Quick Weekend Trip to San Diego

This last weekend my family and I went to San Diego for the annual Sally Ride Toy Challenge. My oldest daughter is a 6th grade student at Copper Ridge Middle School in Scottsdale. She, along with 2 other 6th grade girls, submitted their toy idea earlier this year. Their idea had enough merit to be selected to compete at the national competition in San Diego. Thus, we went to San Diego on Friday, returning on Sunday. The competition itself was Saturday.

I won’t bore you with all of the details, but I’ll boil it down to this: My daughter didn’t win, but just being selected to be there was indeed a victory in itself. Aside from not winning, the girls did an amazing job presenting their toy idea. I really thought they had impressed the judges enough to achieve some level of extra recognition, but oh well. In my eyes, they were definitely winners, and I was indeed a very, very proud dad.

Being in San Diego for the weekend, but having a fairly tight schedule, I didn’t get a chance to do much that was real estate related. I did meet a client that I had never met in person, but for whom I manage 3 of his rental homes. We’ve been doing business since the beginning of the year, so it was excellent to put a face and a handshake with a voice. Good meeting you Stephen!

Being on a tight schedule, we wanted to work in a number of quick activities for the kids whenever it was possible. That meant driving to Mission Beach, Coronado Island, and La Jolla. In my opinion, and especially since the Sally Ride Toy Challenge has an engineering focus, traffic engineers in San Diego are grossly over paid. We never sat in traffic (per se), but 5 cars waiting to get through a light seemed often too much for many intersections to handle. In comparison, it feels like Phoenix surface streets accommodate more cars, without you feeling like you are in traffic. Generally speaking, signal lights in Phoenix are well timed and are designed to get traffic moving large distances in a free flowing manner. In San Diego, it didn’t appear to me that I ever came across two lights in a row that were aware of each other. And in Coronado, I think we waited 60 seconds at one light in which no cars or pedestrians were allowed to go in any of the 4 possible directions. Just plain odd.

Traffic engineering aside, as I sat on the beach off Mission Bay, I was chatting with another parent about what we thought the homes must cost that were ocean front. I thought some of the smaller, more shack-like homes were probably 1000/sq ft (total SWAG). He thought it was probably double that. Imagine a 1000 sq ft home for $2,000,000. Yea…I can’t really imagine that either. So I’m checking prices today on Kris and Steve Berg’s website, and sure enough, there’s a 713 sq foot listing for $1.9M (over $2600/sq ft). There are also numerous 1000 sq foot homes listed for $1.9M. $1.9M seems to be the minimum price for anything that is ocean front in the Pacific Beach, Mission Bay area.

Sorta makes an 8000 square foot North Scottsdale home in Silverleaf for $10M seem like a bargain now, doesn’t it? If you are reading this in San Diego, and want such a bargain, I can help you find it. Of course, if you are reading this and you aren’t in San Diego, but a beautiful custom, truly one of a kind home in Silverleaf is what you are looking for, I can certainly help you find it.

At any rate, it was a pleasure to visit San Diego and enjoy the day time highs in the low 70′s. The beach was a dream every time we were there. On Sunday I even had a chance to get a bit wet with the girls, playing in the surf. Equally good, my 10-year-old daughter told me she’s already making plans to compete in the architectural challenge when she’s in 6th grade. What a dream life my kids have given me…

My congratulations to all of the up-and-coming engineers that competed in the Sally Ride Toy Challenge. And our thanks to San Diego for hosting a fun getaway. (PS, I haven’t checked results of the Rock-n-Roll Marathon from Sunday, but it looked like outstanding weather for a marathon, so I would expect some pretty fast times).

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