San Diego Trip

Friday Naoyuki flew to San Diego to attend the AACR (American Association for Cancer Research) conference, which draws about 15,000 attendees each year. I had to work Friday (which was also the occasion of my 50th birthday) but I joined him San Diego the next day.

As usual, getting "there" was half the fun. In Naoyuki's case he'd booked his flights with American Airlines, which, readers will recall, was the one having all the trouble last week. We spent three days having neurotic conversations about "what if...?" before he finally decided to buy a cancelable, refundable, one-way ticket from Chicago to San Diego on US Airways. By Friday American had sorted out its maintenance problems with the MD80s so he flew the Chicago-San Diego leg of his flight on American and canceled the US Airways ticket.

I flew out on United, which wasn't having problems, but it turned out the plane we were supposed to take from Dulles to San Diego had a malfunctioning toilet and the captain wasn't willing to fly us across the continent with one of the restrooms down. Eventually they fixed the toilet and we were free to go but we were delayed at least 90 minutes.

I didn't make it to our hotel (the rather plush Coronado Island Marriott Resort) until about 7 p.m. San Diego time (10 p.m. here in Buffalo) and given that I'd been up since 5 a.m. I was pretty zonked. Even so we went to a fairly cool Hawaiian restaurant, Peohe's, right on the water in Coronado with a completely splendid view of downtown San Diego. Nice food, fabulous view.

The next morning we stumbled across Tartine, a wonderful French pastry / sandwich / coffee shop at the corner of 1st and Orange in Coronado. Totally scrumptious food and amazing desserts.
Naoyuki came back from the conference long enough for us to go to lunch at a pasta place in "downtown" Coronado, close to the Hotel Del Coronado.

That afternoon I entertained myself by visiting the (very aptly named) Hole, a long-established gay bar on Lytton, just off Rosecrans and close to the northeast corner of the San Diego airport. Aptly named, in part, because you walk down 15-20 steps to a concrete patio surrounded by a high fence on all sides, with a sort of ramshackle roof over the bar portion. When I arrived (about 2:30 p.m.) there were only 3-4 other customers so I had a nice half hour flirting with the hunky bartenders while they got set up for the Sunday afternoon crowd, which started trickling in about 3 p.m. and was in full-swing (probably 300-400 people and a line waiting to get inside) by the time I left at 4:30 p.m.

I hung out with a tall skinny drag queen, a cute librarian boy (25 years old and a year out of library school at Queens College in NYC), and the librarian boy's fag hag. The night before had been "Raquel's" birthday and she was so blitzed by the time her party was over that she just crashed in the section of the complex known as "B.J. Alley." She (literally) popped up about 3:30, looking for her shoes, which the bartenders had graciously kept in a magnum behind the bar. (And, no, as far as I can tell you just don't get to do these things in Buffalo, more's the pity.)

That evening I took the shuttle bus to the convention center, then Naoyuki and I walked over to Chive, a very chi-chi, nouvelle California cuisine restaurant over on 4th Street. Nifty food but given the crowd and the lack of wait staff the service was a bit slow.

Monday morning I hit Urban Body Gym in North Park while Naoyuki did conference stuff, then we did one of our all afternoon / into the evening car tours. Down the Silver Strand from the Hotel Del to Imperial Beach; back up I-5 to Balboa Park (most stuff was closed, since it was Monday afternoon); a quick drive through Hillcrest; out Rosecrans to Point Loma and the Cabrillo National Monument; back through Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, and Mission Bay to La Jolla; an unplanned detour through University Town Center; along the periphery of UCSD and up to Torrey Pines State Reserve; back to La Jolla for pretty yummy sushi at Toshi San; and back to Coronado and Tartine (yet again) for dessert.

Tuesday morning I vegged out while Naoyuki was at conference and had finally worked up the energy to get some lunch and visit the gym again when he called to say he was done for the day. So I turned around and after we'd changed and lunched headed out again, this time out Interstate 8 through El Cajon, Santee, and so forth to Alpine, where we picked up State Highway 79 for the ride up to Julian, the little mountain town (we'd visited once before) famous for its pies.

Last time we'd visited it was the weekend and so many people were there that we skipped pie. This time it was pretty deserted, so we had our pie (crispy apple for me, cherry-apple for Naoyuki) and coffee, then headed back to San Diego, this time through Santa Ysabel, Ramona, and Poway. On the way up we had been aghast to see how badly charred the area was (presumably from last fall's massive wildfires); apparently the Santa Ysabel-Ramona route wasn't as badly affected. Wildflowers, including California poppies, lupines, and creeping phlox, were all present in abundance, making for a nice visual treat.

That evening Naoyuki's friend, Greg, who has been MIA since leaving Roswell Park in September 2006, picked us up in Coronado and took us to one of his favorite Hillcrest restaurants, the St. Tropez Bistro and Bakery, another lovely little French pastry, quiche, sandwich, coffee shop. (We need some of these in Buffalo, dammit!)

It was nice catching up with Greg after all this time and he really did NOT need to give us that lovely little teapot (but it is quite thoroughly fetching, especially in that 1950s vintage bathroom pink glaze!)

Wednesday morning we did breakfast at Tartine one last time, I did yet another mini-road trip (this one up to Del Mar), then it back to Budget to drop off the car and along to the airport to catch our long flight home.

What a nice way to celebrate one's 50th birthday!