Danger is my middle name


Wow, today was great. When I actually got out of my hotel room, I mean. Guess my body’s still on Eastern time… even though I went to bed at close to 3 am, I still woke up at 6:30. Let me tell you, that’s one messed up headspace to be in… it’s a weekday, but you have a day off, and you’re in the wrong timezone after having stayed up too late. In a strange(ly comfortable!) bed. Suffice to say I ended up really getting up around 9:30 or so, researched what there was to see in San Diego (this mostly involved tooling around where2eat.com), shortlisted a few places, after which I felt like I’d hardly have any time left to go see them. Thankfully it was earlier than I thought. So, after taking care of a couple chores for work I made the 40-minute drive pretty much back to where I got rental car — to Cabrillo National Monument Park. It’s an ode to the first European to set foot on the west coast of what is now the United States. Don’t ask me how he managed.. that’s one heckuva detour from Spain.
But it aside from all the talk about Master Explorer Guy, the park had the most fantastic bit of intertidal zone roped off, where you could get right down to the ocean and observe all the stuff going on. That’s where both shots in this entry came from. It’s really an amazing coastline. Highly recommended if you ever visit. There’s a number of other cool pics I have to show you once I get back and can do up a proper gallery.
So. Now that I’ve driven it around a little more, a comment or two on the ‘Stang: It sucks. A lot. Of gas. The tank is half-empty already. Not only that, but it’s got a mean blindspot over my right shoulder (there’s a post in the way), and the mirrors are small and inadequate at best. The dash is also hard to read in the sun (oops, guess they forgot it’s a convertible), and every control I touched felt, well… flimsy isn’t the right word, because they weren’t… they were just more.. vulnerable — like they’d break if I wasn’t careful with them. Now, to be fair, the ride was super smooth. And the stereo was nice. And of course having a convertible was awesome. I always thought having a convertible would mean eating lots of bugs, papers flying around, all that — no, as it turns out, the windshield takes care of all that. ๐Ÿ™‚ The only thing that would have made the driving experience better would have been a kick ass soundtrack. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any of my CDs with me — every one which matters has been ripped and transferred to my iPod — so I couldn’t take advantage of the built-in six-disc changer. No Sasha: Involver for me.
On the flip-side, because of my iPod, I was able to listen to the Presidential debate on foreign policy, for free. No chance of finding that on CD. In time to be useful for the masses, anyhow.
Went to Claim Jumper for dinner with a few peeps from work. Great food, though there’s a LOT of it. Note to self: skip appetizers next time.
Anyhow, just getting ready for work tomorrow — turns out the people I’m giving the presentation to won’t be there until after lunch, so I’ve got an opportunity to give the system a dry-run before its prime-time viewing.. cool. ๐Ÿ™‚


Comments

7 responses to “Danger is my middle name”

  1. Jeff Avatar

    Looks like you coulda done the Tom Cruise hanging of the cliff trick in MI2.

  2. that’s an awesome shot of you DJ ASterizk!!

  3. Jeff, hahah, that’s great. Yup, that’s me. What you can’t see in that pic is that I’m actually sitting on a shelf ๐Ÿ™‚ Oops, did I say that out loud?
    Why thank you DJ ARIZ0NA!! Good luck on OCTOBER 15TH, when you open for CANADIAN PROGRESSIVE HOUSE SUPERSTAR VAX GRAHAM!

  4. That self-portrait is super cool, Krishen.
    I love examining ocean life – perpetually fascinating.

  5. my rental mustang convertible did pretty well on gas, though you have to accept the fact that with the top down it uses nearly twice as much. i agree with you about the instrumnet cluster, the guages are all ridiculously small, though the new mustang coming out next month, a full redesign, has huuuuuge guages.
    if it was the 40th anniversary edition with the big sound system, you really missed out by not bringing your cds. set the dsp function to “front seats” and just keep turning clockwise on anything electronic, and wow. the changer part in the dash is just plain silly though, hard to work.
    and i know what you’re saying about the a pillar. huge blind spot. what were they thinking?
    and geebus, get that fm broadcaster for the ipod already!

  6. Julie: Thanks! I’m shocked how well it turned out myself. Can’t even tell I was holding the camera up with one arm. I gotta say, though, the intertidal zone at Cabrillo doesn’t hold a candle to any part of the Vancouver Island coastline, as far as biodiversity goes. There was hardly anything there! (Of course, it could just be that my eye hadn’t been properly trained to see it, but I don’t think so).
    Jim: My scientific study of FM broadcasters (sample size: 1) tells me that they suck! Static and poor “depth of field” (? not sure this is the right term… the stereo separation sounded crappy). Of course, it could just be that the FM receiver in my Kenwood headunit isn’t very good. ๐Ÿ™‚ Not sure if it was the 40th anniversary one or not, but it is from this year.

  7. And Jim, thanks for the tip about the gas mileage and the car being… converted. I hadn’t thought about that.