I take back every negative thing I've ever said about San Diego

Weekend of Nov. 15, 2009

San Diego

(There are adorbs seals in this album. Just sayin')

Hogan and I flew back from our aircraft carrier adventure into LA and drove down to San Diego to stay with Ryan, another bro from work who was on assignment on at North Island, on Coronado. We got in pretty late and just crashed in Ryan's room, because he was living with some crazy woman with an insane apartment. We got up and IMMEDIATELY ate delicious street tacos - best tacos I've ever had.

It definitely competes with Hanford's "Taco Tuesdays." Less busty bartenders, more children selling tacos out of a parked truck. Regardless: SO DERICIOUS.

Then we were like "well? What should we do now? Oh I know, let's go surfing." November? Who cares. It's San fucking Diego. German for "a whale's vagina." It is consistently 75 degrees and perfect weather YEAR-ROUND. Hell yes we went surfing. I actually got up on the board a few times; I'm counting it. Twas fun.

Ryan, put that away

We had some food I'm sure at some point (probably more tacos), and then we went downtown to a bar where they do goldfish racing. You put your goldfish in these long tracks with water in them and blow bubbles behind them with a straw to make them go forward. Tournament style - best goldfish wins.

This is Fish Taco. He lost in the first round. Thanks bro.

The next morning was the day after Veteran's Day and we had to go to "work." This meant we went along with Eddie and Dan, who were on assignment at Miramar at the time, to go "work on" F18 legacy engines. It was a lot of what Hogan and I did at Lemoore, except with an older engine. It was cool being at the place where they filmed Top Gun, but there weren't nearly enough shirtless dudes playing volleyball. But anyways, after about 3 hours we didn't have anything to do and decided to take our leave. We got some more tacos (there is a theme here) at a restaurant called "Mexican Food." It was... exquisite and terrible all wrapped up into one diarrhea-inducing burrito.
With the rest of the day open, Hogan, Eddie and I went over to Sunset Cliffs and Cabrillo. Great tide-pooly beachy areas. Cabrillo has an especially awesome lookout over the city.

The North Island military base is close by, so helicopters are fairly abundant

Definitely not my worst work day ever

Then we came back, bummed around Ryan's place on Coronado (fun fact: the bridge from San Diego to Coronado is the bridge that Baxter was kicked off in Anchorman. You're welcome), and had food... somewhere. Then Hogan, Ryan, Eddie, and I went to a few bars in the Candle Light District (is that a thing? I think I remember it being called that, but I'm not positive). Played some pool, had some beer. Life was pretty great that night. Hangovers in tow, we then went into work with Ryan to the base on Coronado, North Island. This was mostly blackhawk and seahawk helicopters. We took a tour and then stood around while they were testing one of the engines on a blackhawk. The gusts it was whipping up were friggn strong. Then we got to climb around a bit on the helicopter to pretend to look like we knew what we were doing. False.
Similar to Miramar, we left "early" (i.e. before lunch). At this point, Ryan wanted to... I don't know... pay bills or something? Either way, he was being classic Weaksauce. So Hogan and I went to the San Diego Zoo. DEFINITELY the best zoo I've ever been to. Pandas and tigers and koalas and polar bears! COME ON.

If you are a fatass Panda, how do you just PASS OUT in a couple of branches? Good lord.

My favorite part of the visit was seeing turtles having sex, and then watching some parents trying to explain to their 5-year-old what was happening. In fact, you might want to watch here, because the sounds these things make is just... oh man it's just perfect.

What else did we see? Panda cubs, a snake eating a mouse, Tapirs trying to mate. All in all I'd say it was a pretty great time. OH YEAH. Also, the Eagles were in town playing the Chargers, so there were a ton of Eagles fans all over the place. It was awesome. Great trip.

That's what the babies look like. Almost dead-on.

Before it got dark, we wandered around Balboa Park for a little bit. They had a bunch of cool buildings, some flowers, statues. It was quite pleasant indeed.

Gettin artsy with the photos

Last thing we did in Balboa Park was to check out the Rose and Cactus Garden. Just kind of wandered around. Not having responsibilities is great.

I started getting REAL GOOD at the timer on my camera...

After our "jumping around a bunch of cacti" adventures, Hogan and I returned to Ryan's place and decided to do a spur of the moment power hour while watching Anchorman. Good decisions. We then took a ferry over downtown, which was hilarious because at this point we were all feeling a little wacky and we took about a billion pictures of ourselves being idiots.

Land ahoy

When we arrived, we started climbing some random bulldozers that we saw (clearly making some good choices) and then went to Little Italy for some pizza and energy drinks. Don't want to start falling asleep, do we?

Store in the front, restaurant in the back. This is... normal?

After some delicious pizza, we hit a few bars. I don't recall all that much except being moderately hungover while playing soccer the next morning. So I guess it was a good night.
We took a trip up to Mount Soledad, which had a great view of the surrounding coast. It was a cool place to see. Also saw some dude propose to his girlfriend up there. Not a bad spot to pop the question. Still though... spew.

Oh more perfect weather, San Diego? Surprise surprise.

We then drove to a cove at La Jolla, which was pretty quintessential Southern California coast. There were a few beaches where seals liked to laze about, and they were insanely adorbs, so we hung around just laughing at their methods of locomotion.

AWWWWWWWWWWWW

Wow, I forgot what a packed day this was. After the seals we went up to where para-gliders (what I did in France) jump off the cliff. It was... motherfucking gorgeous? Is that the phrase I'm looking for? Yes, yes it is. The Sun setting over the ocean was almost as cool as seeing the para-gliders floating around the cliff area.

Your argument is invalid

As if we didn't do enough that day, we then checked out Old Town. We didn't spend that much time there, but we found a pretty good Mexican place for dinner with bathtub-sized margaritas. I'm going to vote "yes" on Old Town.
Now that we were full of margarita and Mexican food, we went back to Ryan's place to try out a little something we learned from Always Sunny in Philadelphia: wine in a soda can.

Looks fine in public, and now I can make violent hand gestures and not spill any on myself!

The dangerous thing about wine in a soda can is that you really can't tell how much you've had. And in the case of Hogan and Ryan, it was an underestimated amount. They were out their respective boxes. We went to a few bars, and in the end they ended up throwing free popcorn into each others beers.

Bottoms up. Omnomnom.

We took a cab back to Coronado after there, where I think I was the only person capable of forming memories. And what great memories they were! Right as we got out of the cab, both Hogan and Ryan dropped a serious barf on the sidewalk at the same time. It was... beautiful. We then proceeded to find eclectic ways of falling asleep: me in the fetal position on the floor, Ryan sprawled fully clothed in his bed, and Hogan clutching the toilet. Great times. And thus ends our lovely San Diego experience. Hogan and I drove back up to Lemoore the next morning (stopping at In N' Out Burger of course).