San Diego - recap

On the roof of The W in San Diego

A red tree on the way to Balboa Park in San Diego

A flower garden in Balboa Park

The largest tree in Balboa Park

Built to Spill - 930 Club - May 16th, 2005

As promised, some pictures from San Diego and the built to spill show. The first one is from the roof of The W hotel in downtown San Diego. The roof bar is called "The Beach" and has sand for a floor and trendy people lounging about all over the place. Just my kind of establishment... especially when there's a company tab to be drinking on and they're projecting Dude Where's My Car? onto a wall. The picture is from Saturday night.
Sunday morning I woke up early and took a walk from the hotel up to Balboa park. It's an hour walk at least, but my flight (containing about 30 other people from my office) wasn't until 12:45, so I left my bags with the bellman and headed out. I saw this red tree on the way up and thought it looked out of place and interesting... so that's why there's a picture of it.
I walked all the way to the center of the park to settle a bet with R regarding whether or not another tree that we'd seen somewhere in Spain was more like this tree that she had seen in the center of Balboa park, or more like the tree from Fern Gully... the children's anti-logging, anti-corporation propaganda film (it's good!).
I'll definitely have to dig up photos of the tree in Spain, the one in the movie and the one in the park to do a full analysis of this argument.
I walked up some pretty steep hills to get into the park. Witnessed a hit and run fender-bender, but from too far away to have seen the license plate. No one was hurt, but the pick-up that peeled away was going pretty fast. A homeless woman who had witnessed the accident complained to me as we waited to cross the street about how annoying it was for people to have accidents right in front of her. As we walked towards the park, I asked her directions on how to get to the big tree and she helped me out.
After I'd walked through some of the Spanish colonial style architecture and taken a look at the big tree, one of my coworkers called and said that she and a friend were going to go out for breakfast and suggested we all meet up near the park. The plan was to be done eating breakfast by 11:20, grab a cab back to the hotel, get our bags and then go to the airport to be there an hour early for the 12:45 flight that two of us were on. We were at least a 45 minute walk away from the hotel, so a cab was necessary if we were going to make the flight.
We finished breakfast at 11:30. We started looking for a cab at 11:31 and realized that we were going to have more trouble than we'd expected at about 11:45 when we still hadn't seen a single taxi. We called a number that we got off the side of a cab that refused to pick us up and gave them a street corner to meet us on. At 12:00, we started to panic and called the cab number again. They hadn't put the call out yet for someone to pick us up. I called the Sheraton and explained our situation to the concierge and she said they would send a cab to pick us up, but that if we found another one in the meantime, we should take it.
At 12:15 a cab came barreling down the street and we assumed that it was one of those that had been sent for us. I flagged him down, explained our situation and he said to get in. At this point, we had 30 minutes left before the plane took off. The hotel was only a 5 minute drive and the airport is only 5 minutes from the hotel. As soon as the cab started moving, the driver began to explain that he was, "actually on a call and that he would have to go see if that person was willing to share the cab with us." The adrenaline really started pumping as I realized that this guy was a little crazy and might not get the fact that we only had 30 minutes... wait 28 minutes now... to get where we needed to go. He decided that the best thing he could do would be to help us look for a cab and drive us to a taxi stand, which was right next to the place where we'd just eaten breakfast. There were no cabs there. I started considering opening the door and jumping out to go back to the spot where we'd asked the other cabs to pick us up. I spent some time trying to convince our driver that he would only have to take an extra 15 minutes in picking up his fare if he would just drive us to the hotel and then to the airport, but he was having none of it.
We pulled up in front of the fare's house at about 12:23. The cab driver assured us that a lot of people didn't come out for cabs that they had called, so we shouldn't worry too much.
"I can tell from your voices that you're nervous," he said, "so we'll only wait here a minute after I honk even though I usually wait three."
How nice of him! What the hell were we doing out here even further away from the hotel than where we had eaten breakfast?
"That was the worst minute of my life," I whispered as no one came out of the house and insane-cabbie-guy shifted into drive. A bit louder this time, I said,"Ok. We've got twenty-two minutes to get to the hotel, get our bags, get to the airport, check-in, get through security and get to the gate. This isn't going very well."
Cabbie sprang into action and immediately took a leisurely right turn to stop at a red-light where he chose to not take the risk of a right on red. He then proceeded to start telling us about the neighborhood we were in (Hillcrest) and how it was "pretty gay" and that he was surprised that we didn't find a cab. I found this comment to be completely baffling and wasn't even sure if it was homophobic, insulting or what. He also pointed out a few empty cabs to us as we made it onto the freeway. I was fuming, but had lost the ability to really be mad and was now just trying to think about making the flight... Even if we made it, I was already going to get home at 8:30pm and would have to go to work in the morning. What would I do if I had to take a flight at 5pm or later? I wouldn't get home until 2 in the morning.
"You know what's even more ridiculous about this whole thing," I said, turning to my coworker and her friend, "it's after 12 and the two of you haven't checked out yet. That's going to add some time."
"Will our keys still work?"
"Ouch. That's a good question. You might want to call the hotel to tell them we're coming."
By this time, we'd already pulled up in front of the hotel.
"If you're going in to get your bags, you're going to have to leave some collateral," the cabbie said as the two girls ran inside."
I'll just stay in the cab until they get back, we don't have time to deal with wallets and money. Can you pull up to the bellman so I can get my bag without leaving?"
At 12:32, after getting new keys made, etc. the girls came out and we all threw our bags in the trunk and jumped back in the cab.
Our driver received a phone call as we were exiting the hotel parking lot and proceeded to have a conversation about god knows what as the three of us freaked out in the back seat. We pulled up to a stop light across from the airport and waited... and waited. The light turned green, but our driver was a bit too engrossed in his conversation to notice.
"Green Light!" I chirped.
"So it is," our driver said as he slowly pressed down the gas pedal, "which airline did you say?"
"UNITED!" came the response from all three of us in the back seat.
We pulled up in front of the United check-in at 12:35. We ran to separate auto-check-in kiosks and started hitting buttons. As I was waiting for my boarding pass to print out, I turned around and noticed another coworker from my office standing behind me.
"Donald, man! I've only got ten minutes to make my flight! I'm freaking out!"
"Are you on the 12:45?"
"Yeah, and it's 12:40, and look at that line! I'm not going to make it."
"I'm on the 12:45 too, it was postponed until 3."
So there I was: Two hours and fifteen minutes early for my flight with a blood stream chock-full of adrenaline and nothing to use it on. A bear-attack would have been nice at that moment. Instead I bought a $3 bottle of water at pizza hut and sat around with the 30 other people from my office recalling the tale of how I'd gotten there.
Lesson learned.