A little help from a friend.

I got a little help from Kolohe while doing my exercises last night. :)


San Diego Part 1

Last week I went to San Diego for a conference. I arrived a day early to see parts of the city and fell in love with the place. It's gorgeous, weather is perfect and the people are nice. Plus, it's only a 5 hour flight to Hawaii. Can't ask for more! Now I wonder what kinds of jobs are out there...



A view of downtown from Coronado Island.




Another view of downtown with the sailboats.






Self portrait on the back of my trolley tour bus.




Surfer dude on Coronado. Love it!





My future house on Coronado.





A polar bear at the zoo having a nice snack. He looks just like one of my dogs having a bone.



Red river hogs. One spectator remarked that the babies look like watermelons. So true.





My everest. I was determined to push my clausterphobia and fear of heights aside to take the gondola ride across the zoo.








Me, on the gondola! It was breezey, and the car rocked like crazy, but no panic, wahoo!





The view down on the zoo from the gondola.





Hippos at the zoo, so darn cute!




I stayed in a hotel near the bay's tall ships. There were a whole bunch you could see, from an aircraft carrier, to a russian sub, to this one, the Star of India (1863).




The view from my table at my first dinner in town. Not too shabby.






A sunset cruise. Wish I was on it!





This is one of the bands from the San Deigo Rock and Roll marathon. I watched a good part of the race one morning before my conference. I definitely want to run it next year.




I counted at least a dozen Elvises in the race, but the one of the hand bike was the best.




A few of the runners come up their first big hill.




San Diego Part 2

My conference was held at the conference center located downtown, and next to the infamous Gaslamp District. It was once called the Stingeree and was home to many bars and girly shows. Not suprisingly considering it's a navy port. Now it's cleaned up for the most part and reminds me a lot of Georgetown.






Here's the main entrance.





The ballpark is literally in the heart of downtown. I didn't catch a game, but I did see the bellman and a local hotel loading up the NY Met's luggage. Alas, no ballplayers in sight!




The trolley, all above ground so I almost got on it. In the end I didn't need to. Oh well.




I had some extra time at the end of one of my conference days, so I killed time by going shoe shopping of course!


An old grand hotel. I love it when old and new architecture coexists.






Malcolm Gladwell was one of our big speakers at the ASTD conference. He was fantastic.





A view out the back of the conference center. Really it's amazing anyone would go inside for the sessions with a view like that.





The conference center is built to look like sails of a ship.




The scene inside one of the houses on our Haunted Ghost Tour. Do you see the orbs at the top of the stairs? No, not the door knob, but the orbs near it. Spooky.



Also on the tour we went to a haunted grave yard, but what struck me more was that in the 90's they found bodies buried outside the current grave yard walls. They marked them with these tiny little markers. Kinda sad.






Proof that ghosts exist! :)





One night my conference rented out seaworld. I headed straight for the penguin exhibit. Apparantly they have 350 of them.





More penguins outside.





The sea lion was adorable. Look at those expressive eyes!







Saying goodbye to the crowd.






This is the Shamu Rocks show where they choreographed a 25 minute show all to rock music. At one time there were five whales performing at the same time.





A whale and it's handler.





Diving!




More diving!





Heather went to San Diego for a conference this past week. She got there a day early to do some touristy things, and also managed to fit a few tourist activities in the evenings after her conference was over. Turns out San Diego is everything it's hyped up to be and would be a lovely place to live. Wonder what the job market is for trainers there...