Since we were in San Diego for the Miramar 5k, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to the beach. Interestingly, we’ve learned that in June there’s a near-constant line of clouds along the coastline, so the beach is always overcast. We’d just come from the Marine Air Base, which is only seven miles inland, and where the sun was beating down with a temperature somewhere around 85. At the beach it was grey and maybe 65.
Even though it’s technically the second day of summer, it didn’t seem like it here. I guess we’ll come back in late July or August and have a real beach day!
One of the senior missionary couples in San Diego invited the rest of us to join them in the Miramar Flightline 5k, which is an annual five-kilometer race hosted by the Marine Corps on their air base at Miramar. That location was made legendary by the classic movie Top Gun, so it was pretty cool to go onto the base and see some of the sites from the movie.
We met up with the two other missionary couples before the race started.
As they’re all twenty years our senior, they elected to walk the course. Pepper and I ran. The morning started out nice and cool but temperatures quickly rose into the 80s so it was a warm run. (Of course I couldn’t help but think of the 110-degree day happening back in the valley, so the 80s seemed downright comfortable!)
After the run, we wandered the tarmac to look at all the cool aircraft. This particular base is home to a squadron of F-35 Lightning fighters, arguably one of the biggest, most wasteful boondoggles in government history.
The Ospreys are cool.
I’ve always liked the F-18 Hornets, although I admit the F-15 Eagles remain my favorite fighter planes.
They had a C-130 Hercules cargo plane too.
And even a Super Stallion:
There was also a pretty cool pace car!
Behind me in the photo above is a little Marine Corps band. They were playing classic 80s music, and even managed to sneak in the Top Gun anthem (played at the start of the movie) and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”. Awesome.
I don’t actually enjoy running at all… the only reason I enter events like this is for the event itself. I ran the Bolder Boulder seven times, starting in 1998, and it was always a blast (except the running part). This was no exception: we had a grand time and were happy to spend a few hours with a few thousand runners.
Pepper and I were driving home from our class tonight, when all of a sudden a white blob rose into the sky and passed overhead.
Little chunks were falling off (you can see a tiny white dot just below the large plume on the left) and the bright spot continued soaring into the night sky, eventually fading as it passed into shadow.
We think it was a SpaceX launch– possibly another batch of Starlink satellites. It was cool to watch.
Today we were invited to lunch with our mission leaders, President and Sister Merritt. They’re the couple who oversee the entire San Diego Mission: some 150 young missionaries and about 40 seniors. They’re very busy people, and only rarely travel out to the valley. Since we’re the new kids on the block, they asked if we could meet them for a brief lunch.
It was great to chat with them for a bit. As we were finishing, President Merritt mentioned this would probably be the only time we’d have to sit and talk together during our entire mission. In general, their focus is on the young missionaries– frankly they need a lot more guidance and support than a bunch of seventy-year-old couples with a ton of life experience. We enjoyed our visit, and decided we definitely don’t want to be mission leaders ourselves…
A friend of ours teaches a twice-weekly Zumba class, and Pepper decided to go. She asked if I wanted to, and I told her absolutely not. Not only do I dislike exercise in general, I especially dislike exercise where I have to guess what the instructor is going to do, attempt to emulate it, and end up looking like an uncoordinated idiot.
So she headed to class, and I headed to the street. I’m in training (so to speak) for an upcoming 5k run, so I figured I should at least get in some running time. It was a little after eight in the morning, but already above 90 degrees. I pounded the sidewalks for a few miles, sweating profusely, and went over to the Zumba class to get a ride back home.
When I arrived, they were still Zumba-ing. I waited for a few minutes but they showed no sign of stopping, so I took a deep breath and walked into the gym. I slid into the back– where Pepper happened to be as well– and finished out the last ten minutes of class. Sure enough, I felt like an idiot, but it was funny how all the women (and they were all women) congratulated me on joining them. I guess they don’t get a lot of guys in there. Or they felt so sorry for me they wanted to salvage what was left of my self-esteem.
Here we are afterward.
Next time I think I’ll just run the rest of the way home…
Here in the mission field, we’re part of a “zone”, which is a subdivision of the mission area itself. For the San Diego Mission, we’re in Zone 8, which is basically like District 12 from the Hunger Games: we’re way the heck out in the desert, far from the center of the mission and all the activity in San Diego. But the nice thing is that we’re part of a little mission family here. It’s just us and five pairs of dedicated, hard-working young missionaries.
Every Monday is “preparation day” (aka “P-day”) when the younger missionaries can take care of things like shopping, laundry, and having some fun. It’s a nice break from their daily work of walking the streets to find and teach people. Yesterday in the group chat, there was talk of going to the Imperial Sand Dunes for P-day. We all decided to go, even though it meant leaving our apartment at four in the morning so we’d be there by sunrise. We carpooled in the mission van out to the Dunes, arriving a little before the sun peeked above the horizon.
We had a couple of snowboards, so we took turns surfing the dunes. The sand was steep and very, very fine, so it was perfect for riding.
As the sun rose, it lit up the dunes in beautiful shades of orange and gold.
Here’s our little family:
They’re a great group, and we’re thrilled to be able to hang out with them on desert adventures like this.
We went back to Hodad’s. But this time, it wasn’t the downtown location; it was the original restaurant in Ocean Beach.
We were chatting with friends the other day and mentioned we’d been to Ocean Beach before, and they said something like “Yeah, O.B. has kind of a vibe about it.” That’s for sure. It’s hard to describe, but there’s definitely a vibe. And Hodad’s fits right in.
For the first time in all the years we’ve been here, we managed to score a seat in the van! If you don’t know, it’s kind of a big deal.
After a delicious (and messy!) dinner, we decided not to get one of their legendary shakes just yet. We’d visit the beach for a bit, and then pick one up on our way out of town. We headed to the beach to walk the sand and watch the surfers for a while.
An hour or so later, when we walked back to Hodad’s, the line went out the door into the street. Although their shakes truly are the stuff of legend, we didn’t want to wait another hour to have one. Until next time, Hodad’s!
The Scripps Aquarium, in addition to having a giant shark head for photos, has some sea creatures as well. We wandered the aquarium for a few hours admiring all the tanks. The whole place is very dimly lit, so it’s difficult to get good photos. Here are a few we took.
Jellyfish are pretty cool! This one glows under ultraviolet light.
I don’t remember what this guy is called, but he’s impressive.
And it’s always fun to see all the colors in a coral reef.
Overall, we enjoyed the tour, but we agreed it wasn’t worth the price of admission. We put it firmly in the category of “I’m glad we went, but we don’t need to go again.”
We were in San Diego again, and decided to visit the Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla. While we were walking around, we saw a big shark sculpture (if you can call it that) and remembered that we’d taken a picture of Alex and Kyra in the shark a long time ago. We posed and had a random tourist snap our photo.
Unfortunately we’d forgotten quite what the original photo looked like– we thought Kyra had been looking at Alex and laughing, but it was the other way around. Oh well. It was fun to revisit the shark twenty-two years later.
Last weekend when we were in San Diego we enjoyed the Cactus and Succulent Show at Balboa Park, and bought some plants. Now we’ve potted them, and they’re enjoying their new life in our little casita.
These two really like baking in the hot sun, so we’re setting them outside during the day.
But this guy prefers a bit less light and heat, so he’s inside the window in the (relative) shade.
All three are small but fun reminders of our new desert life.
