San Diego

We had a hard time finding a place to stay in San Diego, because the entire city had been taken over by a Biotech convention.  As a result, our motel was in Little Italy, slightly outside the city centre.  Still it was a nice place to stay, with loads of interesting restaurants and delis to poke about in.  

Our motel was only a couple of blocks from the trolley stop too, so it wasn't too hard to get into San Diego, where Caro immediately found a huge mall named Horton Plaza, and installed herself in Starbucks.  

We took the opportunity of the mall to get Caro’s sunglasses fixed – she had bent them during her close encounter with the aeroplane on Catalina, so I took her into an optician’s to see what they could do.  Caro took them off in the shop to let the lady behind the counter inspect them, and in doing so revealed the black eye she had got when she had whacked into the plane wing.  I thought nothing of it, until I saw the optician eyeing me with undisguised contempt.  “She got it when she ran into an aeroplane ha ha ha,” I explained lamely.  

Caro leapt in to defend me, “Yes, I don’t know how it could have happened,” she added.

As pathetic excuses go, it’s up there.  I fully anticipated the optician would grab Caro by the wrist and say something like, “You don’t have to be brave!  I know of a support group!”  Instead she just stared at me as if to say, “You beast!”  

It was while travelling back to our hotel on the trolley that I got the chance to experience the "3 Cups and a Pea" game.  You know the one, where you try to guess which cup the pea is under, it's got a proper name but I forget what it is.  I was THRILLED!  I had always wanted someone to try that on me, just like they do in the films.  

Anyway, I watched the cup-and-pea guy for a while, as he gave me the spiel, but when he told me that, "It's a bettin' game, not a guessin' game," I thought it was time to nip it in the bud.  I told him that Caro and myself couldn't bet as it was against our religion.  I then informed him that we were both Jehovah's Witnesses.  

You should have seen how fast he moved!!  He SHOT out of his seat like he had sat on a weasel and went off to find someone else!  Telling people you're a Jehovah's Witness is a GREAT way to get rid of them!  Even better than telling them you have Genital Herpes!

MAN:  So I'm a Jehovah's Witness.  I'm NOT going to let it get me down!

A good thing about our motel was that they supplied us with "Pantene" sachets of shampoo.  Not that I got to use any.  Caro very carefully emptied them ALL into a little bottle every night, so that we would be resupplied the following day.  She managed to get a WHOLE bottle of shampoo this day.  It was very impressive.  She was just like James Garner in “The Great Escape”.

I had been to San Diego 3 years earlier with my ex-wife Sue (who you will meet in New York), but it was quite different this time as we spent more time in the city centre and didn't bother with their world-class zoo or wildlife park.  (Caro does not approve of zoos).  However, I did find San Diego just as pleasant on my return trip.  Unlike LA and San Francisco, San Diego is a very relaxed and laid-back sort of place.  It’s like the city knows it's not even in the Most Famous City in California competition, so just gives in, doesn't bother sucking in its gut and slouches about, scratching itself.  I like that.  

We pottered about the huge but quiet streets, watching the traffic cops who were being kept busy by the fact that most of the traffic lights were blacked out due to the power crisis of 2001.  It was very placid.