sand and dunes so much.

I am particularly fond of the area in the town of Emerald Isle called the Point.  It is a very dynamic piece of sand.  In November of 2007 as this picture shows it was covered with water.  Today if you stand in the ocean where the sand ends and look back at where the 2007 photo was taken you will find over 1,400 feet of sand as you can see from this photo taken in April of 2013.

That is a lot of sand that mother nature has moved.  It certainly makes you appreciate the power of wind and waves and puts a little damper on any thoughts that we might have this world under control.

If you would like to read more about my most recent adventure on the Point, try this post, The End of the Sand. If all your beach memories have high rise condos in them, the Emerald Isle area is well worth visiting because that is not what beaches are really like.  Everyone needs to appreciate a strand of sand where there is almost nothing and we have places like that in Carteret County.

Emerald Isle is a place that you can have a beach vacation reminiscent of ones that we North Carolinians enjoyed so much in the fifties and sixties. Our area is not a Myrtle Beach and does not want to be Duck. We are pretty happy with our image of a family beach where everyone is welcome to enjoy the beach.

We have just published A Week at the Beach -The 2013 Travel Guide to Emerald Isle. On May 1 & 2 it is a free download.  It is a Kindle book but there is free software available to let you read it on almost anything.  Check out this webpage for details.

If you love beautiful uncrowded beaches, you will enjoy the book, its many pictures and maps and even recipes.  It is a beach lover's guide to loving a very special beach area.

Wishing for a Beach Evening in the City

'There were a lot of nights when I worked in the DC area that I wished for one of those nights when you get out of the car and you feel like you're at the beach.

Once in a while I have walked across the parking at the Kroger at Ridgewood Farms in Roanoke, VA and it briefly felt like a beach night.  I never got that feeling in Reston. Summer in the city is different. Maybe there are  too many roads or the buildings absorb too much heat.

The feeling of an evening at the beach is a curious mix of warmth, moisture, and breeze.  It is a little like the warmth encircles your body without really heating you up.  Just as you feel the heat getting ready to make the jump to your body, the breeze comes along and pushes away just enough of the heat to keep you comfortable.

Here on the Crystal Coast, it is not surprising that we often have evenings that feel like we are the beach.  The beach in fact is our neighbor and only a few miles away.  A strong sea breeze and the humidity of summer are almost always present.  We just need a day when the heat doesn't linger past six or seven PM.

Then if you are anywhere within a few miles of the beach, it still feels like you are at the beach.  That embracing warmth is a feeling that makes those of us who live here feel at home.

Heat in the city and at the beach are two different animals.  I've been really hot in the city a few times usually when I was wearing a suit and hiking to the Pentagon on an account call.

While in the city, the pavement and buildings absorb the heat, here on the coast, the water absorbs more heat that almost anything except people working outside.

Those days that I have been hot in the city, the cure is pretty simple, get into an air conditioned space and take off as many clothes as possible.  In the city it is almost like the heat is trapped in your clothing and not your body.

It's different here on the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. When you work outside, you start with as few clothes as possible except you add a straw hat.  If you work hard outside for a few hours even during the early morning hours, the heat will penetrate your whole body.  You can take your clothes off when you come inside, but unlike in the city, the heat is still in your body.  It is a lot like having a good workout in a very hot place.

When you come inside hot from mowing the yard, the only way to cool down is to get in the shower and turn on only the cold water.  With our waterlines not buried very deep, our summer water is never very cold, but it is the perfect temperature to cool an overheated person.

After cooling and readjusting to the inside world of little humidity, it is easy to go back into the heat as along as you don't stay for extended periods in the middle of the day. A trip outside when it is ninety degrees isn't much of a shock to system mainly because most of us on the coast don't cool our homes below 78F.If you keep your coastal home at 72F, each time you walk inside, it will feel like you have walked into a meat locker. 

There are days and nights that it never cools and never feels like you are at the beach.  You just feel like you are stuck in a sauna.  Fortunately for us those nights are rare and often confined to August with maybe a few nights in late July where the heat also never dissipates.

July 9, 2012 was a warm day across the east coast, but not as warm as the day before.  I expect as the sun gets behind the Longleaf pine trees and the bite of the heat of the day disappears, it is likely that the night like so many others will feel like a night at the beach.

While the warm feeling of being at the beach isn't as welcome in the summer as it is the cooler fall air, still it is a comfortable feeling that would have helped me get through all those nights in the city.

If you haven't had your escape from Northern Virginia and DC yet this year, give the Crystal Coast some thought.  We are about six hours from Reston.  Once you get here, you will find one of the greatest remaining family beaches in North Carolina.

Development hasn't been as dense as it has in many places.  Also we still have much of our natural vegetation.  In many areas you get to experience a Maritime forest.  You will also find some of the nicest and most accessible beaches on the east coast.

Our area is not an area of wall to wall high-rises and dozens of golf courses interspersed with outlet malls like Myrtle Beach.  It is a magical place protected on one side by Cape Lookout National Seashore and on the other side by the 158,000 acres of the Croatan National Forest.  The Marines at Camp Lejeune and the Atlantic ocean take care of the other two sides.

There are many special places like the Point at Emerald Isle out beyond the yellow house or the beaches of Hammocks Beach State Park that you reach by state owned pontoon boat. The Crystal Coast is a place where the residents seem to live without walls. Learning to live with the heat is just part of living in the South.  Enjoying the nights when the whole area feels like an evening at the beach is part of life on the coast.

My 87 page travel guide for Emerald Isle has all the information you need for a truly memorable holiday.  It is currently available for $4.99 in Kindle format with an iPad version in the works.  It can be read on any device by using the free kindle reader software on other devices.

If you give the Crystal Coast a chance, you might be really surprised at what a neat place it is.

Reston, the epicenter of shopping

A little over a week ago, we were listening to the NBC national news while eating our dinner at our home along North Carolina's Crystal Coast.  My wife and I both got up out of our chairs when we heard Brian Williams do the lead-in for a story about shopping from Reston Town Center.

By the time we got to the television, the cameras were rolling in front of the skating rink in Reston. It was pretty neat to see a place that has figured so prominently in our family's lives over the years on national television.

I still remember visiting Reston for the first time in 1987 when people still thought Dulles Airport would never make it.  I wonder if any of those who doubted the success of the airport are still around to see all the construction of the new rail line.

Later in 1992, I moved the base of operations for my Apple higher education team to Apple's Reston, Va office which was on Preston White Drive for many years before moving over to Town Center.  There were numerous times that I stayed at the Hyatt in Town Center. I cannot even count the number of meetings and dinners that I survived in and around Town Center.  I can even remember being snowed in there one Friday in a December long ago.

I decided to stay in Reston that night rather than risk the long drive back down Interstate 81 to Roanoke, Va.  I was excited until I figured out that all the shops and services in Town Center had closed because of the snow.  I made my way out of town early the next morning.

It was not unusual during my many years of working out of the Reston area for my wife to accompany me for at least one trip during the Christmas season. She enjoyed being overwhelmed by the Reston and Northern Virginia shopping experience.

My oldest daughter and her college roommate from Sweet Briar stayed at the town center Hyatt using some of my travel points after they graduated and embarked on their first job hunting experience.

Of course over the years I have done a fair amount of shopping at Town Center.  In a certain metaphorical way, it is the center of North Virginia shopping located between Tyson's Corner and all the more western based shopping.  It was certainly an appropriate spot for the national news to talk about Christmas shopping.

It is funny that even by 2006 which was the last year I worked in Northern Virginia, I had stopped doing my Reston Town Center shopping trips.  Though I was staying not far off of Wiehle, it was still quicker and easier to head over to Tyson's Corner if you knew exactly where you were headed.  Tyson's Corner also generally had more convenient parking, not to mention LL Bean's, Levenger, and the Apple Store.

Still if you are interesting in shopping, the Reston area has just about everything that one could imagine. There is still no LL Bean's, but I used to joke that if you couldn't find it near Reston, it probably wasn't being built anywhere.  We still enjoy visiting our grown children who live in the area.  We still hit some of our favorite spots like Trader Joe's and LL Bean.

The five years since I last worked in Reston have taken us to the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is much more peaceful on the coast of North Carolina than it is in Northern Virginia. As I am fond of mentioning, our parking spots are designed for extended cab trucks pulling a boat not a Toyota Prius with a bike rack.

The twenty minute trip to the shopping area in Morehead City is nothing like a run to Tyson's Corner.  While we find Belks, Walmart, TJ Maxx, and most of the smaller national stores, we still haven't gotten a Target.

Most of the truly local shopping has to come from Ace Hardware, Lowe's Home Improvement, Walgreen's. or some of the cute local shops in Swansboro.  It is a totally different shopping experience especially during the holiday season.  I am a little more geared to the laid back shopping experience now than I am to fighting for a parking space by Best Buy in Reston.  While we have a Best Buy in Morehead City, it is a baby one compared to the Reston one.

Every place has its good point, and shopping is one of Reston's which is why I guess it was featured on the national news.  Peace and quiet what you find at the beach in December.  The beach in the winter is about as far from the commercialism of the season as you can get.  Instead of extended hours, it is not unusual to find shortened hours. 

The different environment helps you to focus on what is important which happens to be the people in your life.  It also allows for the season to bring back some memories of Christmas trees from the past which is my favorite part of this time of year.

If the cold weather holds for December 26, we are hoping to make some peanut brittle which is a tradition that my mother kept up for most of our life.  Somehow doing peanut brittle seems a little more natural overlooking the mountains than within ear shot of the Toll Road.  Still I am sure there must be some great Reston Christmas traditions, maybe even some very good peanut brittle.  We are a lot closer to fresh peanuts.

The warm early winter that has made the east coast so comfortable has made for a very nice December at the beach. In fact the whole fall has been very pleasant.

There have been some stellar days over on the beach with shorts weather being very common.  It has been a season of where the signs of the changing season have yet to pan out.  Sometime the weather has been so good that I have been afraid that it would just disappear or that it was actually a dream.

Still I love to come visit Reston just because being there puts you in the middle of everything. By the same token, I also enjoy being on the side of a mountain high above the city or down on the coast where the nearest mall is 18 miles away.  Actually I really prefer having fish in my backyard to having a Target or a Walmart.

It is interesting that some of what made Reston unique has migrated to other spots.  We recently found a Trader Joe's just off Highway 64 in Cary, North Carolina. We even heard Wilmington, NC about an hour and a half from us is getting a Trader Joe's.  However, I think it is going to be a while before Reston is replaced as the epicenter of shopping.

Making progress on spring

Some years Northern Virginia, including Reston, goes direct from spring to summer, and then there is 2011.  Reston has seen some temperatures in the eighties followed by lows in thirties, and then there have been some days when the temperature did not get above fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

It has been a spring with even more changeable weather than normal. While April 16 will likely be another day when Reston is stuck in the fifties and gets very wet, it looks like the week of April 18 will be more reasonable with temperatures in the upper sixties heading to the mid seventies for at least a day.  More importantly the lows will be in the mid-fifties which will help greatly with the progress of spring plants.

While I have spent my share of springs in Northern Virginia, I prefer spring a litter farther south.  This year I have been able to watch spring unfold across Southwest Virginia, Central North Carolina, and NC's Crystal Coast. It has been an especially nice spring in North Carolina.

We saw the peak of spring in the Charlotte area on April 6 and in the last nine days we have watched spring roll across the coastal plains.  The weather on the coast has been close to unbelievable.  Our heat pumps haven't run for the last ten or eleven days.  I have had fun playing what I call the heat pump game. Our dogwoods have been in full bloom for a week, and now the azaleas are hitting their peak as the wisteria starts to fade.

We have had more than a few days in the eighties.  Fortunately some fog has shown up just when we needed cooling down. The fog just proved my point that Carolina fog is more useful than Canadian fog. I have managed to get out on the water in our skiff and to do a couple of early kayaking trips. We have had some especially beautiful spring mornings.

The weather has even warmed up enough that I have stuck my feet in the saltwater in order to keep cool.   We have had a fair amount of wind, but it hasn't been enough to keep me off the beaches.

Beside spring plants, construction towers often sprout in the Reston area in April  This year is no exception, and I was pleased to learn that the building of the Wiehle Ave. Metro Station has gotten started.  I am looking forward to being able to take the Metro on my Reston visits.  I might actually go into Washington more often if there is a reliable way around all the traffic.

Of course in early spring, visiting Reston or DC is way down on my list. I always want to make certain that the cold has been vanquished so I stay south usually until the summer heat appears.

First on the list in our coastal paradise is going fishing, and I have already managed a first fishing trip onto the White Oak River which is in my backyard.  Next on my list would be exploring the local beaches to see what the winter storms have wrought.  I have already done a couple surveys of the Point at Emerald Isle.  The fishing structure looks great near the shore.  Then I have to get the crop of tomatoes in the ground so I can start planning for that first tomato sandwich of the year the first week in June.  This year's tomatoes are in great shape already, and the first blooms opened on April 15.  I hope that doesn't mean the tax man gets a cut of my tomatoes.

After all the fishing, beach surveying, and tomatoes are on track, it is time to start taking care of our yard which is covered with an unusal grass called centipede.  It turns reddish brown in the winter and this year, the early greening of the yard was stopped by a late March frost.

Of course the frost only slowed it down. I took advantage of that to pull lots of wild onions.  Earlier this week I sprayed the yard for the weeds that I didn't catch with my pre-emergent weed killer.  On April 16, I will mow the yard for the first time this year. Centipede grass doesn't get fertizlized until June.  It actually doesn't grow very much in early spring which is fine with most of us here on the coast. Being used to the bluegrass yards in Southwest Virginia means that I am accustomed to mowing twice a week in the spring starting in late March.  Mowing once every two weeks like centipede yards require until late June is just fine with me.

While we are a few weeks ahead of Reston here on the coast, it won't take the Reston area long to catch up to our part of the Southern Outer Banks. Spring is a great time of year everywhere.   If the slow progress in North Virginia starts to depress you, just remember my friends in Canada sent me some pictures of their maple sugaring operation. The pictures were taken on April 10, and there was still over three feet of snow in the woods.

With luck, we will all survive the weekend of strong storms scheduled to start on April 16.  Here on the coast,  we can soon start thinking about summer while spring is hitting its stride in Northern Virginia.

Reston worries about its housing market?

I see from this Restonian article that the real estate blahs are also wandering the streets of Reston which at one time seemed to be immune from any bumps in the real estate market.

Our streets as you can see from the picture look a little different here on the coast.

Real estate has seen some similar challenges on the coast, but we have not seen many foreclosures. Also on the coast of North Carolina we never got too far beyond reasonable housing.  Our market even at the peak had new single family homes available for $219,000, and those homes were just seven or eight miles from the beach.

Now that the bubble has gone from home prices, you can buy one of those homes for $189,000.  We still have our share of more expensive homes, but the reality is that you can get a really nice three bedroom home with two baths in a community on the water with a swimming pool, clubhouse, and boat ramp for under $330,000.  Given the grand scale of American real estate, that is still a deal since the taxes on the home would be just slightly over $1,000.

Real estate is a very local business.  It can be very weird.  I can remember when we were looking for my daughter's townhouse in Reston.  She got faxes every morning, and often before she saw them,  the homes they were gone.  She ended up in a great spot, but paid $250,000 for a townhouse that was 30 plus years old.

At the time the price seemed ridiculous, but it was bought far enough before the bubble, that she got a great buy.  Now we are close to the bottom of the real estate cycle.  There are some great buys especially here on the coast where there are few buyers.  Yet most people have seen their portfolios decrease enough that buying a second home is seen as impossible.

Still the ones who manage to come up with the money will find some great buys.  I am getting ready to list this home in Pine Knoll Shores.  It occurred to me that $599,000 would likely buy a lot less in Reston than here on the coast. 

The Pine Knoll Shores home is across the street from Bogue Sound, around one half mile from gated private parking for beach access which costs $100 per year, and has over 3,300 square feet.  You can hear ocean waves from the immaculately landscaped yard.  The soundside golf course is just down the street as is the local marina.  More information is at this link on the Crystal Coast electronic village.

In Reston you pay for being close to the Toll Road and easy access to Washington.  Here on the Crystal Coast you pay for access to water.

They are different worlds.  Traffic is the bane of a Reston resident existence.  We like to see some traffic since it means tourists are coming and local businesses will thrive.

Heat in Reston slowly cooks you, heat here on the coast makes the ocean waves inviting.

A weekend in Reston often means fleeing the city and sitting in traffic.  Here we worry more about boat traffic on the weekend than car traffic.  Fortunately the ocean is pretty big and the county has more water than land.

A local eating place in Reston is often a large chain restaurant, a local place here is often like the Fairway, a small family run restaurant.

Reston area jobs are often high paying.  Here on the coast, jobs are a challenge to find.

The prices in our respective real estate markets reflect those realities.  Given a choice people would probably chose Reston style jobs in a pleasant laid back coastal environment like Carteret County.

Unfortunately it does not work that way.  The good news is that people often find times in their lives to appreciate places like Reston and NC's Crystal Coast.

I still miss the convenience of Reston, but there is a lot that I no longer, but my priorities have changed. You cannot even tell that I ever wore a wrist watch.

Read more about North Carolina's "secret to share" at the Crystal Coast Living Blog.

No distractions

One things that I do really well is focus.  My wife is always amazed at how I can keep doing something with the world collapsing around me.

I have a built-in filter that I guess developed over many years in the corporate world.  When I worked for Apple, I learned to carefully select where to put my time and effort.  Once the selection was made, a lot of the work was just trying to stay on task.

When I worked in Reston I though initially that being away from wife and any effort to have family time in the evening would free me to do more focused work.

It actually turned out to be the opposite.  People who worked for me knew when I was in Reston.  I could almost roll from the bed to the chair by my computer.  Instant messaging and phone calls went far longer than when I was home in Roanoke.

On top of that being in Reston seemed to put me in the center of what was happening.  The Washington Post became an addiction.  Then there was the background noise, always traffic, plenty of airplanes, and sometimes sirens.  While that noise doesn't stop you from doing anything, it does work on you.

Even meals in Reston were more of a distraction.  It was harder to get to the grocery store, and going out to a meal was far more complex and expensive than in Roanoke.

The pictures in this post were taken this morning on the White Oak River where I went kayaking before breakfast.

There were no distractions.  There were hardly any ripples in the surface of the river.  It was just me, the river, my kayak, and the noise of my paddle dipping into the water.

It is hard to appreciate how much background noise and clutter you work around until you can enjoy a place like the White Oak.

I like to think that when I come in from kayaking that my brain has cleared. This morning I had the benefit of a nice bike ride and some swimming before I even got in my kayak.

I have been struggling a little at keeping up on my blogs.  I only managed one post in the last week which puts me several posts behind.  Now I feel like the river has freed my mind, and I can get back to writing.

There were many days in Reston when I could have used a trip to White Oak.  That turns out to be a long trip from Reston.  Maybe given the high cost of fuel, the best way to visit would be through my latest YouTube video.

It that doesn't help try some of the pictures on my CoastalNC.org website.

Above the treetops

When I first started coming to Reston in the summer of 1987, I did not pay a lot of attention to the skies.

We had just moved down from Halifax, NS and were living in Columbia, Md.  Just getting on the beltway and making it to our office in Reston was major victory for some who biggest traffic worries had been the Halifax rotaries.

Our move to Roanoke gave me a few years vacation from coming to Reston.  In 1993 when I became manager of higher education business in the Mid-Atlantic, I quickly moved our team from Columbia to Reston.

It turned out to be a wise decision.  Not many years passed before the Columbia office was closed and the Reston office for Apple was the only one between New York and Atlanta.  After a few years of coming to Reston, I started to appreciate the convenience of Reston.

I really enjoyed working in the area.  Besides fighting the traffic, only one thing would get to me.  As I would come in the Northern Virginia from the west, I could almost always see the haze.  Somehow descending into the haze was a good metaphor for selling computer to the enterprise for a company who clearly only wanted to consumer business.

Still Reston was a great place, and I used to enjoy some of the spectacular sunsets, but I never could find a place where I could capture one.

As the years moved on and we got past 2000, our perch on the mountain in Roanoke was witness to a changing environment in the valley below us.  As more and more trucks poured down Interstate 81, Roanoke became victim the same haze that covers Northern Virginia.  The signature view that is at the top of my View from the Mountain blog became a lot harder to capture.

Roanoke and Reston still get blue sky days after a rain or some particularly strong winds, but truly blue skies are not the default.

You cannot have that many cars and trucks and not pay the price.  If you live in it, you do not see it.

Coming from the coast where blue skies are the rule, it is especially noticeable.  What is also easy to detect is how quickly those of us who get hooked on those blue skies complain went they are not around.

The picture in the post was taken yesterday morning. It is the sky above our home in Bluewater Cove, near Cape Carteret, NC.

Today was abnormally cool for this time of year at about 50 degrees, it was also cloudy with no sunshine. We were coming back from a walk in the tidal marshes this afternoon, and I started complaining about the lack of blue skies.

My wife quickly brought me back to reality.  She pointed out that we had blue skies almost all week except at sunset when we seemed to pick up some light clouds.

It shocked me that I could react so strongly to one day of clouds.  I guess it is time for winter to be over so we can all be out in the sunshine in our shorts.

The good news is that the strawberries are ripe here on the NC Coast so I suspect warmer temperatures and even more sunshine are on the way.  Now if we can just get the wind to stop blowing.

Balancing the urban world of Reston

It is good that some of us prefer to live in the middle of nowhere.  Though Reston has lots of green space compared to a place like Tyson's Corner, it is all relative.

Our coastal home is about two miles from this marsh area in the Croatan National Forest.  The trails through the park are wonderful.

Those of us who live close by are fortunate to be able to enjoy them all year.  Since the weather on the North Carolina coast is rarely too cold for a hike, we wander through the marshes even more in the winter than we do in the summer when it can be hot and humid.

This being Easter weekend, the campground near this marsh is full of people, many from far away and some even from Virginia.

Camping has changed a lot, and as we did a swing through the campground last evening, we only saw one tent and one set of college guys trying to figure out how to make a tent out of a tarp.

No matter where you are rains wash what is on the roads into the streams and rivers.  We do not have a lot of roads but we do have a lot of marsh land which filters the run off.  The coastal rivers are also full of nature's live filter, the oyster, which filters water at up to 1.3 gallons per hour.

In a certain sense places like the Croatan National Forest and NC's Crystal Coast provide a balance to the urban development of places like Raleigh and Reston.

Friday as I was dodging oyster beds coming in from the river, I did not have such positive thoughts about the oysters.  The next time I come in from the White Oak River to our marina, I will try to remember that oysters, even when we aren't eating them, and marshes, wherever they may be, are great treasures which we are lucky to have in this rapidly urbanizing world.

How do you know if you are living in the right spot?

I can still remember moving from McLean to Reston.  We had been renting an apartment near Tyson's Corner.

McLean was a great location, but there was nothing affordable for sale.  We started looking, and it was clear that Reston was as close in as we could afford.

Reston had all the things needed.  It was convenient to work. That was especially the case for me since my work was at Apple over on Preston White Drive.

Reston also felt safe and there were trees, lots of services, and a number of reasonably priced places to eat.  Also when we got up in the morning, you felt a little protected from the world of traffic jams and beltway news.  The townhouse seemed to offer a little preserve of sanity in a world that moved pretty fast.

Reston turned out to be a good place to live.  No place is perfect, but given the alternatives in Northern Virginia, Reston is and was a good place to call home.

As a Realtor® I often talk to people who are deciding where to live.  We all have different things that make us happy.  Those things change over time.  After I graduated from college, I moved to Canada and ended up running a cattle operation for ten years.  It was not what I had planned to do, but inexpensive land, the desire to work out of doors, and the need to challenge the wilderness made Canada the right spot.

At the time I also loved cold weather and snow.  There were few things that I enjoyed more than a good snow storm.  We all change, and as I have aged, having six inches of freshly fallen snow for cross country skiing is not longer a high priority.  That was one of the reasons we moved back to the states.

Having access to federal contractors and high level government executives is also farther down the list today.  So living in Reston is also not my first choice.

What I do want is to walk outside in the morning and not have my system jolted by cold weather. I really miss living in Canada, but I do not miss the cold weather.

Walking out my door this morning and finding the temperature already at almost 65 degrees at 8 am is just about right.  While we have some great friend living in Edmonton, Alberta, you know it is cold there if your wake up temperature is more than triple theirs.

Seeing a White Heron in the distance from the dock behind my house is just icing on the cake.  In addition to being in the midst of natural beauty in a temperate climate, I enjoy the seven minutes of my commute to work.

Part of the commute is through farmland and the rest is down the two lanes of Highway 58 which crosses over the marshes of the White Oak River and and through some pieces of Croatan National Forest. Before I get down to the stoplight and make the turn onto the four lanes of Route 24, I pass a boat dealership, a golf cart dealer, and one of our favorite restaurants.

Our four lane road is nothing like a four lane road in Northern Virginia.  It is much less crowded, and in the space of a few hundred yards, I get to drive by our combined bank, liquor store, and police department.  The new, almost completed Walgreen's stands silently in front of our video store, Chinese Restaurant, Lowe's Grocery, and Lowe's Home Improvement.

Then just across the road from our office is our church.  Though we live a little ways out in the country, our world is a neat, nicely contained neighborhood that makes me feel comfortable.  I am pleased to be living here.  All the services that I can think of are nearby, and there are few places more beautiful.

The services, weather, and scenery are not the only reasons, but they are important ones.

My favorite reason for being here is if I miss the turn onto the four lane road, I end up over at Emerald Isle stuck enjoying the beaches. 

The fact that a mistake in my commute can put me on the beach is a pretty good indication that I am living in the right spot for me.

What makes a place feel like home?

A view like this from our back deck can make you feel like you are home.  But often it takes more than a view to make a place really seem like home.

During most of my corporate career I traveled a lot.  We lived in Roanoke, Va for over eighteen years. 

Much of that time I was driving up Interstate 81 and spending time in Reston at Apple's office beside the Dulles Toll Road.

Eventually I got to the point that I could no longer take staying in a hotel.  It did not matter how fancy the hotel happened to be.  I just wanted something that did not change and felt like home.

I was lucky in that my oldest daughter graduated about that time, and we rented a two bedroom apartment in McLean.  The first summer my son came up and slept on the living room floor so he could do an intern job.

It wasn't too long before my daughter bought a three bedroom townhouse in Reston.  That became my second home. The smallest bedroom became mine temporarily.  I could leave clothes and toiletries three.  I didn't have to make reservations, and I got to spend time with my Northern Va. family.

While having a bed and my own space was a huge step towards home, having familiar surroundings outside the home also plays a big part in making an area feel like home.

In today's world more often than not the stores are same, only the people change.  Still there are differences.  I used to enjoy an occasional visit to Reston Kabob.  There were many nights when we would meet for dinner at Marie's at South Lakes Plaza. Marie's which has been gone a while was a family kind of place.  They knew me since I would grab lunch there also at least once a week.

Beyond the restaurants there were the grocery stores since I always cooked my own breakfast and tried to a cook a meal or two when I was visiting.  I used to frequent the Giant on North Shore.  It was small and sometimes even ran out of chicken breast or hamburger, but I could get in and out of there in a couple of minutes.

Of course having a Books a Million and a Barnes Noble was like having a dream come true to a reading addict.

Still my favorite spot was Whole Foods.  While I enjoyed Trader Joe's, I often marveled at the plants and exotic foods that made it to the shelves of Whole Foods.  Some of the things I enjoyed from Whole Foods became such a part of my routine that I would load a cooler up with ice and take them home to Roanoke.

The other night we were headed from Roanoke to Cape Carteret to find some warmth, and I was on a mission.  I wanted to find the Whole Foods in Cary, NC.  It did not take a lot of effort.  It was  just a  short distance from where 64E run into US1 N.

When we turned into the parking lot late that evening part of me felt like I was home in Reston.

It was a good feeling finding some familiar things that had long been absent from my routine.  I was saddened to find that Icelandic Salmon no longer makes it to Whole Food's cases, but there was no shortage of good things that could be replacements. 

It was a great experience aside from having to drag my wife out of the orchids at the front of the store.  She was overwhelmed.

As much as well known stores and a house with your things can help make a place field like home, routine and rhythm also play a part.

Every place has a different rhythm.  Synchronizing yourself with it makes you feel part of the place.

In Reston, traffic is one of the key rhythms. You learn to structure your life around the traffic jams.  Timing what you do according to traffic flow becomes second nature.  You go to lunch when you know you can find a parking place.

In Roanoke ice and storms in the winter immediately restructure people's lives.  If you live on a steep hill, you know when the sun will melt the ice and likely what time in the afternoon that it will refreeze.  You make plans around those times.  Some roads you just avoid when ice is prevalent.

In Cape Carteret, we are even closer to the elements. Weather is a big topic just like it used to be when we lived on a farm in Canada.  When the weather is good or there is beautiful sunset on tap, you will find people making time to enjoy it.

Beyond that the shifting regularity of the times for high and low tides often adds structure to our lives. We are in place with lots of water spread very thinly so it makes sense for people to know when low tide will arrive.

Finally it takes people to make you feel at home.  In Reston I had family and an office family.  Most weekends I was home so my church family and other friends remained in Roanoke.

Now that we are in Cape Carteret, I have an office family, a church family, and a neighborhood which is southern enough that I actually know several of the my neighbors.  We have also started making some other friends.  It's pretty easy to do here on the coast.

The stores here are pretty different from Reston and Roanoke.   We do have an Ace and a Lowe's Home Improvement, but there is no Giant and no Kroger (the Roanoke grocery store of choice).  And the closest Whole Foods is about 2.5 hours away.

Yet I do believe that the most important thing in making a home is your mindset.  If you want to find the good in place you will find it.

My Giant on North Shore and Marie's are gone.  Reston will never feel like the same home again.  I have changed also, and my office family is long gone.

Even in Roanoke, my neighborhood Ace Hardware disappeared. We recently visited our favorite inexpensive restaurant, the Pancake House, and they were closed temporarily due to the lack of help.  Roanoke might never be the same home again either. It has changed along with me.

So we cannot depend on stores to make a home for us, we have to put our trust in our own minds to build our homes with the pieces that we find and our own changed realities.

Sometimes we move and have to regroup the pieces, but it can be a very positive experience.  Change is constant, and you can always go home if you carry part of it with you in your head and look for the good in your new surroundings.

Maybe that mindset is why I have managed to be happy for so long.