Earlier this year I was still working at a technical support job, dealing witha huge office environment and customers who didn't have a clue. I really needed a vacation. So when the swim team I had just joined announced a weekend trip to San Diego for an international swim meet, I jumped at the chance!
At the time of the meet, I had been swimming with QUAC for only five months. I was still one of the slowest swimmers, and I certainly didn't feel like competing. Also, a month before I had just gotten my new programming job, so I only had one day of vacation earned, and didn't need to take the time off that badly. But I still wanted to go to have fun with my teammates, and also my boyfriend Robert had agreed to come along, so I arranged to put in some extra hours at work and kept my vacation plans.
The trip to California was mostly uneventful. It was nice to sit next to a family on the plane with really young children who had never flown before, and share their excitement. (It had been a long time since I last flew, too.) When we arrived, we rented half a dozen cars to get everyone between the hotel and pool. Then we all checked in at the hotel.
By the time we got settled in, I was getting hungry -- I hadn't had lunch yet, but most of our group had already taken off to eat. The only guys left were about to go to beach, leaving me and Robert without any transportation. (Actually, Robert wanted to go to the beach with that last group, but I didn't make it clear to him that he could have gone along without me.) Rather than sit around the hotel waiting for somebody with a car to return, we went for a walk, and found a half dozen restaurants just a few blocks from the hotel! So we had a good lunch at Denny's, then returned to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the group. Then we hung out and chatted with some of the other swimmers, and later that evening we had a team meeting , then went to the registration "party". (Actually it wasn't much of a party -- just long lines for the registration tables and a bowl of chips!)
Early the next morning, I got up, had breakfast, and rode down to the pool to watch the opening events. Robert just can't get up before nine on the weekends, so I let him sleep in. On the shuttle to Coronado a cute guy named James from Washington DC sat next to me and we talked a bit about various things including QUAC's Ski and Swim weekend this coming winter.
At the pool QUAC took over a little corner and set up some shade. There wasn't much room around the pool, but somehow everybody managed to keep a few feet away from the edge. The swimmers warmed up for a while, several teams shouted out their team cheers, and then the opening ceremonies began with Miss Gay Pride of San Diego hosting the event. There were a couple of speeches, somebody sang the national anthem, and then the games began!
I stayed to watch the first few relay events, but by that time I was sure Robert would be awake, and not wanting to leave him sitting around the hotel by himself, I left the meet.
I got back to the hotel at nearly the same time Robert came back from breakfast, and he was wondering what he could do if I hadn't come back. Robert can get really cranky when he's bored (sorry, Robert, but you do!) so I decided that rather than rely on our swimmers for transportation, I would rent a car for our own use. So I asked the desk clerk at our hotel if there were any car rental places nearby, and she told me that there was an Enterprise office just five or six blocks down the road. I looked up Enterprise in the phone book, and sure enough, it was listed at 49xx El Cajon, just six blocks from 43rd where I was told the hotel was at. I called ahead to see if they had any cars available, and they said there was a Geo they could rent for $30 a day, and would I like to make a reservation? I declined since it was just a short walk andI could just come right over.
So Robert and I took a walk down the street. After a few blocks we couldn't see Enterprise yet, and knowing how bad my sense of direction is, Robert asked me if I was sure we were going the right way. I assured him we were, and that it should only be a few blocks more. About a mile down the road we still saw no sign of it. I told Robert that I had double-checked the address in the phone book, and then he pointed out to me the street numbers where we were at so far -- 30xx! It turns out that El Cajon is 43rd in the N-S direction, but I thought that was the E-W coordinate! But since we had already come so far, I wasn't about to turn back, and we kept on walking.
El Cajon crosses I-15 along the way, and when we came to that intersection we discovered a HUGE pit in the middle of I-15. It looked like crews were digging a tunnel for another roadway underneath the original. I commented on how the I-15 construction was so massive it stretched clear from Salt Lake City to San Diego! Anyway, we skirted around it, and at the crosswalk I noticed that the pedestrian signal whose button said:
PRESS BUTTON TO CROSS STREET <----------
was pointing to an empty lot! (The actual crossing was this way --------->.) Well, eventually we made it to the car rental lot (after stopping at 7-11 for a drink -- we were thirsty and tired), and we had a laugh with the dealers about it ("Didn't you know that we could have picked you up?" "Well, yes, but it was only five or six blocks..."). But by that time, there was only one car left in the lot ... and it wasn't a Geo. But since we had went to so much trouble to get there, the dealers couldn't find anyone else willing to rent that car, and Robert and I were not going to walk back, we haggled for a slight reduction in rent and wound up driving back to the hotel in a Mazda Miata convertible. I wasn't very excited about it -- it had too much power for me, much like trying to drive my dad's Porsche -- but Robert felt right at home in it since he used to own a Z-80.
Our long walk kind of put us off our plans to go to the Seaport shopping center; we didn't want to do any significant walking for the rest of the day. So instead we went to Pacific Beach and sat on the sand, watching the waves come in and a surfer or two rise and fall. On the way back we stopped at a park where I succumbed to the kid in me by playing on the monkey bars and swings in the sandbox.
That evening all the teams were split up to various locations for hosted dinners. I managed to slip into the same place with Robert, which seemed to be a bar located in an open-roofed courtyard. They served Mexican food, which I didn't care for, but ate it anyway because I was hungry. Afterwards, Robert and I stopped for ice cream on the way back to the hotel, and then at the pool we swam around in the pool for a bit. That was fun; we had the entire pool to ourselves.
The next morning I
went back to the meet with the rest of the team (Robert slept in
again). The pool area seemed to be a bit more crowded than yesterday.
This time the events seemed to go by much more quickly, and I saw a
lot more of our team members compete in their events.
That evening we held the Pink Flamingo relays. That event is kind of hard to describe exactly. Team members get together to put on a performance of some sort, and then after everybody's show they choose four people from each team to carry a plastic pink flamingo across the pool and back in pairs. The relay is really just a trivial sideshow; it's the performances that everyone comes to see. One team put on a Martha Stewart skit, another portrayed Barbie over the decades, somebody had a mix of Disney cartoons, and the Canadians showed a spoof of The Sound of Music.
QUAC put on a performance that
outshined everybody else's. We started with the men doing a
cabaret-style dance to the song "Hey, Big Spender!" which captured
the crowd's attention. Then the girls in mermaid tails kept the crowd
entertained while the guys prepared for their big number: a true water
ballet, choreographed to another Doris Day song (whose title I can't
remember).
Our team got an enthusiastic standing ovation for a respectably long time! It was very exciting for us. The only team to get a longer ovation was Great Britain, who, instead of putting on a show like everyone else, paid a very special tribute to the late Princess Diana.
While playing Elton John's new song "Goodbye, England's Rose" with voiceover excerpts from Princess Diana's speeches, the English swimmers floated a giant rose into the pool and unfurled a great black ribbon into a flowing loop around it. Everybody was touched.
After the relays our team went to a dinner party hosted by a couple of our team members at their parent's penthouse in Coronado. They had some really good hors d'oeuvres, and as Robert showed me, a wonderful view of the oceanside at night. After that party there was a dance for IGLA, but because it was my usual bedtime and both Robert and I were getting drowsy, we decided to skip that and call it a night.
On Sunday I slept in, and then Robert and I went sightseeing. Our first stop was the Reuben H. Science Center, which I wanted to see because it sounded like the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (I spent an entire day there when I was young, and didn't want to leave!) I was wrong. The place was basically just a small warehouse-like room with a couple dozen toys for kids to play with; nothing all that interesting. So we left there and walked further into Balboa Park where we found several art museums, which Robert enjoyed, including a replica of Shakespeare's Old Globe Theatre (closed at the time).
Next we went to see Corvette's diner, recommended to us by Robert's uncle before we went and some of the other teammates who tried it. It's a large, classic 50's-style diner, with good ol' Rock-n-Roll music, soda fountains, pictures of movie stars, old advertisements, hubcaps, and even a couple of corvettes hanging from the roof. Our waitress was just what you'd expect from the period. She sat down next to Robert and chatted with us while taking our order, called us "boys", threw some straws to us when she brought our drinks, and generally treated us as if we came there often. I had a bowl of chicken and rice soup, and let me tell you it was the best chicken soup I have ever tasted! We thoroughly enjoyed the trip to the past, and I highly recommend to anybody visiting San Diego that they dine at Corvette's at least once.
That evening was time for IGLA's tenth anniversary dinner and awards ceremony. We arrived at the Hotel del Coronado shortly after they opened the ballroom doors, which means there were few other people present, and we were subjected to a violinist for more than an hour before dinner was finally served. (But at least we were certain to get a seat.) The dinner was ok; dessert was rather small. Then they had the awards ceremony. There was a lot of speeching, but it all boiled down to this: QUAC placed fourth as a team in the races, and we were #1 in the Pink Flamingo!
And that wraps it up. The next morning we packed up and headed back to the airport to come home.
