San Diego, September 2003
Getting There Again
Fast forward eight months.
Once again
I sit at the Greenbelt Metro station awaiting the B30 bus to catch a Southwest flight to San Diego.
Some things have changed during these eight months, but some things remain irritatingly the same.
I am now working in a different office at the agency,
am traveling for training not testing and
am traveling with two fellow co-workers not one.
There is no snow falling in Maryland around the time of my trip,
but Hurricane Isabel had passed through just before I flew west.
I did not have to sit out the sumo tournament because of my trip,
but almost missed submiting my final day's picks.
There was no superbowl to make my hotel reservations challenging,
but my being asked to attend on short notice did make me work a little to get my room.
Which gives you another similarity of having to make my arrangements on somewhat short notice.
Again I used mass transit and my own two feet to get around
while my co-worker(s) were not there with our rental car.
And, of course, again I had a good time.
As I said above, Isabel came through the Washington, DC area.
Transit shut down. My workplace shut down. Flights were cancelled.
Luckily local transit and the airlines had gotten most everything back on schedule
before I my trip to the airport (at least as far as I could tell),
but before I could submit my final day of sumo picks I lost my access to the internet.
What's more, the only place I knew about offering paid access had lost power.
So I flew to San Diego hoping to be able to gain access somewhere upon my arrival.
Thinking I had plenty of time, I decided to walk from the airport to the trolley instead of taking the bus.
A park I wanted to visit ran along the bay right near the airport and through this I made my way.
It is named Spanish Landing Park because it was somewhere along here that Juan Cabrillo,
the first Spaniard in what would become California,
first landed in what would become California
in September 1542.
Here I made my first BookCrossing release of my trip.
My spot was chosen for me as I found a book abandoned on the first bench I saw.
It did not have a bookcrossing id, but
it does now.
To thank the book gods I left mine right at this spot.
The park and this bench look out
towards the San Diego Bay across Harbor Island with its
many sail boats.
The city of San Diego was visible to my left and Point Loma to my right.
Between them hidden behind a forest of masts was Coronado and the rest of this marvelous body of water.
Making my way along the bay I discovered San Diego's
Richard & Annette Bloch Cancer Survivor's Park
….
It reclaims beautifully a difficult space just out of view of the bay across Harbor Drive from the airport.
In hindsight I am both sad and glad I did not spend more time here.
Sad because I am proud to know cancer survivors
and wish to give thanks for their strength and the hope they give the world.
Glad because I ended up needing that time to make my sumo picks.
Maybe on my third trip I will be able to do the park justice.
Until then I will have to be content to express my thankfulness in other ways.
Eventually I headed inland from the bay and found myself walking once again past the Laurel Street hill.
This time instead of walking up it, I took a picture up it
(which should display to the right of this text and)
which I think will illustrate its slope more clearly than
the picture I took in January from its top.
With one new thing already under my belt, my visit to Spanish Landing Park,
I was ready to experience another new thing, the trolley.
Unfortunately I got off to a bad start.
A strong feeling of inadequacy washed over me as the first trolley passed by
without my being able to get the farecard machine to take my money.
I tried a second machine with similar results and another trolley was coming down the line.
With Zen-like control I forced myself to glance at the instructions
and realized that I had to select what kind of fare I was paying before I inserted my money.
Without any time to spare I made my selection, inserted my money, grabbed my farecard,
pressed the little green button to open the trolley doors and climbed aboard.
This part of the trolley line runs smoothely with little interference from traffic or track repairs
and is a pleasure to ride.
I made my way past Old Town and into Mission Valley to the Fashion Valley Transit Center
which was across an imperceptably flowing stream from the resort hotel complex
hosting the conference I was in San Diego to attend.
Unfortunately the lobby was clear across the many acre complex from the transit station,
but I had not used up all my energies on my walk from the airport.
Once there and checked-in, I learned that there was no internet access at the resort after 5p.m.,
except for those having their own computers,
the concierge suggested I get back on the trolley
and continue up Mission Valley one stop further to a Kinko's.
Realizing how short my time had become for me to complete my sumo activities,
I rushed over to my room, dropped off my increasingly weighty baggage,
crossed the footbridge over what I fondly nicknamed the bayou
and took another look at the trolley farecard machines.
Without a trolley bearing down on me and somewhat refreshed from my brief stay in my hotel room
I realized I would be taking the trolley again the next day
and would benefit from purchasing a two day pass.
Unfortunately I had not thought of this before I paid $2.25 to get to my hotel.
Fortunately my agency would reimburse me for travel expenses to the hotel,
but it was still money down the drain and an irritation.
I found the Kinko's and logged on to discover two things.
One, I had won the previous night's match-up
which gave me a winning record for the tournament.
Two, I had over an hour to make my selections for my final day's picks.
At 20 cents per minute, with a winning record already
and having spent a long day travelling not only across town by foot and trolley,
but also across three time zones by airplane,
I decided to make a hasty job of it.
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