Travel Thursday: San Diego

I certainly understand this can be hard to get used to.

If you hate perfect weather and beautiful scenery, by all means, stay out of San Diego.

I mean ... 12 months of balmy weather and little precipitation can get downright boring, and really, if you've seen one zoo full of practically every type of animal there is, you've seen them all, right?

Sure, the cuteness is off the charts, but who needs that?

Maybe that's why the Padres and Chargers have to be mediocre or historically underachieving, to bring San Diego down to other cities' level.

Needless to say, just a terrible place to watch a ballgame.

However, for those of you who just can't handle the thought of constantly pleasant surroundings, I'm here to tell you that once in a great while, San Diego is something less than paradise.

I now pronounce you ... mad at your meteorologist.

Some days, you just have to tough it out.

Every morning on the local news, there was a segment called "When Will We See Sun?' The meteorologist's name was Jodi, although I don't remember if this was her. Unlike in the Northeast, where such a segment might try to answer the question of when the endless clouds, rain and/or snowfall will actually leave so we can feel like human beings again, in San Diego, it's when the "marine layer" (what we non-Pacific Coasters might call "fog") will burn off so another day of perfect activities may begin.

One fine morning, Jodi announced confidently that the marine layer would burn off late morning ... as she had every weekday we were there. With that in mind, my wife and I decided to head to Coronado.
It's a lovely area ... cute downtown, nice houses and hotels and miles of beaches. On a sunny day, I imagine it would be hard to beat.

Except on this day, Jodi was wrong. The marine layer didn't burn off. The sun didn't come out. We had to experience Coronado on ... a cloudy day.

To this day, if you say "San Diego" and "Jodi" around my wife, she will growl. I think she's plotting for the day when vengeance will be hers.

Beware of old guys carrying chairs.

Balboa Park is simply wonderful. Not only is it home to the San Diego Zoo (which we went to separately), it has museums, gardens, walkways, shops and restaurants. It's easy to spend an entire day there.

However, it's also easy to seemingly spend an entire day looking for somewhere to park. The place is kind of popular. As my wife and I circled the parking lot looking for a spot we thought we'd never find, I saw in the mass of humanity heading up the sidewalk an old man carrying, of all things, a chair.

OK, that was weird, but destined to be a footnote once we finally parked the car and began enjoying the park. Our first stop was lunch, where the waiter, making small talk, asked us where we were from. When we told him Boston, he said that was interesting, because there was a former Boston Celtics player in the restaurant.

The waiter pointed him out, and I spent the rest of lunch not wanting to be that guy ... you know, the one who stares during the entire meal when he finds out a famous person is in the restaurant and interrupts the meal to get an autograph. Plus, he looked like he was with friends.

He finished his meal not long before we did, so as we were getting up to leave, he was headed out the door after stopping to talk to a few people. Out on the sidewalk, I saw him again ... and he was carrying a chair.

You see, that old guy I saw as we were parking and the former Celtic we shared the restaurant with were one and the same ...

...

...

... Bill Walton.