7 July 03

San Diego Jaunt

berkeleyferry.jpgI flew to San Diego and back today for a business meeting in the afternoon. Southwest has lots of Sacramento-San Diego flights, which makes turning it into a day trip quite easy. They’re my favorite airline, in part because of their enlightened GPS policy (they explictly allow passengers to use them inflight), so my usual trajectory is to head straight for a window seat and once we reach altitude I turn on the GPS and try to get a location fix. Somebody once wrote that not preferring the window seat means wasting the airfare and I heartily agree—there’s too much to look at outside, and I always end up staring rather obsessively through the window.

The meeting ended early and I had time to visit the Maritime Museum of San Diego, the three-masted Star of India having caught my eye on the bus ride downtown. It’s a beautiful iron-hulled bark, first launched in 1863 under the name Euterpe, and had many careers, hauling emigrants to New Zealand, timber from Puget Sound, and salmon from Alaska, among other voyages. I also stepped aboard the Berkeley, shown up at right. This is a passenger ferry, launched in 1898, that spent most of a 60-year career operating on San Francisco Bay being run by Southern Pacific Railroad. It has beautiful woodwork inside on the main deck, with elegantly finished benches for the passengers.

I think this is my fourth visit to San Diego, none of which have allowed me a great deal of time to explore. But San Diego is a place where many people pass through on their way to elsewhere, and the energies are that of a port town. The trolley heads to south to Baja, the naval presence has long looked towards the Pacific (two aircraft carriers in port today), and the aviation history dates back a long time as well. Interesting town.

Posted by at 09:25 PM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. I might have a postcard of that ferry….I have always loved visiting the Eureka at San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. Oh for the days when you could walk down to the ferry and have those thirty to forty minutes thinking to yourself instead of worrying about who was about to run into you.

    — Joel    8. July 2003, 02:36    Link
  2. I end up with the worst neck pain, but cannot stop looking out the window. Ideally I sit right window going and left windows coming back, to spread the prolonged awkward posture to both sides. Having the GPS would be wonderful. This time last year I flew from Denver to Rapid City to see my dau, came home, ordered Delorme TopoUSA thinking I could pick out some of the landforms I had passed, they were so distinctive. THe result was disappointing, though I did end up with the neat software I still use for armchair travel.

    — fred1    8. July 2003, 06:54    Link
  3. On their way to elsewhere… my brother used to live in a house abutting a park in Chula Vista just south of San Diego. Friday and Sunday nights would often feature the local helicopters with searchlights looking for workers on their way to, and from, home in Tijuana. Everybody understood that everyone else needed to be doing what they were doing—it seemed sort of for the sake of form, really.

    — Pica    8. July 2003, 10:02    Link

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