San Diego by Train

after mike came to visit (friday), i went down to san diego by train to see roberta at a conference she's attending. the academy health research conference was held at the town and country hotel. they had a nice unheated pool. i swam in it yesterday morning, but this morning it was too cold. roberta laughed when a hostess at a restaurant asked if we wanted to sit on the heated patio. roberta said to me, why would you need heaters? i was glad for the heaters, and i am glad for the heated pool at caltech.

the train isn't quite as smoothly run as it is on the east coast, but it's cleaner and just as meditative. riding along the ocean made me miss the ocean. i loved going to the beach in san francisco. when i lived in pacifica and took mac to the beach almost every day, that was wonderful. i watched surfers on the way down, and i was more interested than i have been before. i'm not sure why. it may be the angle. from above, the maneuvers are more fun to watch. i'm not especially tempted to take it up myself though. i am inspired to get to the beach more. stay tuned.

another oddity of observing the world from a train: i caught sight of men in white out in the middle of a green expanse. i assumed they were farmworkers like the other people i'd see out in fields. closer inspection revealed that they were golfers.

i feel more exposed to southern california than ever before. i saw many barbies, but also more variety than usual. mike remarked that LA has more thin women than san francisco. i think LA might be even worse than the rest of SoCal. you could pick the californias out at the conference: they were wearing shorts, sandals and/or capri pants. speaking of which, i bought the second pair of sandals.

on the train on the way back, there was an amish family on the train. there were three girls in their late teens. they were wearing teal robes, black stockings black shoes. they and their mother all wore their hair parted severely and tied in a bun under a simple lightweight white cotton bonnet with strings down the sided. the dad was bearded and wearing a dark vest and pants. mom's wearing a large black dress. it's nice to be surprised.