Skip to main content

Waking Up in San Diego

I just got back from a trip to San Diego that wasn't at all what I thought it would be.

It started with skin care products. These used to be my crack cocaine, especially when I was on a low-fat diet. I thought I was past that, but a dealer found me on the street and got me to drop what used to be a mortgage payment (before I refinanced). At least the stuff she sold me worked.

Spending such an embarrassing amount of money on skin care was a wake-up call to be more stoic and less of a hedonist. The weather and hotel set the mood. It was so cold, cloudy and humid that I wore my long down coat and alpaca gloves. The hotel was the noisiest room I've had since I lived in a military dorm. Some of the guests let their doors slam shut with a BOOM!; my room was across the street from an all-night construction site; and very late one night, someone on the second floor pulled the fire alarm for no discernible reason, sending everyone out to shiver on the front steps for half an hour.

Earplugs not included.
The first couple of days, I walked all over downtown, the harbor, the Gaslamp Quarter and Little Italy taking pictures. It was cold and my knees and right foot hurt from so much walking, but there was nothing to do at the hotel (no TV in the room, and guests didn't gather in the unheated lobby). I'd have stayed in my cozy  room with a book, but "This is the California where it is easy to Dial-A-Devotion, but hard to buy a book."(1) The library the hotel clerk found turned out to be a law library. I wanted to go home.

If you're unhappy in San Diego, you can go elsewhere for a few dollars. That's what I needed--a getaway from my getaway. I got on a train called the Coaster and went to Oceanside, an old little beach town. The sun came out, my shoes came off, and I waded out into the ocean with a couple of guys. It was like stepping into snow. For a few hours, we waded and sat on the rocks in the sun. The guys left and I found a coffee shop with greeting cards, pictures of the area from the turn of the last century, and a shelf of free used paperbacks. I took Mission of Honor by Tom Clancy.

For all my walking around, I wasn't hungry more than twice a day, sometimes once. The much-heralded Gaslamp Quarter was mostly gingerbread buildings and party animals. I preferred Little Italy: less fru-fru, more trees, and sidewalks stamped with dates going back to the 1920s.


Little Italy, San Diego: Fru-Fru Free Zone, Except During Carnevale
Unexpectedly, it was easy to find low-carb fare in a place associated with pizza and pasta. La Villa served local vegetables and regional pastured meats. Lounge Burger served the best burger and salad I've ever had (their meat is grass-fed and they offer gluten-free buns), and even a place called Spaghetteria had a filling stuffed pork dish. I needed it after skipping lunch and going sea kayaking.

Man v. Nature: Kayakers at La Jolla
When I booked the kayaking trip, I was thinking of paddling in the sunshine, watching animals frolick in the sea caves of La Jolla. In reality, you put on a wet suit to keep from getting hypothermia, drag your kayak into snowy-cold water, get in and paddle through the breakers, heading straight into them so the waves don't roll you out of your boat. There were six of us in the group, including the guide, a 30-ish couple from Oklahoma, a woman from Washington DC and her son, who looked to be in his late teens. The guide and I were the only ones to make it out past the breakers, the white-capped waves that crash into the shore. He said he admired the determination of the others (they tried to get out there nine times), but hoped the experience would be a wake-up call for them to get into better shape. The woman and her son eventually made it out to the open water; the couple from Oklahoma didn't. Earlier, the wife mentioned she walked all the way to the Spreckels Theater from her hotel and her feet were sore. According to Mapquest, assuming I remembered her hotel correctly, it's a 0.72-mile walk. She's too young to think that's a long walk.


After I dragged the kayak to the shore, I got in and the guide pushed me off. I paddled and corrected to keep going straight into the waves. A big white wave hit me in the face and gave me a mouthful of water. I finally got past the waves and sat on the open water--a big, cold, frightening ocean--hoping our guide's promise about being unable to drown in a life jacket wouldn't be tested. After he joined me, we couldn't get close to the sea caves: the waves there were too big and would have crashed us into the rocks. But we could hear the sea lions barking and saw one swimming close up. Between the cold, the motion, the good-looking guide (even if he was a vegetarian), and being a little scared of the ocean, I got overexcited and slightly queasy. I had almost made it to the shore when a wave tossed me out of the boat.

In spite of the cold and my sore knees of the first couple of days, I had a good time in San Diego. I went to Balboa Park, the Maritime Museum, saw the movie Lincoln, went to the Carnevale in Little Italy, and saw the New Shanghai Circus. Anyone who thinks they'll get muscle bound from strength training should see these strong, graceful performers. Any woman who works out with dinky little weights to keep from getting big muscles should be inspired to break out the 20-pound barbells. All the acrobats came out to greet the audience after the show. None of them was taller than I was (I'm 5'-4"); the women, some of whom bore the full weight of a couple of other performers, were tiny. They were all trim and toned, but nobody looked like Mr. or Miss Universe.

I'm satisfied that I was able to be happy in the cold, face up to something scary (the kayaking) and find a lot of things to like. But I'm very happy to be back in my quiet home.

1. "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" by Joan Didion. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1968.

Comments

JanKnitz said…
I'm glad you found Balboa park and other amusements. People tend to think of "sunny California" and fantasize that it's always warm and tropical here. Nope. It's February--WINTER (such as it is) is here. This isn't Florida or Hawaii.

And if you ever come to San Francisco or other points in the SF Bay Area, remember what Mark Twain said (or at least it's often attributed to him) "The coldest winter I ever spent was July in San Francisco". San Francisco equals fog equals COLD. Don't forget your SWEATER!
Lori Miller said…
True, California is no more tropical than New Mexico. I suppose it's like people imagining that Denver is cool and breezy in the summer. But I've been to the Central Coast in the winter a few times and never needed more than a sweater.
tess said…
EB would be so proud of you, playing in the ocean in February.... :-) me -- i think i'd prefer doing it in August.
Lori Miller said…
The key is to keep moving. But I'd rather do it in August, too.
I AM proud, and also quite fond of Oceanside. It is so laid-back there.
Hi Lori

Your blog is called Pain, Pain go away.I hope you are not in constant pain.

Eddie
Lori Miller said…
When I started this blog, I had an abscessed tooth, among other problems. It was the worst pain I was ever in.

Popular posts from this blog

An Objective Book about Other Childhood Vaccines

Today's decision by the CDC to add COVID shots to the schedule of childhood vaccines has some people concerned about the rest of the vaccines on the schedule. Contrary to fact-checker claims, adding COVID shots to the schedule means children will be required in about a dozen states to get a COVID shot to attend public school. Indiana isn't one of them--our childhood vaccination law doesn't mention the CDC and such a requirement could run afoul of our ban on COVID vaccine passports. But even freewheeling Indiana has some vaccine requirements and this kerfuffle has people wondering how safe those vaccines are.  There's a book called Vaccines: Truth, Lies and Controversy  by Peter C. Gotzsche, DrMedSci and co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, about the safety and efficacy of all those vaccines, including COVID and others. Cochrane was founded to "to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving healt

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and