Taking the plunge

Last night, I took another big step toward becoming a grown up -- I got engaged! Knowing that Tracy would be suspicious of anything remotely romantic that I did once I moved down here, I've been admittedly holding off on giving her any false hope. The result is that as soon as I asked her out to dinner last night, she had a hunch that I might be up to something big (it didn't help that I got caught trying to leave this morning's outfit in her car!).

The night started with her meeting me at work in Pacific Beach. From there, we walked over to a seafood restaurant called The Fishery, which is quite good and conveniently located only a few blocks from my office. After that (as I had warned her), we went on a sunset stroll along the beach toward Crystal Pier. Having never been out on the pier, I suggested we go out to the end it. It's an unusual pier, in that there is a hotel built right on to it with a bunch of private beach cottages, one of which I had secretly reserved that morning. On the way off the pier, I instead took a left turn into one of the cottages, where the ring was waiting for her on the bed. At first, she seemed a little upset at the turn of events, as though this wasn't the way the script was supposed to go! After all, she did have to work early this morning, and she is on call overnight at the hospital as I write this. I figured all would be well once she opened the box, though, and I was correct. The rest, as they say, is history (she said yes).

And so begins the next stage of our lives together. We anticipate the wedding will be next summer in Seattle (probably August or September), but beyond that, we don't have any details. I wanted to give it at least a full day before diving into the planning, although I'm sure Tracy's already done a lot of that already in her head. I've posted some pictures of our special night below (you could click on the image to see bigger versions of the pictures):

The Life Aquatic

Last night, I embarked on an overnight fishing trip with my friend, Larry, aboard the Condor, based in San Diego. I had never done such a trip like this, only day trips in such exotic destinations as Hawaii, Alaska, and Vancouver Island. I also had never fished with 29 other people off the same boat, so crossing lines was certainly a concern of mine. My world is still rocking back and forth as I write this.

The boat was quite nice -- 94 feet long with berths for 35 guests. Needless to say, 28 of the other 29 people were male; mostly older, with big stomachs and facial hair. Yeah, you know the type. We took off around 10pm, and after some brief instructions on how it was going to go, I laid down for some (surprisingly good) rest till about 5:30am, when we dropped our lines out for the first time. Albacore tuna was our target fish, and we used live bait (anchovies and sardines). We headed about 40-50 southwest of San Diego, to the open Pacific off the coast of Mexico.

My day got off to an inauspicious start. Two of my first three "casts" resulted in a snake's nest on my reel. Apparently, I had some lessons to learn. Those three attempts lasted a grand total of three minutes, which was a sign of things to come. After those three, we also motored along for another two hours or so before dropping lines again. In that time I got seasick for the first time in my life. Not fun.

The rest of the day consisted of moving from kelp bed to kelp bed, staying at each for maybe 2-5 minutes. All in all, I probably had my line out there for 20 minutes during the whole trip. Here's a good picture of everything I caught:













Most everyone else suffered a similar fate. In all, the boat only caught 8 fish (7 albacore and a yellowtail), so most people went home empty-handed. Was it worth it? Probably, since I always would've been left wondering what might've been had I not gone. I don't think I'll ever choose to go out on a boat with that many other fisherman, though. Besides being overwhelmed at the amount of maneuvering that was necessary to avoid crossing lines, I seem to have been out of my league, since everyone else seemed to know what they were doing. On the positive side, it made me reminisce about that 175 lb. tuna I caught during my Hawaii trip a few years back, and how fun it was. I'm afraid I'm hooked for life.

Next up: sailing this weekend in Seattle. Saturday will mark my third different boat (and third body of water) in the week. Hopefully my world stops rocking before then!

Recent happenings in my life

San Diego has been a transition for me in many ways, but one of things I'm realizing is that I don't often have that much exciting stuff to write about in this blog. Since I've pretty much cut out overnight sailing or backpacking trips, my adventures are somewhat less...well...adventurous. Regardless, as my bike's odometer passed the 1000-mile mark (since last fall, I think), I figured I'd update my readers on the other random happenings in my life -- bullet point-style:

- Tracy and I finally got around to getting a television, mainly so we could watch movies on something other than our laptops. It's a 26" Vizio LCD screen, and it's pretty neat. Now we just need a DVD player. Neither of us have had a TV since February, and Tracy hasn't had one since she moved down here over a year ago, so this is all very exciting...

- Tracy's sister, Kate, and her boyfriend, Ben, are down visiting/vacationing. They've been here since Wednesday and are staying till Tuesday morning. It's always nice having out of town guests, since it means we get to be tourists again. Among other things, we went to a Padres game, a few parties, kind of went to see a band play, and this afternoon, we went sailing under the Coronado Bridge -- all very exciting. Tomorrow is back to work/reality day, which brings me to...

- I'm bringing my car into the Mitsubishi dealership tomorrow to have a strange paint problem repaired, one in which the black paint on the roof and hood are fading to almost white. Even though my car is over six years old with 52,000 miles on it (read: not under warranty), apparently this paint problem is so pervasive on these models that they're fixing it on their dime. I didn't know such service existed in our world anymore, but it's very good news for me. I was debating whether I should fix it myself and hope that it didn't come back, or wait till I sell the car and let someone else do it. This makes the decision easy, but it means no car for a week.

- Upcoming news: deep-sea fishing trip on Thursday, and then a weekend trip to Seattle. Stay tuned!

Another fun weekend in LA

This weekend, Tracy and I ventured up to Los Angeles for a long-awaited concert featuring the Decemberists at the Hollywood Bowl. As part of the trip, I talked her into going with me to the Richard Nixon library in Yorba Linda, CA, so there was something for both of us.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Nixon Library, which also doubled as his birthplace. This was my first presidential library, and I must admit that it was quite impressive. Lots of historical artifacts, including Nixon's early years (he was raised in a Quaker household -- who knew?), and his entry into politics not long after he graduated from Duke Law School. There was an entertaining wall of handwritten letters from children saddened by his defeat in the 1960 Presidential election, as well quite a bit of material from his trips to Asia (I never realized how well-traveled he was, both as Eisenhower's VP and as President). Pat Nixon was also honored in quite a few exhibits, as well as the Nixon children. Strangely, the section on Watergate was "covered up" for renovations, but by the time we got there, the museum was closing anyway. Lots of history happened during Nixon's political career! Listening to him talk, I couldn't help but notice the contrast between him and our current President, in terms of accountability, charisma, and modesty. Nixon seemed like a pretty likable guy.

After the museum, we met up with Tracy's friend Christine and made the hour-long drive up to Hollywood Bowl to watch the Decemberists perform alongside the LA Philharmonic Orchestra. The venue itself was breathtaking, set amid the Hollywood Hills with the famous sign in the backdrop, and sold out with probably 10,000 people. The best part was that you were actually allowed to bring food and drinks inside, meaning you could basically have a picnic in there, complete with your own wine or beer. I've never seen a venue do this before. The show itself was pretty good (including the two opening acts). I wasn't familiar with too many of the songs, but I seemed to be in the minority on that one. Once the concert was over, the shuttle bus quickly whisked us back to our car in the satellite lot, one of the most efficient post-event setups I've experienced. Kudos to the Hollywood Bowl!

It's summer in San Diego

Now that the annual "June gloom" has lifted, summer has begun in earnest here in Southern Cal. That means a stronger sun, even less chance of rain (I believe the last rainfall was mid-April), and a pretty hot apartment.

This, of course, made me start thinking about Seattle -- I'm hoping to go back in a few weeks for a sailing excursion and see some friends. I began noticing some pretty major differences between the two cities. Two of my main sources of summer happiness in Seattle are sailing and escaping to the mountains. Both would most likely be cooler than sticking around a warm house on a hot summer day. Neither of these is really a viable option here. There is sailing, but there aren't really any cool destinations like there are up in Puget Sound, and I'm pretty limited to daysails. There are also mountains, but I've learned that going more than about 5-10 miles inland means the temperatures are going to rise 15-30 degrees (depending on how far you go). That kind of limits me in the eastern and western directions. Going south means Mexico, and while that can be fun I'm sure, I don't know that I'm ready to drive down there or deal with Tijuana just yet. Which means, if I want to escape the heat and the city, I need to go to the beaches here, or go north toward LA. It also means lots of crowds.

I'm also beginning to think that my favorite neighborhood in this city is Pacific Beach, where I work. It's the only area where I can consistently find that bright green grass that I enjoy so much, as well as cool ocean breezes. The problem, of course, is that getting in and out of that area in the summer means having lots of company. I'm clearly not the only one trying to escape the heat!