Tag: walk

Comic-Con, Thursday

SDSpiveyLeave a comment

I mentioned the noisy hinge to the front desk and they had taken care of it before I was ready to go out.

I walked down the road a little ways, to an Albertson’s, looking for something to eat for breakfast, on the run.

It was too early, so a clerk was removing all the old pastries from the shelves. New stuff was still in the oven.

I bought a small bottle of OJ and a couple small snack pies, apple and pecan. I was hoping to find a small fruit bowl, but couldn’t afford them.

I had gone too far in that direction, so I ended up having to come back to get to the convention center, taking a long flight of stairs, instead of crossing a half dozen train tracks. This lead directly to the convention center, but the only entrance open in the morning was on the other end.

Seriously, these people do not know how to organize a large group. There are maybe a dozen doors along the front, but they funnel 10,000 through only 1. They do utilize more later, but then the flow is significantly more spread out anyway.

There is an escalator that takes you down from the second floor, and then it is blocked off at the bottom, so that you must scan to go out, then you may re-scan in the next door to come back in. Why??? I have already scanned to get in the first place, so why do I have to go out?

There is another elsewhere, going up, where they have a long (60-70 ft) barricade at the top before you can choose which way to go, even if you then walk directly along the side of that escalator.

Nothing started until 10, the main doors opened at 9, so that people could line up (out of the sun) for whatever event they wanted. I headed upstairs and was one of a handful that was at the panel that I wanted, so I got a seat, right up front.

I just bounced from panel to panel, surprisingly not having to stand in line to get into any of them.

One was in the Grand Ballroom, well, it was actually called Ballroom 20, but I think my name would have been better. It could easily hold a few hundred dancers, without crowding. Also, it is the only room, that I know of, that was called a “ballroom” and not a “hall”.

There was a vampire discussion, with Ashley Greene and Peter Facinelli, who both played “Cullens” in Twilight, and the director, Catherine Hardwick.

They also had a K-pop boy band, N-Hyphen, who just released a vampire video, with many vampire themed songs. Although, from the preview, it looks very homo-erotic. I’m not sure if that was they were going for.

By 2pm, there were no more interesting panels, for a while, so I browsed around the main hall for a bit.

I came up to one booth, and looking at the artwork on the book cover, it looked very familiar. The artist asked me if I knew his work, and I replied it looked like a “zombie fetus” book I bought in Orlando 20-something years ago. He was very surprised, because he had only gone to that convention once. I loaned out the book I had to someone, and of course, never seen it again. So I bought the 25th anniversary edition and a sequel, $40. He autographed both, for free, which he normally charges for, just because of the previous purchase. I think he may have just been more impressed that I remembered it from that long ago.

“Artist Alley” has at least 100 artists in their booths, most of which had some awesome artwork displayed. But I have a limited bank account and really don’t want to carry anything at all.

Hunger was striking, and the food at the con was limited in variety, and very expensive. I headed back over to the “Gaslight” district, and found a Irish bar that had a reasonable priced menu posted out front.

I order a shepherd’s pie, only $16, but was disappointed in how small it was. It did fill me a bit, so I guess I should not complain for that. I sat about 10 minutes after I finished, waiting for my check, before someone came over to take my dishes, who was not my waitress, then waited another 8 for it to actually come.

The total was over $18, because of added sales tax, but also a “hospitality” fee. I presume that was the tip, so I left exact change on the clipboard and left. I don’t know who would have been tipped anyway, as the person who sat me, the person who took my order, the one bringing my order, and the one who brought the check, were all different people.

They were not that busy to have that poor of service.

I came back to the room, just to drop off some of the stuff I was carrying, including some swag I got from panels. Then I headed back over to the main hall, for a while.

The next panel I wanted wasn’t until 7, and it was just after 5, but I was hurting again, so I just went up to just sit.

There is a “food court” with a seating area, but every seat is taken up by people just sitting there, not eating, even though there are plenty of rooms with panels that they could sit in, and maybe be entertained.

One panel was really just a trivia contest, for Andy’s mint chocolates. Many of the questions and answers I did not have any clue about. Other questions, I was just way too slow for my brain to process.

One question was about a character that liked lollipops, no one was answering, so I joking called out “Kojak”. The host thought it was funny enough, so I got a chocolate.

San Diego, day 1

SDSpivey

Ok, I got up at 4am and got ready and went off to the airport.

Once I arrived at the terminal, I see the sign stating 3-5 minutes delay for security. Oh God, I’m way too early. I sat at the gate for over an hour and a half.

It was only a 4 and half hour flight, so they only served a small bag of pretzels, a bag with a couple Oreos, and a small cup of a drink. Not nearly enough fuel for my day.

I managed to nod off for 20 minutes or so, but didn’t really get any rest. The couple sitting next to me had a 3-ish little girl, who managed to sleep almost the whole way, so no crying, hurray!

The plane was a 737, which I didn’t know anyone still used. There was no entertainment or information displays, so I had to guess on location and ETA, based on time used so far.

I was thinking about using Uber or even the bus, but last year, the Uber to the hotel, about half a mile, was over $40. This year, the hostel is 3.5 miles, so I really didn’t want to even look at the price. Everything in CA is outrageous. The bus was only $2.50, but I had 4 hours before I was supposed to check in, so no hurry, so I decided to walk.

About 20 minutes later, I regretted that decision immensely. At home the temperature yesterday was about 98F. Here was only 77, but felt so much worse. There are almost no clouds or trees, so the sun just beats down.

I was smart enough to refill my water bottle before leaving the airport, but I almost drank the entire liter by the time I arrived. Also, my ipad lost 20% of the battery, just from the heat, so it wasn’t just me being too damn old.

I did figure out a solution, not that it would help today. I should have fond a big name hotel neat the hostel, then used the airport shuttle to go there, then it would be closer to walk, but hindsight…

Fortunately, the clerk let me check in early, so I dumped my stuff and sat in the common room for a bit, recharging my ipad up, and cooling me down, before heading out to find food.

I found a Yemeni restaurant, but they won’t be open for another month. I can’t wait that long. So I hit a bar that a couple people said had good food. I had a burrito, not bad, but didn’t have any salsa.

I came back to my room, to dig out my Comic Con badge and went down to the con center to get my goodie bag. really only the schedule is want I was wanting. I returned and marked up the programs I wanted to see.

3.5 miles from the airport to the hostel, plus maybe the same for roaming around downtown. My hips are sore, something I haven’t had to experience, so far, even last year.

I hung around the common room awhile, talking with whomever came in. One guy was from Crystal River, wherever that is.

An employee said they were going to have a “movie night”, but never actually played the movie, but did have nachos and popcorn in some bowls.

I did not want to go to bed too early, I would just end up waking too early and have nothing to do. I hung out until I realized I had basically been up for 21 hours, then went to bed.

I was stuck on the top bunk, and the woman below kept coughing and getting up to go to the toilet or whatever, shaking the bed, squeaking the very loud hinge, and closing the tight door. Meanwhile, I had placed some of my things at the foot of the bed, so I was worried that I was going to kick something off and make a huge noise or mess.

I finally got out of bed around 8, peed for the second time since arriving (man am I dehydrated), and walked a few blocks to a market.

It was basically the same as a Sav-alot, just a bunch of cheap, no-name brands, but I got a few items and headed back to eat.

Wednesday has nothing really going on, so I though about going back down to TJ. Halfway to the market, my hips were arguing with me again, so there is no way I am going to walk aimlessly around. I am probably stay in, only going out to eat, today. Wasteful, I know, but better than wasting a day or more not being able to use the tickets I paid so much for.

I am sure I will get bored and go out anyway.

San Diego

SDSpivey

I arrived in San Diego and it felt odd to not have to immediately pull out my passport. Every trip I have made, in many years has been international, in destination.

I headed towards the exit, but I had a thought while on the plane, maybe the hotel has a shuttle. So I asked at the info desk, “How do I get to the hotel shuttles?” He asked which hotel and I told him and he replied they had no shuttle.

Fine I will just Uber then. Holy crap, a mile and a half ride was going to be nearly $45. Forget that, I will just take the city bus.

It was not easy following the Google Maps directions, as there were so many different levels of “roadway”, but I managed to fine the bus stop and sat to wait.

Checking the directions again, I noticed it was 28 minute estimate for the next bus. It was only an 18 minute walk, so screw it, I’m walking. I had nothing but time anyway.

It wasn’t a hard walk. I found the hotel and check in was swift and easy. I dumped my stuff in the room and headed out to find food, as all I had so far was a tiny bag of chips on the plane.

I headed out with the intention of going to a Mexican restaurant I found in the map, 3/4 mile away. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go that way, as there is a fence surrounding the property. Trying to find my way around, I spot a Subway sandwich shop. It isn’t what I want, but I am hungry and I’m still in the hotel parking area still.

I am surprised, they actually have whole wheat bread, without oats and nuts on top. I can’t find that at home for several years now.

He makes my sandwich and then rings it up, $15.51!!! WTF, this same sandwich in Florida, or anywhere else, would only be $6+tax. But since it was already made, I couldn’t just say no.

I don’t know if it because it is close to the hotel or because everything in CA is high priced, but I went back up to my room to eat. Partly because I didn’t want to find out how much the drinks were.

After turning on the TV, which had a message welcoming me, by name, I flipped through a few channels, finding that the on-screen descriptions did not match any of the shows on any channel.

I decided to bring my Amazon Fire Stick, so I checked the back of the TV (which had a decent swivel base) and inserted it and switched the input to the second HDMI port.

It booted just fine, but when I went into the network settings to connect the WiFi, it had a problem. On my other devices, they would auto-load a webpage, then I would have to click a link to bring up another page to enter room number and last name (the password). Unfortunately, this device didn’t like doing that and froze on the network page, forcing me to cut the power just to get back to the home.

Oh, well, I guess I don’t need to watch TV anyway.

I do have a few episodes download on my iPad, and I can watch streaming on it as well, but so much easier to see it on the larger screen.

It is only 7pm, but it is ten back home. I am exhausted, so I just go to bed.

I am woken at 4:45am by several texts. I had a problem with my RV a week ago, so I had dropped it at a service center.

The CSR had put the wrong info into the work order, so several days were wasted. I had gone in on Friday to clear it up and got the work order fixed.

As it was later in the day and their estimator would not be in until Monday, I expected a call then. After landing, on Tuesday, I had a text from them, but I needed to get to the hotel, and then forgot about them.

Even getting a text at 7:45am would be too damn early, as I am a night owl. Besides they don’t even open until 9am.

I tried going back to sleep, but I was already awake, so I got up and showered. I had to wait a bit for the breakfast to be open, 6:30.

I wandered around the first floor a bit just looking around and found a tourist info stand and got a free San Diego map.

As I walked through the dining area, I glanced at the menu. $18 for just eggs!!! All the prices were high. Never mind, I’m going out on the town anyway, I’ll get something somewhere else.

I took a seat in the “business center” and browsed the map. I decided on going to Balboa Park, which I had seen at home also, so I took an Uber there.

The ride was pleasant enough and was reasonably priced. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I was getting out, I forgot to go to get food. And also, it was only 7am, nothing here would open until 10. I wandered about a little in the park, then walked to a nearby place to get a breakfast burrito. It was just a hole in the wall place, so I walked back to the park to find a bench to sit and eat.

I sat right in a puddle on the bench. Well, it will dry. The burrito was good, as chorizo is always good.

I wandered a bit more, finding a cactus with a tall flowering stalk. There were dozens of humming birds fluttering around, drinking its nectar.

There were also thousands of bees flying around, hitting every possible type of flower. None bothered me, so I didn’t bother them.

After so many trips to foreign countries, this was the most “alien” place I have been. Nothing felt “normal”, which I suppose is good, as what’s the point of traveling if everything is the same as home.

In Florida, most trees don’t have a lot of flowers, at least not for long. Here, every type of tree seems be blooming. There are pines and oaks, of course, but they are different species than Florida. There are so many different trees that I don’t even think I have seen before. I was looking at one tree and noticed a spiky plant in its branches, but as I look I realize, it isn’t in the tree, it was the tree. The base had long ago lost its spikes and appeared more like bark.

I spotted a baobab tree, with its tendrils hanging down, ready to become new trunks to support the tree. The sidewalk went under a huge magnolia tree, perhaps 75 feet across, with a trunk bigger than I could get my arms around even halfway. Our magnolias just go straight up, not out.

I see the twisted, gnarled trunks of perhaps mesquite bushes. There is a pine/fir tree that has a huge knotty base maybe 8 feet across, I would love to have that as it would have some fantastic grain pattern.

On the east coast, so many of our “ornamental” plants came from Europe and Asia, it is nice to see a variety of native plants.

Finally, it is 10 o’clock and the places are opening. I selected an art museum, as it was free. It wasn’t very large, but it had some nice stuff.

I walked past a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, but obviously, no plays at this time of day.

Then I went to the “Museum of Us”. It was a general history museum of humanity. They had some ancient relics but also some modern items. They had a room of secret confessions, people would confess something on a postcard and mail it in, anonymously. They were tame confessions, nothing criminal, like “I hate my mom’s boyfriend, I’ll never eat with him” or “I can’t tell grandma that I’m gay, because she’ll leave me out of her will.”  Stupid stuff like that, but interesting somehow.

There was a room that explored our desire and disgust of eating different animals. My personal theory is that we eat ugly animals (cows, pigs, fowl), but not attractive (rabbits, cats, guinea pigs) or extremely ugly animals (camels, worms, insects) unless we have no other choice.

It also included a cannibalism exhibit. Starting off, they show posters of many movies that had a cannibalistic theme or content, like Silence of the Lambs, Robinson Caruso, or Apocalypse Now, before moving on to tribal ceremonies involving human sacrifice and famous cases of forced cannibalism such as the Donner party and the Andean plane crash.

Afterwards, I wandered about town, looking for lunch. I went far, walking through neighborhoods, just seeing the different house styles. Almost went up the ramp to Interstate 5, but caught myself.

I walked quite far, going through “Little Italy”, but I didn’t want overpriced Italian food. I did ask someone as I passed, where to find good, inexpensive food in that area, but he didn’t know, as he was a newcomer.

After walking many miles and hours, without finding a restaurant that wasn’t outrageous, I decided to head back to the room, to rest. I called for an Uber, but after several minutes, it still hadn’t found me a driver. I walked up to the next corner, for shade, and saw a Chinese takeout place, and it was reasonably priced. I canceled my ride search.

As I wait for the previous person to order, I notice, there is no bathroom, so I get my rice with orange chicken to go, and call another Uber, this time it was only 1 minute away.

I asked the driver where he was from, he just said “west Africa.” So I guessed Somaliland, and was not only right, but impressed him as well. Most of the world sees the entire area as “Somalia”, but Somaliland is a self-governing area that is fighting for independence. Further more, they are a “safe” area, unlike Somalia, which has a very high murder rate and pirates that attack ships in the Gulf of Aden.

I watched an English man on YouTube who travels a lot. He made a trip to Somaliland and at one point there is a money-changer sitting on the edge of the street, surrounded by piles of different currencies, in cash. He had never been robbed. That is something that even someone in the US could not do.

I ate my food, then crashed for a couple of hours.

I checked, there were people in the pool, so I got on my swim trunks and went in for a while.

While in there, I realized that I haven’t swam in many years. Probably the last time was when Sherri had rented that house for the weekend, that had a pool. There is nowhere local that is worth going to anymore and the good springs are too far away, so I haven’t gone into the water for a while.

The water was warm enough, but the wind started picking up and was chilling my head too much, so I had to get out.

Walking count: at least 6 miles.

Food and parks

SDSpivey

After re-awakening, I took a shower/bath.

There is a faucet that fills the tub and a shower head, but it is handheld. It has a wall mount, but it wouldn’t be pointing in the right direction. So I sat in the tub and lathered up. There is shampoo, conditioner, and liquid soap here, so I didn’t have to buy any.

After a few minutes, I decided to put in the drain plug. The tub filled quite fast, although the tub was small, it was tall, so I was able to submerge.

The water was nearly perfect in temperature, from faucet and shower head, which is a hard thing to accomplish.

I had sent a message to the host asking about the WiFi. Apparently there was supposed to be directions on a paper on the kitchen table, but there wasn’t

I did a quick search for restaurants, but decided just to walk around until I found one. I went into a small restaurant and closed my eyes and pointed to the menu. If you don’t know what to order, then random is just as good and any.

I got a bowl of rice topped with cabbage and a very thin cut of meat (bacon???) and a side of miso soup and some sort of greens.

The greens didn’t taste good, but the rest did, and I got full before finishing.

I wandered a bit, aimlessly, until I found a small park. I sat in the shade and watched the kids play.

There were the usual items; swings, slide, monkey bars, etc.. But they also had a sort of moon-shaped hill, that had wall-climbing handholds and the inside part was a large slide.

There are a lot of parks around and I just roam from one to another. In one, I sat under an arboretum and watched the huge bumble bees flit around the flowers.

Before heading back, I remembered to find a shop to get a fanny pack. As I walked, I found a Makita store.

It smelled of machine oil, it was wonderful. But I did manage to not buy anything. How would I get it home anyway?

After a few more misses, I got the idea to search for a purse store. Luckily one was nearby.

It was a general purpose clothing store, but did have a large assortment of purses, and I found a fanny pack that was simple and cheap enough. More important, I could put my iPad in there and stop carrying it.

I also realized something, while I can count out the change I need, it can be a pain if I don’t know if I have enough to start with. The smallest bill is ¥1000, so it is easy to end up with a lot of change. I realized that since most stores have a machine for you to pay with coin, cash, or credit card, you don’t hand the money to the clerk, I can just insert the change I have, then insert cash, and the register will just spit out the minimum change.

Cheating, yes, but I don’t care.

The problem being, the metro machines don’t accept ¥1 and ¥5 coins, so I have to try to rid myself of them at regular stores.

More foolishness

SDSpivey

I woke up around 3am. I browsed around the room a bit, took my first dump since Georgia. The toilet has a heated seat, and fortunately, there was toilet paper.

I understand the need in many places to use bidets as the plumbing is not good enough to move paper through, but I don’t want to have to sit there while air is blown on my backside to dry.

Morning view of Osaka and Yodo River

I don’t think I will use it, but I did bring my Amazon Fire, so I could watch some TV or movies if I wanted, but there is no TV. I thought there was supposed to be, so I will check the listing.

There is nothing anywhere I can see that says what the WiFi is, and there are a dozen signals I am detecting, so I have to use my precious mobile data.

The listing doesn’t say there is a TV, so I must have imagined it.

I also notice, that I had searched for places with 2 beds and 2 bedrooms, but I only have 1 bed. Apparently, since I am only paying for one person, I shouldn’t need the other bed, so that room is locked off.

Even if I didn’t need the bed, I still would want it so I can lay out my suitcase, instead of having it on the floor.

Being bored and hungry, I start looking for an all night market. The closest I can find is an hour’s walk away. Oh, what the hell, I got nothing else to do.

It is cool inside the room so I put on my jacket, but it doesn’t take me very long to remove it. Great, now I have to carry it as well as my iPad. I suddenly realized as I was pulling into Atlanta airport, that I hadn’t brought my fanny pack.

Fanny packs are ridiculous looking, but they are super convenient.

I had to cross over the Yodo river, the bridge being really high above the water. They must have ships coming through. Maybe though, it is just because the river banks are so far apart.

As expected, very few people were out at that time of night. Other than a road crew repainting one of the roads near my room, I might not have seen anyone for 40 minutes.

Following the directions, I made it to the store, and it was open. I would have been really angry otherwise.

It wasn’t very large, barely larger than many convenience stores back home.

I ended up selecting a bunch (4) of bananas, a box of grapes, and some sort of apple drink. I can’t read it, but the label has too many ingredients to just be juice.

One thing I had forgotten, Japanese stores don’t give out bags, normally. So I used my jacket to wrap up my purchases, tying the arms together.

I made another mistake, I had opened the apple drink and drank some, so as I walk, it splashes back and forth. Although I would have been more upset had I waited until getting back and then finding out I had carried it all that way for something that tasted bad.

The Japanese brag about how much they recycle, but they also waste a lot. The bananas were wrapped in a cellophane bag, despite not needing one.

The grapes also were wrapped, but that makes more sense, as grapes don’t have an outer coating that we remove before eating. You wouldn’t want random people touching your grapes before you eat them.

Along the way, my wrist was beginning to hurt from the awkward carrying of the stuff. I had the idea to call an Uber, but after waiting for 15 minutes, I still had not been connected with one, so I canceled and kept on walking.

In China, there are lots of Lawson stores, which are branded just like 7-11 stores are. In Osaka, I see Lawson’s, but they are more blue and greenish-blue logos. There are also 7-11 stores here too, maybe that’s why there is a difference.

The also have some restaurant chain called MacuDonarudo’s. It looks familiar, but can’t place why.

As I was arriving, dawn was breaking, so a good time to go back to bed. 🙂

Downtown Derry-Londonderry

SDSpivey

We really haven’t spent much time in any cities since Dublin, and there wasn’t much to see around anyway, so we walked down, across the bridge to the city walls. Derry has one of the few double decker bridges in Europe and has the only remaining “full” city walls, they were never breached.

Derry is a city full of past trouble. It is the battle ground between the Irish Nationalists (for a free Ireland) and the Unionists (loyalist to the UK crown). Even the name of the city is rife with difficulty. The legal name is “Londonderry”, but it has long been called just “Derry” also.

The city was even a center to the turbulent times referred to simply as “The Troubles.” This was a time of terrorist tactics of shootings and bombings of public places, starting in the 1960’s and having deaths as late as 2002.

We ambled along, enjoying the sights, nothing really new or noteworthy, but enjoyable. Until mom spotted a Hop-On bus sign. Wait a minute, I bought tickets for the Derry Hop-On bus before we left, Unfortunately, the bus here only makes one round per hour, so we had to wait 30-40 minutes.

We took the whole tour, coming back to where we started, mainly because the driver never stopped at the places he was supposed to stop. Also, nothing looked interesting enough to stop at.

It was just a mile to the house, so we went across the Peace Bridge and walked down the street.

Ready for a nap.