San Diego visit to NCMIR






Ran down to San Diego with Greg, Tolga and Jamie to meet with Mark Ellisman for the day. It was a whirlwind trip, flying down in the morning and back in the evening which precluded any surfing time or opportunities for a delicious meal in San Diego. Just too much to do and not enough time for everyone given the projects that are coming down.







Unfortunately, though I bought my camera, there were very few opportunities to make photographs other than shooting what I saw through the plane windows.






Looks like Peter Jackson was in town as this is his Gulfstream IV sitting just off the runway.









Taking off we circled around and flew over the USS Nimitz. I had an invitation a couple of months ago to embark on the Nimitz as she underwent maneuvers off the California coast, but prior commitments kept me on land. Perhaps another time.











The flight home was nowhere near as pleasant as the flight down to San Diego had been. I started off thinking that getting an exit row seat was a bonus until actually sitting down in the Skywest Canadair RJ 700. That was the tightest exit row seating I've ever been in combined with a rather loutish seat neighbor. When we were taking off, the flight attendant asked him to buckle up to which he begrudgingly did only to flip out of the seatbelt muttering the word "bitch" underneath his breath. I was sitting there eyebrows raised for a couple minutes until the cacophony of half a dozen kids under 11 around me picked up with one of them directly behind me kicking my seat repeatedly. A polite inquiry to the child and the child's mother to stop the incessant kicking went heeded for about 20 seconds until the seat table went down and the pounding on that began. The child's mother simply said "stop......stop......stop.....stop kicking the mans seat.....stop...." until it was almost as bad as the pounding. After deciding to give it up to the universe, I noticed the lout sitting next to me text messaging back and forth to his friend which he continued to do throughout the entire flight. Thankfully, there was some entertainment from the kid seated in front who was playing with all of his action figures.... Indiana Jones versus Jack Sparrow! Raaaaarrrrrrgh..... then it was Darth Vader against someone I did not recognize which had me laughing enough to make a picture.

Still.... was most happy to be off the plane, away from weird 50-something anti-social seat neighbors and planeloads of children full of brownian motion.

Posted: Thu - July 23, 2009 at 10:21 AM          

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