The squealing CPAP mask said times up so here I am in my bathrobe a little after 3, drinking tea and trying to coax some new flames out of the embers of last night’s fire. Maybe I’m the kid on Christmas morning impatiently eager to get at the goodies the day is promising to bring. My day today, beginning with a morning like any other (except for the early rise), becomes interesting when Kathy and I board Delta 1033 nonstop to San Diego, starting a 10 day immersion into warm spawned entirely by Academics. Once in San Diego I’ll attend the 1 ½ day “Bendcare Summit”, an old fashioned boondoggle – rare since Ted Kennedy’s reforms – all expenses plus a small honorarium come to the 50 or so invited doctors who attend to hear lectures on a variety of topics in their field (rheumatology) at the US Grant, a nice hotel downtown. The company will put on nine more summits this year at attractive places https://www.bendcare.com/summits/: Orlando, New Orleans, DC, Las Vegas, Boston, Colorado Springs, San Francisco, San Antonio, and Miami. We will stay in the area for a few days, moving up to an AirBnB by WindnSea beach in La Jolla, very near the little bungalow that was our home in the Winter of ’17 when we were out there 3 months for my sabbatical at UCSD. We’ll aim to recreate some of our favorite moments from those days, carrying a bottle of wine down to the rocky beach to watch the sunset, attending services at LaJolla Presbyterian to hear Rev. Cunningham’ spell binding sermons followed by a stroll through the nearby farmer’s market, eating at The Promiscuous Fork, the Fish Market, Karl’s, Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, Bistro Du Marché, the Public House, that little Thai place across the parking lot from Von’s and maybe even go down to the Market by Buon Appetito in Little Italy to pick up some squid ink pasta and wine to bring back to the AirBnB for a home cooked meal. San Diego may be the best beer town in the country, and we for sure want get back to Pacific Beach for Amplified Ale Works, with its rooftop view of the Pacific, and Latitude 32 (where Brady Hoke hung out when he was coaching SDSU), and hit Half Door downtown near the US Grant. With luck, one of these outings will be with my old friend UCSD professor Ken, who happens to be Kim Kardashian’s cousin but knew us long before she was born.
And if that’s not enough, a little while after I got my invitation, Kathy did. The American Kinesiology Association asked her to come address their annual meeting about her novel methods of teaching Scientific Writing. Since the invite came, she published her e-textbook on the subject. So the stage in Tampa could be a good launching platform for the next phase of her career. The only drawback is that the talk is next Thursday, limiting our LaJolla idyll and making for a weird way back: SD to Detroit, overnight at the airport Westin, then an early morning flight to Tampa, for which we are prepared with car, AirBnB, and recommendations from my beer-loving friend Eric to check out Cigar City and Broken Chair. Ten days from today we’ll be back in AA, ready for our respective work on Monday: Kathy with the paying job teaching and me with a mountain of projects which are fulfilling in so many other ways (and wait till the cash from eBay and Craigslist comes rolling in), tans to show to the jealous left behinds, a few more memories and, we hope, somewhat richer souls, for which travel is supposed to be good.
Posted from my 7th floor room at the U.S. Grant high noon Pacific time
:
Bob Ike's blog 
One thought on “Way too early on a Friday morning January 17th: a pre-travelogue”