San Diego Trip: Part 1

San Diego: Episode 1: Attack of the Snack-Pack: Friday

We started by flying from Chicago to San Diego. This was my first time to fly with Emily in a long time. It was fun… and stressful. We had a lot of things to check on the plane, but a lot of carry on bags too. Emily demanded the window seat… which turned out to be good because Melissa and I were able to box her in. She really had no where to go.

She loved take-off… looking out the window and watching Chicago slip away to nothing. I am always so impressed with Southwest. On this trip, we received the customary peanuts, but we also received a snack-pack that included Cheese nips, honey grahams, and Oreos! (Yes, it’s true… I really don’t care about the flying ability of the pilots as long as I get good food.) Emily eats her Oreos like this: Open up the two halves… lick the two halves clean of the yummy white filling… throw away the two halves. Kind of messy.

Emily is strange: She is the most outgoing bashful person I have ever met. She can be bubbly to complete strangers and then spend two hours being bashful around family. Anyway, we got to our hotel and we were all starving. She sees a guy in the commons area eating McDonalds… and she goes right up to him and says: ‘Can I eat some lunch?’ I tell her immediately that she needs to eat her own lunch and that we would go for our own lunch later. But the guys responds: Well, can she have some fries? I reply: Sure... she can have fries. The guy dumps out about 15 fries on a napkin and she stuffs her face while we get checked in.

Our hotel was right in the middle of Downtown San Diego. The room was nice… not huge, but we aren’t picky. We had our own little balcony overlooking a few large sky-rise buildings. We also had wireless internet. I couldn’t believe it. I actually picked up about five signals… probably from various businesses here and there. Pretty amazing.

We walked down to a little Mexican restaurant. We ordered some nachos, a breakfast burrito, and some enchiladas. It wasn’t really that good. Over the trip, Emily made friends with several different little friends. At this restaurant, she tried her best to be-friend a little Hispanic kid. He was a little older than her and just thought she was weird.

We took Emily to the pool. This was a big deal. Up until this point, she was pretty much against swimming and pools. Melissa got her to not only get in the pool, but to kick and ‘swim’ with Melissa from one length of the pool to the other. At one point she even asked to swim alone. It actually caused Melissa to want to research mother-daughter swimming classes this summer.

Back in our room… we were sandwiched between two rooms full of high school boys. They decided to throw chicken wings, pepsi bottles, and peanuts at our balcony sliding door. They were loud. They were rude. They were noisy. They needed a butt-whooping. I figured it that it wouldn’t be a fair fight: Me versus eight high schoolers. I might hurt them too bad…

San Diego: Episode 2: Return of the Pacific Ocean

We went to breakfast and Emily met her second friend of the trip: A cute Asian girl. They ran around all the breakfast tables and giggled and had a great time. When it was time for us to go, the Asian girl sat down in the middle of the room and looked like she was going to start crying. We told Emily to go tell her bye. She went right over and gave this girl a huge hug. It was very, very cute.

We spent most of the morning in our room reading and packing up our things. After check out, we met up with a family friend and she took us to lunch and showed us a little of San Diego: Here are a few of my observations:

-Motorcycles can split lanes here. Out of nowhere, a motorcycle can go between two moving cars at anytime. Weird.

-I’m a Midwest boy… I am used to seeing cornfields and flat land. Even small hills seem like mountains to me. I love the San Diego landscape… so many hills and high places.

-Where’s the humidity? Holy cow. The first two days it’s been 70 degrees and a slight wind. Almost too cold for shorts, believe it or not. Not a lick of humidity. Perfect.

-The ocean is gorgeous. Melissa and I took a late stroll along the beach after dark. The moon was out and there was a soft, almost blue glow glinting off the waves. When you look at expansiveness of the ocean… it reminds you of how big God must be. Amazing.

Turns out that our condo is gorgeous. We were worried going in. As we drove down the main strip, we noticed that some of these condos didn’t look that great. They were almost smashed together. In fact, certain people could probably even manage to jump from balcony to balcony because they are so tightly packed together.

It’s a three level condo. Each level has it’s own bedroom and bathroom suite. There’s a garage. The main level has a living room with a TV/DVD and fireplace. It has a kitchen… a nicer kitchen than ours in St. Peters by a long shot. Also on the second level: a small walkout balcony with a gas grill. Yes, you can see and hear the ocean from this balcony. The top level contains the last bedroom/bathroom and a large walkout patio that overlooks the ocean. I wrote about half of this trip report out there. Best news of all: Someone has an un-secure wireless internet transmitter and I am able to hawk free internet all week long. We had originally thought that we would have to go to a coffee shop a couple of miles from here to check email and fantasy baseball teams.

After a long day of traveling… my parents, brother, and my brother’s girlfriend made it here. It was good to see them. We all have been looking forward to this trip for a long time… We ordered some pizza, hung out, played some PS2, debated on whether to attend church tomorrow, played some cards, and just enjoyed each other’s company.