Long Beach, CA (USA)

After shepherding all the students and wayward instructors for over a week, I'm in pretty good with the boss now.  As a reward of sorts, he told me I could take one of the students "and get some training done somewhere until Monday morning" (!!!). I had called my cousins - Kathy, Kevin and Mary - earlier in the trip to see if we could get together while I was here. Ended up hearing from Mary's husband, Leo, this morning: they are having a Super Bowl Party! They offered to put me up at their place if I could come, so I took off from El Centro around 1600 and got to Long Beach (after stops in San Diego) at around 1900. On final, a giant stork (or heron) took off right in front of us - I was SURE we would hit it, but we lucked out... Leo picked me up and took me back to their house - it is nice! Went over to Patsy's Irish Pub in Westminster and had some drinks. Back to their house after that - we stayed up late talking and got to bed after midnight...