I’ve been meaning to blog for over a week now – I have a few stories that I really just have to share from my various travels this past month or so. I’ll start with this –
November 29th to December 2nd I was with 6 social science teachers from my school district @ the Annual National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference. This year it was in San Diego, CA. As you can imagine it was not too great of a hardship for us to go there in the last week of November! While the Midwest got some ice & snow we had some rain and then some rather balmy temperatures. I’m ok with that! I also found out that having a “title” behind your name can get you wined and dined. I made the rounds on Friday evening to many little wine & appetizer events hosted by book publishers and folks like that. I also got to do some networking & that was interesting.
Well, the story I’ve been dying to share is pretty classic. Getting out to San Diego was pretty uneventful. We flew from Champaign, IL to Chicago O’Hare. We had enough time @ Chicago to grab some breakfast and then meet up with the one teacher who was meeting us there. We boarded a VERY full plane headed to San Diego and 4 hours later we arrived. While we were still on the plane but waiting to disembark from it we heard a woman a few rows ahead of us talking about “In-N-Out Burger”.
Now some of us had been to California & have eaten at an In-N-Out Burger before. It is good. http://www.in-n-out.com/ Check out the info for yourself. They pride themselves on their freshness. http://www.in-n-out.com/freshness.asp Anyway, we had time – things didn’t really start at the conference until the next morning – so we ALL decided to try to have lunch/dinner at the nearest In-N-Out Burger in San Diego.
One of the teachers in our group has a navigation system on his cell phone. While in the van from the Airport to the Westin San Diego (the very nice hotel we were staying at) he punched in the info he had and determined that the nearest In-N-Out Burger was about 3 miles from the hotel. Well, after sitting on planes for 4+ hours that day we decided we were up for a walk. The temps were in the low 70’s and it was beautiful…why not take a bit of a hike?
Well, Greg’s phone had given us driving directions and we were going to be on foot. No big deal, right? That is where we were mistaken. Now, none of us had really been to San Diego to wander around like this with no map, and just a cell phone's directions, but we thought we could make it work. We stopped off at a transit stop and got a quick look at the map of where we were & where we thought we were going. It didn’t look too bad. We decided to keep on walking.
I almost forgot to mention that when we checked into our hotel Anne & I changed into more California appropriate apparel…I put on my capri pants & FLIP FLOPS. Anne put her flip-flops on too. Not our wisest move.
As we kept on walking we occassionally had Greg check his phone – we were on track, but it just seemed like we were making awfully slow progress. We walked through Balboa Park, past the Zoo, past a high school (as it was dismissing), past a community college (where the fuzz were busting some students), past a library (more fuzz, more busting of young people), past MANY street people. After about 3 miles we stopped to ask for directions at a gas station…the attendant looked at us like we were crazy – she told us there really wasn’t an In-N-Out Burger anywhere close to there. The only one she knew of was on the other side of Interstate 8. Well, according to Greg’s phone that was the one we were headed to, so we kept on…can’t be that much further, right?
At one point we had to walk down this GIANT hill alongside a rather busy road – with no sidewalk, just a shoulder. I was sure someone was going to get hit on this stretch. When we got to the bottom of the hill we saw I-8 and knew we were almost there. After crossing over I-8 we finally saw what we had come so far for – In-N-Out Burger!
November 29th to December 2nd I was with 6 social science teachers from my school district @ the Annual National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference. This year it was in San Diego, CA. As you can imagine it was not too great of a hardship for us to go there in the last week of November! While the Midwest got some ice & snow we had some rain and then some rather balmy temperatures. I’m ok with that! I also found out that having a “title” behind your name can get you wined and dined. I made the rounds on Friday evening to many little wine & appetizer events hosted by book publishers and folks like that. I also got to do some networking & that was interesting.
Well, the story I’ve been dying to share is pretty classic. Getting out to San Diego was pretty uneventful. We flew from Champaign, IL to Chicago O’Hare. We had enough time @ Chicago to grab some breakfast and then meet up with the one teacher who was meeting us there. We boarded a VERY full plane headed to San Diego and 4 hours later we arrived. While we were still on the plane but waiting to disembark from it we heard a woman a few rows ahead of us talking about “In-N-Out Burger”.
Now some of us had been to California & have eaten at an In-N-Out Burger before. It is good. http://www.in-n-out.com/ Check out the info for yourself. They pride themselves on their freshness. http://www.in-n-out.com/freshness.asp Anyway, we had time – things didn’t really start at the conference until the next morning – so we ALL decided to try to have lunch/dinner at the nearest In-N-Out Burger in San Diego.
One of the teachers in our group has a navigation system on his cell phone. While in the van from the Airport to the Westin San Diego (the very nice hotel we were staying at) he punched in the info he had and determined that the nearest In-N-Out Burger was about 3 miles from the hotel. Well, after sitting on planes for 4+ hours that day we decided we were up for a walk. The temps were in the low 70’s and it was beautiful…why not take a bit of a hike?
Well, Greg’s phone had given us driving directions and we were going to be on foot. No big deal, right? That is where we were mistaken. Now, none of us had really been to San Diego to wander around like this with no map, and just a cell phone's directions, but we thought we could make it work. We stopped off at a transit stop and got a quick look at the map of where we were & where we thought we were going. It didn’t look too bad. We decided to keep on walking.
I almost forgot to mention that when we checked into our hotel Anne & I changed into more California appropriate apparel…I put on my capri pants & FLIP FLOPS. Anne put her flip-flops on too. Not our wisest move.
As we kept on walking we occassionally had Greg check his phone – we were on track, but it just seemed like we were making awfully slow progress. We walked through Balboa Park, past the Zoo, past a high school (as it was dismissing), past a community college (where the fuzz were busting some students), past a library (more fuzz, more busting of young people), past MANY street people. After about 3 miles we stopped to ask for directions at a gas station…the attendant looked at us like we were crazy – she told us there really wasn’t an In-N-Out Burger anywhere close to there. The only one she knew of was on the other side of Interstate 8. Well, according to Greg’s phone that was the one we were headed to, so we kept on…can’t be that much further, right?
At one point we had to walk down this GIANT hill alongside a rather busy road – with no sidewalk, just a shoulder. I was sure someone was going to get hit on this stretch. When we got to the bottom of the hill we saw I-8 and knew we were almost there. After crossing over I-8 we finally saw what we had come so far for – In-N-Out Burger!
We literally walked for 2 hours to get to the In-N-Out Burger – When I’ve tried to map it out I think we walked 7 miles or so to get a stinkin’ burger! My feet hurt so badly when we got there – and I have to admit that the burger was pretty great! We were all convinced that the food tasted so good because we had walked so far to get it! Thankfully one of the guys in our group had the idea of talking to one of the guys wiping tables to find out about public transportation back to the hotel. Turns out that if we walked about 3 blocks beyond the In-N-Out burger we’d find the tram back to the city center where we were staying. We followed his directions and got back to the hotel in about 30 minutes (most of that time was sitting waiting for the tram, too).
When we got back 4 of us suited up and headed for the roof-top pool and hot tub. Boy did that feel good on my poor overwalked tootsies. Not sure I’ll ever walk that far for a burger again, but it was sort of fun and it was a good way to bond with the teachers I had taken on this trip!
Stay tuned…there will be more stories from this trip soon.
When we got back 4 of us suited up and headed for the roof-top pool and hot tub. Boy did that feel good on my poor overwalked tootsies. Not sure I’ll ever walk that far for a burger again, but it was sort of fun and it was a good way to bond with the teachers I had taken on this trip!
Stay tuned…there will be more stories from this trip soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment