Blair's Blog

What the old saying about March?  In like a lion, and out like an angry lion? This weekend has seen another dump of snow, at least it was only 2 or 3 inches this time…

Anyway, it’s a little disheartening when you’ve got a shiny, new (to me) red motorbike waiting in the garage – calling with its siren song.  Yep, we are now a two motorbike family.  After Brenda got her motorbike licence last year, she decided that she was used to and comfortable on my 2000 SV650S – so she stole it.  I was pretty sad when I discovered the theft, but at least I knew the culprit and was able to extract some compensation!

Of course, when your motorbike is stolen, the only thing to do is to replace it.  So after thinking about what I might like, going to the motorbike show in January, and spending some lunch hours browsing the bike dealerships, I decided that the best bike to get would be a 2009 Triumph Daytona 675 ( in “arrest me red” of course).  But then my inner Scotsman heard about the plan (i.e. the price tag) and had a go at my inner Hooligan.

So on Friday I picked up my new bike – a 2006 SV650S …at least I got the colour I wanted…

Now if the weather would just cooperate.

No Comments »

Just like that, the holiday is over!  … well except for the unpacking, the laundry, putting the suitcases away and getting the house whipped into shape!

Today was just a travel day,  no sights or attractions other than the airplane ride. The hotel by LAX was handy, but it really made us appreciate just how nice the other hotels had been.   We started the day with a less than satisfactory continental breakfast, but it did keep body and soul together while we faced the rigours of the air travel security theater.  We boarded the plane in sunshine and 15 °C and three short hours later got off the plane to be greeted by -2 °C and a stiff north wind – and snow for tonight.    It didn’t take us long to lose our acclimatization to winter.

Gramps was at the airport to meet us with our van and when we got home Gram was in the midst of preparing dinner for us.  What a treat to not have to think about what to have for dinner, and to have something prepared fresh – nothing deep fried in sight!  After supper we had a chance to look at the videos and some of the pictures that we took on the vacation with my folks before they headed home and left us to our unpacking.

Now to try and psych myself up for work tomorrow…

1 Comment »

Today was pretty busy – we started by packing up all of our gear a checkig out of our hotel in San Diego after a big brunch in the hotel restaurant. We got to SeaWorld about noon, it was a fine, sunny day. We saw the killer whale show then toured a number of the exhibits – bat rays, penguins, belugas, walrus and polar bears. We rode the Skytower at the end of the day, then piled into the van for the drive back to LA.

It was almost exactly 2 hours from SeaWorld to our hotel by LAX – not the nicest part of town! However, the hotel is handy for dropping off the rental car and getting to the airport in the morning.

Our flight is at 11:00 but we need to check in 2 hours earlier, so we’ll have a busy start tomorrow.

No Comments »

Today was still a little cool, but sunny and nice enough for a harbour cruise. We took the first tour of the day at 10:00 am of the north harbour and had a few rain showers. By 11:00, the sun was out and the second hour touring the south harbour was very nice. The US Navy presence at San Diego is pretty amazing -we saw at least one example of each of the main classes of USN ships – a carrier, 3 attack subs, destoyers, frigates, cruisers, landing ships and a bunch more.

After the cruise we drove up the coast to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla and spent about three hours there. To finish the afternoon, we spent an hour at the Wild Animal Park. The coolest thing we saw there was the lions – there were four of them and they were quite active, chasing each other around.

We headed back to the hotel and had dinner at the restaurant there before heading to the pool with the kids. Tomorrow is our last day in San Diego before we head back to LA.

No Comments »