Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Road Trip: Day Two

First my daily:

This morning I swam the breast stroke for half an hour in the hotel pool. Because the pool is short (what a surprise, the hotel pool is a non-standard length), I ended up doing circumferences. I figured I'd have no idea about mileage (or fractions there of), so I'd just go for time.

I was the only person in the pool... for like 2 minutes. Then came the guy I began to think of as my swimming buddy. Like me, he was only doing breast stroke and he did it the same way I did. A few minutes later, athletic woman joined in.

Athletic woman was around my age with the "dig me, I work out" body and attitude. She (literally) swam circles around us, got frustrated after 10 minutes or so and went off to the spa.

Then came swimmer guy. Swimmer guy was the guy in the guy bathing suit (tight fitting ... more like boxer briefs than trunks) who made a point of stretching and walking around before diving in. He jumped in before Athletic Woman got out, lasted like 5 minutes before he got out, stretched some more and went off to the other spa. In the mean time, swimmer buddy and I are still swimming in circles doing our slow, steady breast stroke.

Then came tri-girl in her Tyr 2-piece athletic suit. She took one look at swimming buddy and me, rolled her eyes and then hopped in. Again, she was either bored, frustrated or done in less than 10 minutes with another eye roll.

After 20 minutes or so, swimming buddy got out and shook himself off before toweling down and heading back to his room. I relaxed a little, still doing my circles cursing the PR people who listed "view of San Diego bay from the pool." (Yeah, if you're standing up looking over the freakin' cement portico railing.) Then came fit guy. Fit guy looked tight in a great bathing suit, did a couple of stretches, smiled and jumped in.

Too bad my half hour was up. :)

I spent five minutes in the spa - after I saw Athletic Woman leave - before heading back to the room to shower and get ready. I'm off to go see the pandas today. I'm hoping to see the baby panda this morning (how fun is that?) Tomorrow morning is the 5K race here.

San Diego - day two:

Yesterday I spent the day wandering around the Gas Lamp District. I can't believe how much I walked yesterday. Because I couldn't find my steppy doodle on the way out the door the other day, I grabbed Mr. Pi's - which I think has some issues. (I know, I know - what do I expect from a cheap piece of plastic?) I started walking over to the conference with Mr. Bear (he's so cute) and stopping at the Kinkos/Fed Ex store front in the center to get some business cards. The guy was like, "Oh... I'm going to copy it onto card stock and you cut it yourself... I don't know if I can line up a 2-sided card."

Dude - you work in a freaking copy shop where everything is digitized. Learn to use the equipment.

At any rate, I ended up with about 10 cards in case I needed to pass any out. (I did actually pass a couple of them out.) I went to the City Club of San Diego luncheon where John Hickenlooper, the Mayor of Denver, was speaking. Considering all of my knowledge of Denver comes from four sources (South Park, Hunter S. Thompson, the Masonic conspiracies about Stapleton airport and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), it was nice to get a different ... shall we say, more realistic view of the city. If half of what he says is true about his approach to running Denver - then we need more successful small businessmen to become politicians.

On my way back to the hotel, I walked through the convention center (two words: air conditioning) and bumped into Mr. Bear and his boss. We chatted a little before going our separate ways again and making plans to meet in the map display room at 4.

Here's the thing with GIS conferences - there are a lot of maps and they are freakin' cool. Like the most precise map of British Columbia ever created. (OK, it was a scale model of the most precise map of BC - and that was cool. I can only imagine what the real one is like.) Then there are the maps that show all sorts of things like hurricane tracking for the past 5 years off the coast of North Carolina. One of the things that was even cooler about that is, because they can precisely measure terrain and overlay the roadway system - they could figure out how to direct people to high ground and then rescue them by chopper if need be.

I thought about it myself after leaving the map room. Let's get real, I figured out the length of my run yesterday using GIS mapping at the USTFA site. This is truly cool stuff.

After the reception, we drove up to La Jolla to watch the sunset over the ocean. Sorry - that's something I don't know if I could ever get used to - watching the sunset over the ocean. The sun is supposed to rise over the ocean and the water is supposed to be on the right hand side of the road when you're driving north, not the left. It was pretty and stuff, but it was just wrong.

In fact, all I could think of was that line from Hitchhiker's Guide when they first encounter the infinite improbability drive and Arthur remarks how it looks like the seaside in Brighton but the water is perfectly still and the buildings keep washing up and down on the shore.

So... I'm off to go check out baby pandas. I want to get there early enough to see them. Hurray Pandas!

1 comment:

Katie Fries said...

I am envious of your time in San Diego. As a native Californian currently exiled in the barren wasteland of the Midwest, I enjoy hearing non-native takes on my home state. What do you mean the sun doesn't set over the ocean? Next thing I know, you'll be telling me the ocean is supposed to be warm!

Good for you for making the time to work out on vacation! I try, but these days, with two little ones, it's not as easy as it used to be.

If you like coffe, be sure to try and track down a Coffee Bearn & Tea Leaf while you're in San Diego. A West Coast treat that needs to make its way East.