San Diego, CA (USA)

Awake by 0700L. This morning I finally got to drive my own rental car, a Nissan Altima hybrid - nice! Todd and I drove over to Glorietta Bay to get Rob and then we drove over to the hangar. I dropped them both off and then headed to Hertz to put car in my name. Soon after that, went over to meet Darin at the Forecast Center. He gave me a tour of the facility, sort of similar to the one he gave me in Germany (see AUG 2011). Spent a while chatting with him and his co-workers. Had lunch (hot dogs) provided by the Goat Locker. Around 1330L, headed over to visit Ski at HQ, where security badges made things difficult... After he got me inside, I was able to take care of a lot of work emails. While there, I called Eric (my former Boss) and found he was available for a visit. Had a nice time talking with him (for about an hour) before he had to cut it short due to the responsibilities of his new (important) job. It was about 1600L at that point, so I drove back to the hangar and arrived just as Rob and Todd were finishing. While waiting for them to be ready to go, we talked about doing something outside tonight. One of the guys in the squadron offered to let us borrow coats (I didn't bring one this trip - I've never been "cold" in San Diego...). But, even when we got back to our rooms, our plans were still uncertain (although we were almost all convinced that it was a good night for baseball). I waited in my room for another hour before Todd called and said "let's leave in 15 minutes" (1800L). Luckily, I was ready. I drove them over to the Ferry Landing near the end of Orange Avenue - I've been there before for shopping but never tried to cross to the city. Turned out to be pretty easy, though: we easily got the water taxi (a little boat) that was going back and forth between Coronado and Convention Center. It did take a bit to figure out how to pay with the machine near the landing but we later learned they will accept money onboard. The taxi service started 1.5 hours before baseball game and ran for one hour after the game ends. Luckily, there weren't too many people waiting on either side... It was a fast ride and easy walk from landing to Petco Field, the "new" home of the Padres (my last game was in old Jack Murphy Stadium in 1995). I found it odd that despite recent poor attendance figures, the ticket prices were still very high... Once inside, we found some pretty good seats next to the visitor's bull-pen (on the first base side). For dinner (eaten throughout the game), I had pizza with pepperoni buried inside the cheese (mmmm...), peanuts, a Weinershnitzel called a "Friar Frank" and some beer (including one very bad taste of Stella Artrois). The game actually only lasted 2.5 hours - not a pitcher's duel, just bad hitting. However, the game had an exciting finish: the Padres squeaked out a win with two outs in the bottom of the ninth! We walked back to water taxi afterwards and managed to get onboard without much difficulty, although there were lots of other harbor cruises coming through at the same time. It was a quick ride back to the Coronado side and we had no problems getting back to our room. A little TV and email before bed...