Wrapping up the summer

The summer is slowly coming to a close and I thought I'd recap a few fun events that we haven't had a chance to post on the blog just yet.

First up, a visit from my NCSU friend, Mike Fitzula aka Fitz. Fitz came out for a business trip and graced John, Miles and I with his presence for 2 nights. On the top of the agenda while Fitz was in town surf and eat fish tacos!

Fitz lives at Atlantic Beach, NC and got up EARLY the day of his departure and worked in a short surf session on the Atlantic and then when he arrived late afternoon in San Diego we hit up Tourmaline Beach in PB. Fitz successfully completed his mission of surfing in both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean in the same day.
Here's a shot of Fitz and I post surfing. The water was super warm for the Pacific (70-72 degrees) so neither one of us even bothered with a spring suit. Waves were great, water was only slightly crowded and the sunset was amazing!

John and Fitz share a brewskie as we watched the sun set and worked up an appetite for fish tacos.

Yep, the sunset was pretty hard to beat. When you say Southern California sunset this is pretty much as good as it gets. Fitz was our first non-family visitor and we hope he gets more meetings on the west coast so I can have a good excuse to go surfing mid-week again. Also hope that next time he's out this way that Becky gets to come with him :)

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Sometime in August The Avett Brothers, a favorite NC band of ours, made their debut in San Diego. They played at a super fun smaller venue in Solana Beach about 20 minutes north of where we live.

John and I met up with my NC friend from camp, Holly, and had Pizza Port before the show and then had a few PBR's while we enjoyed the music. I was surprised how many people came out and how many people were singing along with the songs. I kept wondering to myself if the crowd was a bunch of east coasters or if the Avett's are really getting big. Regardless, the show was great and they played a good mix of new and old. I'm going to try to insert a video I took at the show, it's of the song Paranoia in B. Can't wait till they come back to S.D. again!

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Of course I couldn't make a post and not mention a climbing adventure or ten. John spent a bunch of weekends going up to the Tram...that's the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which is part of San Jacinto State Park.
You take this gondola tram from the palm springs (elevation 100 ft temperature 100 degrees) up to the top of the mountain (elevation 8,400ft and temperature 75 degrees....much better)

John met some cool climbing buddies, Chris and Jeannie, and we climbed with them on this particular day. Jeannie doing this cool overhang problem.

I climbed for about .2 seconds before I was spent and done for the day. I'm way out of climbing shape, but it was fun to be outdoors and watch the rest of the crew. Here's a shot of me on the fun (easy) green boulder.

John doing this cool crack problem. We ended up climbing ALL DAY and caught an amazing sunset and moon rise. Check it out

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And the fun just keeps continuing..... in September John and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary!!! We treated ourselves to an amazing dinner at Oceanaire restaurant in the gas lamp district downtown. The executive chef at Oceanaire, Brian Malarkey, was the 4th runner up on the Bravo TV show, Top Chef. Needless to say, the dinner was out of this world. We both tried different varieties of fish we hadn't heard of. For me it was the Coho Salmon which is only available and in season a few weeks out of the year and for John it was Black Sea Bass. Afterwards, we went to see the musical, Mamma Mia. John and I laughed our asses off at the costumes (the fluorescent scuba gear was my fav) and you can't help but sing along when it's ABBA.

Our dinner ran over a bit so we had to bust a move to get to the theater. Here we are on the peddi-cab (think small bicycle drawn carriage). And if you're wondering what those white things are on top of John's head it his sunglasses.

Here's John at intermission enjoying a beverage by this cool boat fountain. You can make out the hull of the ship and then the massive bow wave. Very neat.

And that concludes the marathon blog entry.....