Springtime in La Jolla

Our Delta Flight

It was a painless flight out to San Diego, mostly because I’ve come to the decision that Cindy and I shall not fly more than two hours in coach.  Our two flights on Delta in First Class were wonderful, with great service, decent food and drink and comfortable surroundings, a far cry from our usual five hours of cluttered, cramped and cruel coach. Within forty-five minutes of landing we were standing in front of our casa on the Pacific with cool breezes, a temp of 65 and bright sunshine, just what our bodies and souls needed after a particularly horrible two weeks of weather in Charles Town.

On Saturday we did a little shopping for the weekend and also a lot of walking.  Cindy wanted to order a book from the library, which we joined last year using our tax receipt for the time-share as proof of our San Diego residence. While there she found out that there was a chamber music recital scheduled for three that afternoon so she was in heaven and I was in napville.  We had what for us was an early dinner at a favorite restaurant and we were home and ready for bed by nine-thirty and sound asleep by ten. I fear that age has amplified the effects of jet-lag, as much as I would like to think I’m immune.

Great Biplanes

Perhaps MGs?

I think this is a Jag

Sunday was a grand and action-packed day. After an early run for Cindy and a walk for me, we met at a new coffeehouse downtown. Peet’s Coffee is a California standard and they make a mean espresso, so we were delighted to just sit and linger over the coffee as well as another California standard, a morning glory muffin. It was then off to the races, a quick walk to the store that carries the Sunday New York Times - which we had asked them to save for us - and back to the casa to clean up and get ready for the Air Show that was to start at 10:30.  This was part of a gala weekend event here called the Concours d’Elegance, which attracts 18,000 visitors to the small village of La Jolla. Now in its fourteenth season it is a really fancy car show with mostly high-end cars like Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, well, you get the idea. We could have gotten a VIP ticket for only $375 each, but decided to go cheap and just walked around the event, outside the temporary fences installed around the park which was filled with cars and their owners who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time buffing their beauties.

After taking photos for our friends who like cars, we positioned ourselves along the bluff overlooking the sea to afford us the best views of the planes. It was super fun with about 30 different planes, some flying in tight formation, others spewing multicolored smoke and lots of old biplanes painted in vivid colors.  They came in clumps of five our six at a time and made three passes and our positioning could not have been better.  The climax of the show was two WWII planes, a Navy Hellcat fighter/bomber and a P-38 Lightning, both in excellent condition and still able to scream across the horizon. It was really something to see and hear.

Nice Formation

We had just enough time after the airshow to walk home and get ready for lunch with our dear friends who live in La Jolla and are gracious enough to keep a box of stuff for us every time we leave, thus lightening our load for our return.  It was a grand day and the weather was more like summer than spring, which was just fine in our book.