Abortive Trip to Spain

I was supposed to go to Spain for some meetings but never got past San Diego. So instead of pictures in Spain, here are pictures in San Diego while we waited for flights back up to Monterey. The flights were so screwed up, they couldn’t get us to anywhere in Europe for three days which would have been after our meetings.

Getting on the plane and taking off from Monterey. We were delayed by fog in San Diego from taking off in Monterey. By the time we took off, we already knew we weren’t making our next flight.

Wonderful views heading down the California coast.

Coming into San Diego. The airport here is basically right in the middle of downtown. It’s crazy this big city still has their airport right next to skyscrapers. Someday maybe they’ll build a new airport outside of town.

My coworker and I spent the rest of the day down by the marinas. There wasn’t anything else to do because they couldn’t get us to Spain in time for it to be worthwhile nor could they get us back to Monterey until the next day.

Around San Diego

During our time at the IDETC09 conference we had some time to wander around town. While there are a lot of good bars in San Diego, there are also a lot of tourist traps. We were able to find most of the good ones and stay away from the bad. Here are a few photos to prove that we were there.

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Mike enjoying some late night food.

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Jon up to his usual tricks.

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Justin, always the photographer.

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Anthony joined us for a bit, too.

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Outside our hotel on the way to the conference.

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Trains crossing the street.

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The train stopped and backed up.  Then it went forward.  Then stopped.  Then backed up.  After about 15 minutes it finally got out of the way and let people cross the tracks.

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Some people actually tried climbing between the cars and engines!