Teresa and will sometimes want to do things rather spontaneously and this upcoming trip was one of those. We wanted some mystery and our plan was to go to the airport, bags packed for hot and cold, walk up to the ticket counter and lay down cash on the counter and say “book us anywhere this will get us, round trip”. Want a little Spontaneity? Sounds cool? Sounds romantic? Sounds scary?
Apparently scary is one place you might end up. No, I am not talking Hoboken, Detroit, or Walhalla Washington (not that there is anything wrong with those places either). No, I am talking a TSA cell…. or so I am told. In this post 9-11 world, TSA does not like people not knowing their destination. We also talked to several of the major airlines and were told that it was not possible, that they could not choose the destination for us.
So, how would we be spontaneous and still comply with TSA and the airlines? Well, I found a last minute deals website (something like TravelZoo). We waited until two nights before. We put in our origination and the dates and it gave us a list of places, over 16 pages of destinations. Since these were “packages” which included flights, hotel and rental car, we had to combine our budget line items. From those 16 pages, only 7 and a half pages were within our budget. Being gamers, we had several die types, like 6 sixers and 20 sided dice. It was only fair to use ONE die since 2 dice would skip an entry. We used a 10 sided dice and rolled it. What ever number showed, we counted up the list and marked the trip. We then rolled again and counted from the previous selection the number that the die showed. We repeated this until we got to the last trip within our budget. We now had a shorter list.
We did this again with the shorter list, and again until we had a list of six destinations. On the list was New Orleans, San Diego, Washington DC, St Thomas, and Dallas. We liked to try new places and two of those places (New Orleans and DC) are places we had been. Still, our rules were that the dice would decide for us. We picked up a six sided die knowing we had a 33 percent chance to go back to some place we had been, or a 66 percent chance to go someplace new. We rolled and counted up the list and landed on San Diego.
San Diego, A spontaneous trip!
We connected through Atlanta and one our flight from Atlanta to San Diego, we were in the rear of the plane. Once we got to a cruising altitude and the captain turned off the seat belt sign, an older gentleman with long blonde hair stood up and started walking about the cabin. He’d stop and talk to someone, then move on. He stepped aside to let people pass or let the flight attendants server refreshments. He looked familiar to me, but I could not place him. He was up and about most of the flight. I leaned over and asked Teresa, but she did not know him.
After we landed, the man stood again. We were working our way out when the man stopped to talk to one of the flight attendants. He asked her that if she was staying over, she should come to his show tonight. Me being me, I stepped up and asked him, “what show?”. He said they were playing at the “House of Blues“, that “anyone who is anyone plays there when in San Diego”. I smiled and told him we might have to come check him out, that we were on our anniversary trip. He congratulated us, reached into his pocket and pulled out a card and a pen. He scribbled on it and told me to give it to the doorman for free admission. I still didn’t know who this guy was. He started to hand me the card and them pulled it back and scratched on it some more, saying “no, don’t give it to the doorman, just show it and then take it to the bar, first rounds is on us.”
By this time, we had walked off the plane. He handed me his card and he turned and walked away. I looked at the card. It was for Tim Lindesy of “Molly Hatchett“, a band I listened to in high school.
We got out baggage and picked our rental car and drove to our hotel. It was a very nice resort hotel with a wonderful view. We were tired and the fight had been long. We unpacked and then took a “quick nap” and woke up 2 hours after Molly Hactchett’s sho had started. We went out and had a nice dinner and drove around for a bit before heading back to the hotel. We wanted to be rested for we were going to be spending the next day at San Diego’s Zoo.
San Diego Zoo
After breakfast, we headed to the the San Diego Zoo. We knew it was large. We also knew it was one of the few zoos in the country with a panda and we wanted to see it.
We spent a good portion of the day here, before leaving and wandering downtown.
Up the Coast
The next morning, our feet hurt from all the walking. We had a car, so we decided to drive up the coast. We had no place in particular that we wanted to see, but had found a card for Hot-Air Balloon rides the night before and gave them a call. We were happy they had room.
Up the coast, we found several beaches and of course, had to stop to get our feet wet. Sure, we had been in Hawaii, so our feet had been in the Pacific Ocean. Still, we had not been on the west coast. We found ourselves in a small town diner before heading to the field for our first ever balloon ride.
Hot Air Balloon Ride
When we got to the parking lot, we met with the pilot and some ground crew. We knew we would be sharing the gondola with others. We did not expect it to be eight others, not including the pilot. When we got to the field, there were a multitude of balloons.
We lifted off and it was surreal. Other than the burner (which burns LP at over 7-15M BTU’s per hour), the silence was deafening. Seriously, there was no sound of wind which we expected.
Wine and champaign was served at altitude. Our other passengers toasted our flight and our anniversary.
