The Diatribe * net

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– No new photos yet.. I’m running out of disk space, so I have to clean it up a little.. I’ll do that when I get back to the Bean.

Tonight we’re spending the night in San Diego… and it’s been a long week, so we’re just ordering Room Service, and relaxing in the room. Miss possible heads home tomorrow afternoon, and my conference begins as well, so a little relaxation could be good.

Yesterday we started out in Monterey and drove through Carmel and the Pebble Beach / Spyglass Hill Scenic Drive (17 miles). Beautiful course, even though I don’t really play golf [except tiger].

Taking Route 1 from Carmel all the way down to Santa Barbara was beautiful. I’ve never seen such an amazing coast line. Some of the houses out here must cost a fortune, of course, but even so — I’m not sure I’d want to move to any of those places — it’s so far from civilization, it’d be impossible to get groceries or anything.

We took nearly all day to cruise down Route 1 and by the time we got to Santa Barbara it was about 7pm and time for dinner. We ate at a place called “Left at Albuquerque” — a chain-style southwestern restaurant. Dinner was good, and we met an interesting man while waiting in line who told us all about the area.

Today was the drive from Santa Barbara to San Diego. We got up early, so that we could make decent time heading through LA. Traffic was bad, but I imagine it could’ve been a lot worse on any given week day. Saturday morning at 10am and there’s still a ton of traffic, go figure.

As we approach SD, we stop in La Jolla to have lunch and see the coast line, as we got a number of recommendations to check it out. Beautiful town — much nicer than Santa Barbara, Carmel, Monterey, etc.. in my opinion. It was rich, but not so rich and glamorous that it seemed disgusting. We saw the Seals on the coast line that were pupping. Much nicer than the Sea Lions in SF (not as loud, smelly or obnoxious).

The caves of La Jolla were a total ripoff. It was up there with the dinner in Portland or the stop at “Rainbow Falls.” $4 a piece, to check out Sunny Jim Cave that was a 2 minute walk down the stairs, a cheap-o cave, and a 2 minute walk back up the same stairs. Totally lame.

We checked into our Hotel in San Diego and toured around the city.. Balboa Park, The Hillcrest Area, Downtown, etc. The weather was the warmest to date and the city seemed fairly nice.

And here we are.. relaxing in the Hotel, ordering room service, and taking it easy on our last night. Tomorrow we’re going to check out the Zoo, and drive up to Del Mar for my conference… so the journey is nearly over, but it’s been a great trip so far.

One side note about the iPod.. Once we got the iPod working in Portland where we bought the Car Adapter, it worked well all along. Only a few minor issues here and there. We made it all the way down to “Captain ~ Ween” and called it quits. It was getting difficult to find a station that wasn’t taken by a Los Angeles radio station. So, we gave up. But, it was a fun experiment. We listened to “California ~ Phantom Planet” as we were driving down Route 1 sometimes yesterday.

“California… California.. Here We come…”

Mileage to date: 1,680 miles.

~ LTJ