We had beautiful weather on Friday to kick off the weekend. While I was out and about on the Spyder, I stopped on East Mission Bay Drive to shoot a photo of the sunset over De Anza Cove. This was a much different view than the one I shot through the window of the Coaster in my last post!

Donna and I rode the Spyder over to Lanna Thai restaurant at 6pm to meet up with Chris and Sherry Nirschl. I’ve known Chris since my high school days. We were also roommates in Colorado back in 1976. We last got together with Chris and Sherry two years ago – the time flies by.

Lanna Thai is one of our favorite restaurants and it’s only about two miles from Mission Bay RV Resort. As usual, I went for the pad Thai plate.

Thai cuisine demands Thai beer – so I paired it with a glass of Singha lager.

It was fun catching up with them. Now that we’re short-timers – we plan to leave San Diego on Sunday, January 15th – we’re trying to touch base with as many friends as we can.

Donna was up early Saturday morning. She was running in the Resolution 15k race and had to be at the starting line by 7:15am. The race started at Tecolote Shores – part of the Mission Bay Park system south of the Hilton hotel. She picked up a Deco bike rental in front of the RV park and rode it two miles to the start area where she dropped it off. I slept in and didn’t get out of bed until 7:30am.

Sini sent me a text message at 7:45am asking if I wanted to walk with her over to the course and see if we could find Donna at the race turnaround point in De Anza Cove. I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet, so I told her I would go later.

After coffee and breakfast, I estimated Donna’s position on the race course – her Garmin tracking app wasn’t working right so I couldn’t track her progress on my laptop. I rode the Spyder to the boat ramp parking lot – I thought she should have already passed this point but would come back by after the turnaround.

I saw someone that looked like Donna heading toward the turnaround and rode the Spyder to the north end of the lot. It wasn’t Donna, so I turned around a started riding south. There she was – she was past the turnaround and heading back south. I paced along with her for the length of the lot, then I rode down to the lot north of the Hilton. I caught a photo of her passing by there.

Then I rode to the road closure near Tecolote Shores and found a place to park. I walked out onto the race course and Donna caught up with me within a couple of minutes. I ran with her for about a quarter of a mile to give her encouragement. Then I peeled off the course and ran across the grass to the finish area – I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to run along the final stretch to the finish line.

Donna averaged 10 minutes/mile covering the 9.3 mile course in 93 minutes and placing fourth in the females aged 55-59 group. Her original goal was to try to beat her personal record of 1 hour 28 minutes set 20 years ago. But her best time on a long training run was closer to 10 and a half minutes/mile. So she felt really good about the race. At the finish, she picked up a goody bag provided for the competitors and decided to hang out at the vendor tents. She was able to get a free chiropractic session and picked up lots more goodies before walking back to the Deco bike stand and riding the two miles home. Meanwhile, I returned and tuned in the Dish satellite to watch the wild card NFL playoff games.

The weather remained gorgeous all weekend. I squandered the beautiful weather as I was glued to the playoff games. The games went pretty much as I expected with all of the home teams winning. Home field doesn’t mean an automatic win – last year all of the road teams won the wild card games. But this year, I thought the home teams were the stronger of the match-ups.

On Saturday night, we planned to go to a party in La Mesa where Hans Kohls’ band was playing. We decided to pass though. We were concerned that it might not be the best idea to make the run back down I-8 on the Spyder in the dark after the party. As it turns out, Donna was pretty wiped out after her race, so we opted to stay home.

So, the weekend of blue skies and mid-70s temperatures were wasted as I stayed indoors most of the time watching football. This morning it’s raining again and the temperature will only reach the low 60s.

Last week I saw an iconic RV. We didn’t really think of them as RVs in the ’60s, but this VW type 2 camper van with a pop-top is a recreational vehicle.

The owner fired it up as I was walking by. He said it had a “big motor” but didn’t elaborate. I assumed it was a typical air-cooled engine with big bore pistons and maybe a stroker crankshaft – it didn’t sound like anything radical. He pulled out of the Offshore Tavern & Grill parking lot, then parked it on the street in front of the tavern. He said a group of VW vans was coming, but I had to leave and didn’t get see any more of them.

Hopefully the rain will clear out this afternoon. I have a few things that need to get done this week before we head east. I’m getting the hitch-itch and I’m looking forward to a change after three months here.