Once a Reston resident

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.

Summer in the city

Summer in the city obviously looks nothing like this beach picture.  If it did, we would all be flocking to the city.

There are a couple of things that I remember as being nice during a summer in Reston.  One was that traffic thinned enough to be noticed.

The other was city life itself seemed to back off from its normal intensity just a little.  Of course the morning rush hour was still there on Wiehle, and there was still plenty of traffic for most people's tastes.

It is hard not to say that there are better places to be than the Washington Metro area in summer. The truth is that almost no one wants to be in the city during the summer.  To measure the truth of the statement, just get on one of the main roads out of town on a Friday before a weekend.

I used to try to leave my Reston office on Thursdays during the summer just to stay off Interstates 66 & 81 on Fridays.  I doubt it has gotten any better in the five years since I stopped working in Reston.  I know that during our spring visit, I was impressed with the amount of road upheaval.  To an outsider it might look like the guts are being changed in the area's infrastructure.  However, they didn't live through the mixing bowl construction.

My theory on summer in the city is simple.  Streets, buildings, and concrete all absorb heat and then radiate it at night.  In spite of Reston having more trees than many urban areas, it is impossible to escape the heat.  Of course all the trees help stop any thought of cooling breezes.

Having the buildings act as a giant heat sink could be useful in winter, but unfortunately I don't think it works that way. All the concrete seems to absorb cold and intensify the cold during the winter.

So it is that everyone looks forward to getting out of the city in the summer.  People just want to get away from the heat, roads, people, and traffic.  Ideally you want to find a lake, beach or some body of water, and Reston's manmade lakes really don't count.

Virginia doesn't have a lot of lakes so there is no quick escape like Lake Norman provides for Charlotte.  Of course there is the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River, but somehow a real escape seems to demand a little more travel and a little less traffic.

Crossing over to Maryland's Eastern Shore and perhaps heading to Rehoboth Beach or one of the other Delaware beaches is an option that can be done in under 3.5 hours if there is no traffic according to Google maps.  Taking the trip to four hours can get you to Virginia Beach, but it is almost as urban as Reston.

About four hours will get you to Smith Mountain Lake near Roanoke. Four hours will also get you to Kerr/Buggs Island Lake which is the middle of lot of Virginia countryside.   All those venues have their advocates, and they certainly have the advantage of relatively short driving times.

A couple of more hours, give or take a few minutes, will get you to some serious North Carolina beaches.  Most people from the Reston area are familiar with Corolla, Duck, Kitty Hawk, and Nags Head. Add another hour and you can be on Hatteras Island waiting in line for the ferry to Ocracoke.

Depending on the traffic gods, you can probably get to North Carolina's lesser known Crystal Coast in about six hours.  My wife and I have made it from the Wiehle entrance on the toll road to the stoplight by the Emerald Isle bridge in six hours at least a couple of times even with the inevitable traffic in Fredericksburg.

I won't pretend to know about Rehoboth Beach or any of the other Delaware beaches, but I do know the North Carolina beaches very well.  I grew up going to them, and never stopped visiting until I managed to find a spot near the beach where I could live.

The area south of Ocracoke Island is sometimes called the Southern Outer Banks.  Cape Lookout National Seashore is part of the area and is only accessible by boat.  There are 56 miles or so of wild isolated beaches there.

The real attraction of the Southern Outer Banks is the Crystal Coast which stretches from Beaufort, NC to Swansboro, NC.  The heart of the area is a strand of beach which runs from Fort Macon State Park near Atlantic to the Point of Emerald Isle. 

The area has about twenty one miles of beautiful beach with a population density of about half of what you would find in one of the Delaware beaches. The area is even on the doorstep of the 158,000 acres of the Croatan National Forest.  The National Forest and the National Seashore keep the area from becoming just another over-developed beach area.

There are a wide variety of accomodations available on the shore, but the majority of what you will find are single family homes available for weekly rentals.  There is one small oceanfront motel in Emerald Isle and a couple of larger ones up by Atlantic Beach.  There are some scattered condo complexes, but nothing like the wall to wall highrises in Myrtle Beach.

The area differs greatly from Myrtle Beach.  The main activities on the Crystal Coast are walking on the beach, fishing, boating, or visiting some of the area's historical sites. It is a peaceful area where stress is not part of the daily equation.

The Crystal Coast gets its name from the crystal clear waters that are usually found on its shores.  I have visited beaches from Assateague Island all the way to Myrtle Beach, and I think some of the best beaches on the east coast are within the town limits of Emerald Isle.  I have walked all the miles of beach within Emerald Isle's corporate boundaries at least three times since spring, and I am always amazed at the beauty of the beaches, and how there always seems to be space to enjoy the beach.

One of the unique things about the area is that the beaches face the south.  Having the ocean to the south instead of the east is a little different, but it has its advantages especially during the cooler months.

If summer in Reston has finally gotten to you, or if the 104F or 106F high temperatures in the forecast towards the end of the third week of July 2011 have you considering a quick exit from town, you can check out our forecast temperatures for Emerald Isle.

The water has been warm enough for dipping in since the end of May so it is nearly perfect now.  You can check water temperatures for much of the east coast at this link.  You will find our surf temperatures in the mid-eighties which is just enough to cool you off and to keep those super hot temperatures at bay.

Our area also has the advantage of being a great area for boating whether you choose the sound or one of the big coastal rivers.  Our traffic even on July 4th doesn't really compare to what anyone from Reston sees on a weekly basis so you can drop that worry because we are already past the season's peak traffic.

If you are planning on visiting, you can read lots more about the area at my Emerald Isle Travel Guide.

It is a unique area which has a real year round population.  So while you get the advantage of being at the beach, you don't have to give up any modern services. 

If you are a regular to Northern Outer Banks, you will be surprised at how much vegetation surrounds the homes in our beach communities and how laid back life is here on the Crystal Coast.

You might just the discover why the almost secret beaches that native North Carolinians have been enjoying for years are such a great place to live and visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A holiday shopping trip to the big city

Northern Virginia is a wonderful place to shop.  I doubt  there are many places where you can find so much shopping so conveniently located.  During my career at Apple Computer when I worked out of Reston, I would always try to bring my wife up for a holiday shopping trip.

Some of the trips stick in my mind.  One particularly nice visit around 2000 was when our corporate hotel was the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson's II.  We had a beautiful room, and we even got some snow and ice to strand us in the Ritz for 24 hours.  I think we managed a dinner at Maggiano's and breakfast at one of the food court shops.

Fortunately the weather cleared so my wife could visit Tyson's I which is her favorite mall.  There was a time when we would do a lot of holiday shopping, but now that our children are in their twenties and thirties, we only buy stocking presents.

With that in mind and some potential personal shopping for us, we made a visit to Reston just before Halloween this year.  It was actually a great time to hit the stores.  Our son took a day off from work and escorted us to Tyson's I.  As always we were amazed at the variety of stores, and at how many people wander the malls.

Our first stop as always was LL Bean's.   I made a quick trip to the men's department, found a pair of jeans, and then visited the sale racks where I found a couple of items.  My wife was still checking out the ladies clothes with our son when I took off to visit the Apple Store.  I wanted a copy of the newly released Microsoft Office for the Mac, and a firewire adapter cable.  After getting those items, I managed to have some hands on time with the new MacBook Air systems.

While I love Apple hardware, even I find it hard to justify their pricing.  I did finally buy my first new Mac in four years this fall.  It was an I5 iMac, and it is a great machine, but I do have a few bones to pick with Apple over the design.

After my wife finally decided that there were no clothes in LL Bean's that she needed, I got her to swing by the Apple Store for a quick look at the iPad.  It took her about one minute to decide that she would rather keep her laptop.  She did tell me that if we won the lottery, I could buy her a new MacBook Air.

Our next stop was the Vera Bradley Store.  I was pleased that they have a nice sofa for husbands.  It is great to have a place to relax while all the patterns are examined and debated.  The three ladies in our family are all multiple bag carrying Vera women.  When they all end up traveling together it looks like a Vera Bradley convention.

The staff at the Vera Bradley Store even gave bottles of water to my son and me to keep us hydrated during our shopping experience.  We managed to get out of the store without any purchases and wandered on through the mall.

I was surprised to see a Lego Store and a Steinway Store.  We had lunch at Coastal Flats.  I was amazed to find out that no cell phone worked there. According to my son, who is enough of a regular there to be welcomed by the staff,  I guess it has something to do with the movie theater being above the restaurant.  I am always suspicious in Northern Virginia when my cell phone doesn't work.  I end up looking for unlabeled buildings that might be jamming my signal

It was a great lunch, and a nice follow-up to our dinner the night before at their sister restaurant, Sweetwater Taver.  As we left the mall we visited a couple of children's stores to look for bargains for our granddaughter, and I made a stop at Levenger's just to look at all the neat things that I don't really need.

My wife made it through Tyson's I without buying anything.  I was not surprised. She is a frugal shopper, and she will only buy something when she has found a deal.

She convinced me to drive by our old apartment (now condominium) just north of Tyson's on Chain Bridge Road. I shared the apartment in McLean for a couple of years with my daughter and son just after they got out of college and started working.  Of course the road in the area has doubled or tripled in size.  It must be ten lanes wide at least.  As we passed our old home away from home, we noticed that the southbound lanes of Chain Bridge (Va. 123 or Dolly Madison) were completely stopped.  We had planned on turning around and heading south, but we ended up taking Lewinsville Road back to Spring Hill Road so we could get on the Toll Road without sitting in Friday afternoon, grid-locked traffic.

Of course you rarely avoid even stop and go traffic in Northern Virginia.  On the Toll Road back to Reston we had to exit at Hunter Mill Road to avoid stop and go rubber necking at an accident site.  I guess all the construction for the transit system will make holiday shopping lots of fun.

When we got back to the townhouse, I got to go shopping in my son's closet.  Both he and I have lost substantial weight so I was given a number of his outside jackets, a couple pair of jeans, and several short sleeved shirts.  He buys great stuff, and it is sort of neat to be able to recycle stuff within the family.  If we both keep losing weight, perhaps we can do it again next year.

That evening my wife treated the kids to a home cooked meal which we rustled up from ingredients purchased at the local Whole Foods.   While I wouldn't make Whole Foods my only grocery store, it is certainly a treat once in a while.  Where else could you find an ostrich egg when you need it?

Our entertainment to close the day was watching the Blueray version of Ironman 2 on my son's giant Sony TV.  Saturday morning, our last day in town, we visited for a while, I used my portable, traveling electric blower to clean the leaves off the deck, and then  we headed out for lunch at Chicken Out which used to be one of my evening favorites.

During our trip, we managed to hit most of our favorite spots, but we did not get to drive through Town Center or visit Trader Joe's.  I was diappointed that the Reston Ritz Camera shop has closed, but I am sure that something will spring up to take it's place.

The Northern Virginia area continues to be a neat spot to visit and to live if the traffic doesn't get to you.  We left Reston in early afternoon.  In spite of being in stop and go traffic just north of Fredericksburg for twenty minutes on a Saturday afternoon no less, we were at the stoplight just north of the Emerald Isle Bridge only six hours later. It was a reasonable drive considering all things.

While we are headed into a cold spell of weather down here on the coast, I am glad that I will be missing holiday traffic during construction and winter weather on the Toll Road.  The Southern Outer Banks feels like home these days, even when we get visited with some cold Canadian air.  Things are pretty quiet this time of year along the beach, and it is always a pleasure to get back to pick-up-truck-sized parking spaces instead of the tiny Northern Virginia ones.

I will use the current cold weather as time to work on my HouseVision project and my real estate websites.  We have had a busy fall in real estate, but after four years we are due some activity.  Still I will look forward to my next trip to Northern Virgina, the shopping mecca of the US.

Spring will be here soon in the South, and when Northern Virginia thaws out in April, it might be time for another visit.

 

A different kind of rain

I can remember many rainy days in Reston.  My grown children have told me that Reston has had plenty of rain in the last few days.  I know our home in the mountains of Virginia got rain and now it is having a hard time stopping.

Here on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks, we have actually been very dry. There was little or no rain in the month of May until we got about one third inch on May 17.  Since then we have only seen sprinkles until last night when we finally got about one half inch of rain.

We needed the rain, but it occurred to me that there was something fundamentally different about our rain here on the coast and Northern Virginia rain.

Just like a television commercial I am willing to walk in the rain in my bare feet.  I rarely wear shoes or even sandals when I go get the morning newspaper this time of year.  I actually like the feel of the cool concrete on my feet.

The wet concrete with a light rain on it feels even better.  Perhaps it takes me back to those childhood days in the Piedmont of North Carolina when as kids we never wore shoes.  I can still remember the challenge of walking on our gravel driveway with no shoes.

Even today when I put on shoes, they likely would get me laughed out of a city.

Then again maybe walking down the driveway reminds me of walking along the wet sand on the beaches.  Perhaps it is the closest thing that I can get early in the morning to a great day on the beach.

Whatever it is, I would not walk to the mailbox in Reston in bare feet.  It is just not something you do in a city.  The rain does not run nearly as clear in any city as it does here at the beach.  Maybe our skies that stay almost perpetually brilliant Carolina blue have something to do with that.

Of course life is a lot more casual at the beach. There are very few suits, and most of our umbrellas are beach ones.   It is not that unusual to see people standing outside in a light shower talking.

Perhaps we are deluding ourselves, but it is a very pleasant delusion.

Seeking refuge from shopping fever

I am remember well many of the falls that I covered my Reston years.  The city seems to snap back from summer like summer never even happened.  The buzz of traffic goes back to its normal level.

As the temperatures start dropping, holiday fever creeps into everyone's thoughts.  Shopping while plentiful in Northern Virginia can be stressful.  Just finding the time, a parking space, and someone to wait on you can be a huge challenge.  I often found myself sneaking off to LL Bean to do a little early shopping just so I would not get caught in the crowds.

Once you get into the shopping mode, it is hard to unwind or stop.  It is not like you can really escape places to shop in Northern Virginia.  At one time, your home could be a place safe from shopping, but now with Internet and catalog shopping, even the home has become a place of shopping.  And if you happen to turn your television on, you will be reminded of that more than once.

In a rural area like North Carolina's Crystal Coast, escaping shopping is not the problem, finding a place to shop is the challenge  If we want a serious department store, we have to drive eighteen miles.  Now before you jump the gun and apply Northern Virginia standards to the trip, the eighteen miles takes less than eighteen minutes.  Still the trip is not something you make in the evening unless you are serious about buying something.

So here we are on the coast in place with much less of an opportunity to shop.  On top of that our weather most fall is very nice.  This fall it is exceptional.  We have seen great weather even this first week of November. I have a theory that says, the better the outside weather, the less people are interested in shopping.  That is especially true if they live in an area where playing in the outdoors is easy and rewarding.

Our area which is near the beaches of Emerald Isle happens to fit that description perfectly.  So the question is, "Why would you want to shopping when you could go boating or fishing." The simple answer is that you would not.

Perhaps that is why no one here on the coast seems to be thinking about the holidays.  The weather is far too good to be fooling around with shopping.  This is still shorts weather. It is so nice outside we have been cleaning and washing down the house in preparation for cooler weather.  I still have green tomatoes growing on my tomato plants.  Our roses are still blooming.  The fish are still biting, and I have not been in a department store in months.

This afternoon as the day was winding down, we climbed in our boat and lowered it in the water for a quiet journey out into the river to watch the sun slip behind the horizon.  Had I been in Reston, I might have made a run to Tyson's to visit Bean's.  It would have just been another trip to a mall that I would forget as soon as it happened.

Tonight's sunset will not be forgotten so easily.  It is a memory that my wife and I will enjoy together. We could only hear a few birds out on the river.  It was a wonderful way to end a day.  It was certainly the right spot to escape any shopping fever that might try to infect us from up north.

Dreaming of a home

Being in the real estate business I deal a lot with people's dreams.  Having lived and worked in the Reston area, I know well the challenges of finding affordable housing.

Reston is a great place with lots of jobs and plenty of shopping, and  it is conveniently located to just about everything except reasonable priced housing.

Every area has its threshold of housing prices.  In some places you have to be an executive to afford a home, in others teachers can buy homes.  It all depends on the area, the density of housing, the cost of land, the price of labor and a number of other factors.

We have all been through a roller coaster ride on housing prices.  When my daughter bought her townhouse in Reston, she had to race other buyers to the good properties.  Today things have changed, but housing is still pretty expensive in Reston.

Here on the coast, you can buy a new three bedroom, two bath home with 1,600 square feet for under $170,000 and still be less than fifteen minutes from the beach.  If you can deal with a smaller home built a few years ago, you can get a home for $160,000 or under.  A new home like the one pictured in the post in a gated community like Bluewater Cove where I live will cost you something over $300,000 but less than $400,000 unless you want to be on the water.

All those prices look pretty cheap compared to what it costs to buy a single family home in Reston.  The big difference is jobs. Jobs are scarce on the coast of North Carolina, but the cost of living including property taxes is also very attractive to most people including retirees. 

We end up with lots of small business owners, people who cannot live without the ocean, and some people who enjoy our warm climate no matter what their age.

Every time I write about the Crystal Coast on the blog Crystal Coast Living, I think about how different our area is from places like Reston.  We might have half a dozen traffic jams a year lasting a few minutes when everyone tries to check into their rental properties at the same time on the fourth of July weekend and a few other popular weekends.

Other than that there are lots of differences besides housing prices. It should not come as a surprise that we have lots of space since we have a 158,000 acre National Forest on one side and miles and miles of an undeveloped National Seashore on the other side.

Because of all the space and fewer people, it gets dark here at night. There is no glow, and you can see the stars in the  skies.  We also still have old fashioned events like a covered dinner supper at church. It is not a stretch to think that by November all the new waitresses who came in during the summer will know you.  The old ones never forgot you.

As I remember those days creeping along the toll road to Tyson's early in the morning, I wonder why you cannot have the jobs of a Reston in a place where people can afford to live.  I still remember my area associate when I was director of federal sales for Apple.  She had to drive an hour and forty five minutes morning and night in order to get to an area where she could afford a home.  She would have been very well paid by standards down here.

It is a stretch to think that lots of Reston style jobs will ever make it to the North Carolina coast.  However, the loss falls more on the companies who fail to understand how much more productive people can be when they do not spend half their lives commuting.

Those of us who manage to scrape by down here have a lot of fun, and the air we breath is first rate.  The sky is blue and the clouds are white. When our feet need some work, we just go for a walk on the beach.

Having fun is as simple as dropping your boat in the water and heading out to the Inlet.  In the case of going to the Inlet, the journey is definitely the reward.

It is a good life even without fancy jobs. I can even handle the mowing job for my yard without too many complaints.

A better kind of Sunday traffic

I remember when I first started visiting Reston years ago. In the late eighties people thought Reston was never going to make it.  

Then in mid-nineties I can remember talking to people who thought Reston was going to become so crowded that it would be impossible to go to a grocery store on the weekend.

I think it is safe to say that Reston will muddle on with its traffic.

My son hates to shop for groceries during day in.  Reston because of the traffic and small parking places.

Recently I have been thinking that it would neat to have a grocery store on the water.  I guess my dream store would have plenty of places to tie up a skiff.  You could hop off the boat and do your shopping.  Then it would take just a few minutes to get home.

The boats in the pictues are in the Intracoaslal Waterway.  I bet most Reston people would trade our water traffic for their car traffic.

Unfortunately I doubt that Lake Anna in Reston would make enough connection to replace the roads.  The farmers market seems to work well, but there is just not enough water in Reston for my waterside grocery to work.

These perfect beach days are behind all my dreams.  Once we get to January, I will be back to reality.

Where bridges still rule the road

With a world defined by huge multiple lane highways, anyone from Reston who ventures down to Beaufort, NC must think they have dropped off the face of the earth.  After all the main roads narrow to two lanes.

Then there is the famous Galllant's Channel drawbridge which seems to open at the most inconvenient times.  Yesterday we were headed to Beaufort from Cape Carteret with the hope of seeing the replica ships, the Nina and Pinta.

We were on a tight schedule since I had to work at 1 PM in the Bluewater Real Estate office.  Just as we were approaching Beaufort, the traffic ground to a halt as the drawbridge opened.

Since I have been here on the beach for nearly three years, I no longer get very upset about delays.  I have lost the tan line on my watch arm. That happened when I stopped wearing a watch.  However, I was wondering how the Maryland and Virginia cars who zoomed past me on the short causeway were handling the delay.

I know from experience that North Virginia people do not like to stop even for red lights.  They can also get a little aggressive around parking spots at their favorite shopping and eating spots.

Imaging the morning Toll Road grinding to a halt because of a drawbridge would send chills down the back of anyone who has tried to make a meeting  before nine AM meeting in Tyson's Corner.

I am not sure why boats have the right of way over traffic, but I guess it adds charm to Beaufort and give visitors something to talk about.

It is a short wait and much more enjoyable than a two hours waiting in traffic as they clean up an accident on the two lane traffic.

To create memories that you want to keep and will help you forget drawbridges, read this, What Makes a Vacation Memorable?     

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.

Perhaps a little of this would help

I checked the Restonian this evening and was surprised to find a story about a murder in Reston.  It made me think back to this afternoon when I was standing on a deck watching waves crash into the beach here on the North Carolina coast.

While waves cannot wash away crime, but they certainly help to soothe the modern mind. 

I always felt very safe in Reston.  I am not sure why since it would be a rare morning that you could not hear sirens somewhere in the background noise.

Maybe I felt safe in Reston because the news in the Washington Post overwhelmed anything that might have happened in Reston.  Also news in a modern community like Reston does not travel by a grapevine. A lot happens that you never hear about personally.

If a crime takes place, you likely will not find about it unless the police knock on your door and interview you to see if you know something about it.

Here in the world of small towns on the coast, news does travel by grapevine.  We were driving out of our subdivision this afternoon as one of the children of some friends was walking home from the bus stop.  She flagged us down to tell us about an outside light fixture catching fire on a neighbor's house the previous evening.

We live about five houses away but heard nothing, certainly not the fire truck. We continued on our journey to my workplace to check my snail mail and got another version of the story from the daughter of the 88 year old lady who lives in the house.

When we returned home, we were flagged down by yet another neighborhood youngster.  In the space of a couple of hours, we heard three versions of what happened.

The first thought might be that so little happens here that anything is exciting news.  There is a certain amount of truth to that.  However, our neighborhood would be much more connected than a Reston one.

Some of it just has to do with numbers. Our little piece of heaven, Bluewater Cove, only has forty two homes.  While we do not know everyone, we know several folks well and many others well enough to strike up a conversation.

It is a completely different world than Reston.  There is a fair of community interaction here, and some things happen that are unlikely to happen in Reston.

This past weekend, I was backing out of my driveway as my neighbor was mowing his yard.  I motioned to him that he could just take his riding mower over and do mine while he was at it.  We both laughed, and I headed on out not thinking any more about my joke.

When I came home late Saturday evening, the joke was on me.  I was surprised but not shocked to find that he had mowed my yard.  Not many people have neighbors who look after each other like some do in our subdivision.

There is a pretty good support network here.  Finding someone to check on things or feed the cat when we are out of town is not very difficult.  We often have to worry more about whose feelings we might hurt if we do not ask them for help.

Big cities like Reston are great in their own right.  Usually very good jobs are available, and you do not have to worry about everyone knowing your business. Every service known to man is usually available.

But we all those services and people comes some less desirable people and certainly more crime than we would see in our rural area.

Living in a peaceful rural coast area is pretty easy on the nerves.  There is a good deal of comfort in knowing that we live in a much smaller community where people have the time to get to know each other and perhaps keep an eye on those who need watching.

I suspect the 88 year old lady who had a total stranger bang on her door and tell her that her house was on fire appreciates his efforts almost as much as those of the neighbor who went to his own home and got a hose and put out the fire using another neighbor's spigot well before the fire truck arrived.

Sometimes it is good to be out in the boonies near those waves.  For a story of some friends visiting us on the coast check out this post, On Being the Local Experts For Visiting Friends.