A Balmy Thanksgiving

Last year we tried to have a traditional Thanksgiving. It was very hard. When Tim decided to pursue working with collegiate basketball teams, we knew we would lose him to whatever tournament his current team was playing in during the Thanksgiving break. Rich and I decided at that point that we would make our future Thanksgiving holidays about basketball and go to wherever Tim and his team were. They had already made a big trip to Italy in the late summer, so they stayed home for Thanksgiving. We were fine with that as Lily and Rich had not been to San Diego yet. Rich and I flew into Burbank/Hollywood direct from Kalispell on a new (no frills) airline called Avelo. We actually were quite impressed. There is no drink service…no snacks….no frills. You get on and they get you there and back. It was between 2 and 2.5 hours to get there and then it is another 2 hour drive to get to San Diego. (At least it should have been. It took us 4 hours to get there the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.) We rented a car and because Rich guessed the salesman was from Turkey (and he was), he got a free upgrade to a 2023 red Ford Mustang convertible. It is a fun, little sporty car, but the key is little. Not quite a four-adult car…but we made it work and we had great weather for convertible time.

We managed to squeeze a lot in during our time there. Lily flew in from KC on Wednesday night. The three of us stayed on Miramar (hello Top Gun!). Lily was able to stay from Wednesday night until Sunday night. Rich and I stayed a full week, from Wednesday to Wednesday. Thanksgiving day was the only day that Tim had off all day. We spent the day at the San Diego Zoo and then ate dinner at Denny’s. It was actually really nice. The next day while Tim was working, the rest of us went to the Zoo Safari about an hour north of San Diego. That was AMAZING. Can’t wait to get the photos back from that day as they had 4 month old Siberian tiger cubs romping around. Met several photographers waiting for them to come out and play. I have some Christmas stuff to get done, but will have those up soon, I hope, as well as the rest of our trip. We managed to get some time on the beach….Coronado and La Jolla Cove. We got to see harbor seals and seagulls. I have to admit that San Diego has the best sunsets…hands down. They were spectacular every single day. We also spent the day at Sea World, which was fun. Rich and I took a hop on, hop off trolley tour of San Diego which was pretty interesting. They have one of the biggest Little Italy’s in the country. We had lunch there and walked around. We spent time on Coronado and really enjoyed walking around there. We also took a tour of the U.S.S. Midway, which was amazing. Basically, we saw a lot of the major things in San Diego and now we know what we want to spend more time at when we go back again. We were able to get a tour of the weight room at UCSD and he showed us all the sports science side of his job (which is a lot – it is crazy what he does! ) We were all super impressed. We got to see the women’s team play a couple of times while we were there. It was great to see Tim in action. I have included some photos below. That was not his home gym, but a cross-town rival, SDSU. It reminded me of The Pit at the University of New Mexico, where Rich and I went to college….it looks like a one story building on the outside and then just goes straight down. That was A LOT OF STEPS!

One of the best things we got to do was on our last full day there. Rich and I met a friend of mine, MeiLing, for lunch on Coronado. I met MeiLing when we were both bridesmaids at a wedding at Annapolis. She knew the groom, as they were midshipmen together, and I knew the bride. We were both getting ready to go into the military….MeiLing into the Navy, and me, into the Air Force. This was 31.5 years ago. Annapolis has strict guidelines about the weddings at their chapels and the shortest bridesmaids had to be at the end. That was MeiLing and me. We chatted throughout the rehearsal…then at the reception. We became good friends and have always stayed in touch over the decades that passed. I had not seen her since that first time I met her back at Annapolis. That bear hug for her was a long time coming. I also got to introduce her to Rich. It was like the years melted away. It was wonderful!

Although we missed having Joe around with us, it was nice to talk about him with people who knew him his whole life. I felt like he was with us, enjoying San Diego. I felt his presence everywhere.