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. 🙂 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. 🙂

Woo, well, I made it to my hotel room in San Diego! Technically, I guess I’m North of San Diego in a town called Oceanside, now. All the rooms have high-speed internet wired right into them, and even include the ethernet cable. Pretty sweet.
Observations so far: although at 65, the speed limit of the I-5 is 10 mph lower than the I-75 in Florida, the lanes are much narrower. Combine that with the fact that I’m not used to driving Mustang convertibles (woowoo! 🙂 ) and I wasn’t sure what exit I was supposed to be looking for AND it’s a little past my bedtime, and you’ve got one stressful situation. Thankfully the road my hotel was on happened to be one of the major exits from the highway.
Whoa, sheesh.. the computer clock says 4:34am, time to switch it to the right timezone methinks. Oh yeah — I *do* have high-speed internet right from my room, so I should be able to keep y’all up-to-date.
Before I doze off in front of this thing, a tidbit about the flight over.. first, we were late leaving because Houston was just “getting slammed” and was very congested, so our plane was instructed to stay on the ground in Sarasota. What should have been an hour and 19-minute layover turned into a six-minute, all-out sprint across George Bush International to get from gate B69-C44, service from Houston to San Diego. I got on the plane four minutes before its scheduled departure time.
Though all the effort would turn out to be somewhat anticlimactic, as shortly after we pushed away from the gate, we stopped. Why? Because the airport had shut down temporarily while a thunderstorm passed. An hour and twenty minutes later, we were in the air! Guess I got my layover in Houston after all.
Did I mention the ‘stang is red? So far I’m not terribly impressed — it feels like it only wants to drive in a straight line — but I haven’t really put it to much of a test, either. And driving automatic after driving stick for so long is going to take some getting used to. Tomorrow. After some sleep.
Don’t forget, if you’d like a postcard, just send me a note and I’ll make sure there’s one in the mail with your name on it.