Flight to San Diego & Excursion in La Jolla
Sunday I flew to San Diego for a workshop. The workshop is now over and I'm still hanging out in the area with my friend Matt from Arkansas, but I figured I'd post about Sunday.

Russ drove me to the airport. I got there around 12:15. My flight was at 1:25. Everything was pretty routine despite the Orange Alert, until I got to the security check. I took my shoes off and emptied my pockets and whatnot, and got through the metal detector fine. My tray, however, didn't make it through. The dude stopped me, held up my keys, and said "Are these yours, young man?" Whoops. I forgot to take my 4" knife off of my keychain. I'm pretty sure I could've gotten in big trouble over that, but thankfully, I just gave up the knife and that was that. Yeesh. (I also found out I was supposed to have taken my laptop out of my carryon bag for the check. Duly noted.)

The first of two flights was to Atlanta. I sat by Luther, a young professional-looking dude, who was going to Atlanta to recruit teachers to the Wake County school system. On my other side (the aisle side) was Laurie (I think), a 40ish mom of two. She was flying to Florence, and was going to meet up with her friend 3 days into a 10 day tour of Italy. She had quite a tale to explain why she was running late!

Laurie bought a traveler's wallet of some sort through a website. She got it in the mail, tried it out, and didn't really like it. It didn't have a clear window for ID, and her daughter told her it looked stupid. So, she mailed it back. She gave it to FedEx the day before her flight. Well, when she was getting ready to leave for the airport, she couldn't find her passport. She had forgotten to take it out of the wallet before mailing it! She frantically called FedEx, the passport office, etc, all to no avail. So, 3 days later, the package finally got to its destination, and the recipient overnighted her passport back to her. What a mess!

I got off the plane in Atlanta and hurried to the nearest sports bar to watch the last few minutes of the ACC championship. Our pilot, knowing that the game concerned many of those on a flight from the Triangle area (Carolina was playing NC State), informed us at halftime that Carolina led by 8. I found a bar with 7:20 left in the 2nd half. State was closing the gap, but we held them off to become the 2007 ACC Champions. Woohoo!

The next flight went straight to San Diego. To the aisle side sat Mason (or Davis, maybe?), who was in the Army Reserves. He was flying back from Panama. I don't remember what project he was working on, but it was basically a goodwill project to help out the Panamanians, so that was cool. The weather was just barely good enough in Panama for him to catch his helicopter to the airport. If he had missed it, he would have had to go home after his orders expired, which means he would have had to pay for his own flight.

To the window side sat Sam, a 9-year-old. I don't really consider myself good with kids, but Sam and I had some fun. We talked (well, he talked, mostly...he was a chatterbox!), we played rock-paper-scissors, he listened to my iPod, and he watched the movie for about 5 minutes. At one point, the lady in front of us turned around, smiling, and made a "Mr. Chatterbox" motion with her hands where only I could see. Of course, the flight was like 4 hours long, and that's a long time to sit still if you're a 9-year-old. I think another couple hours and I would have gotten pretty tired of entertaining him, but it was OK as it was. Mason also helped entertain Sam. Heh, Mason asked him if he liked football, and Sam said he did. Mason said "I bet you're a Raider's fan, huh?" Sam, of course, was a Charger's fan. You should have seen his face, all pinched up in disgust. ;-)

We landed and went our separate ways. I caught a shuttle to the Radisson La Jolla, talking with the driver, a Brazilian named Felipe, on the way. I got to my room and met my roommate, Alessio, an Italian going to school in Napoli. He was busy working on a paper, so I left him behind and went out for a walk. There was a shopping area very near the hotel, so I thoroughly checked that out.

Across I-5 there was a beautiful, shining structure of some sort. I walked a while and found a gate, but it was locked. A motion-sensing camera clicked at me. I retreated a bit, found a good vantage point, and just stared at it for a while. I was just captivated. It was so beautiful. (Here is a picture.) It turns out it is a Mormon temple, and apparently only Mormons are allowed inside.

I eventually left there, grabbed a gyro at a place called Daphne's, and got back to the hotel around 10:30. I fell asleep quickly and slept well. I fell asleep on Eastern Time, and awoke on Pacific Time, so I was quite well-rested for the workshop.