Nice to see the good news in yesterday’s Union-Tribune: that some attention is finally being paid to sprucing up the Torrey Pines Gliderport. I think the site should rank among our more interesting tourist attractions, but the existing facilities are pretty scruffy. Who knows if the city will really be able to scrounge up any money for this? But it’s good to know it’s a possibility.
I hadn’t realized that the gliderport was listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. Less surprising was the news that it played an important role in the development of hang gliding and paragliding. According to the Union’s story, one of the players in that history was Charles Lindbergh, who was the first person to fly above the bluffs (in a sailplane that took him from Mount Soledad to Del Mar on February 24, 1930). The gliderport’s website says it was “first established as a soaring site in 1928 and has defined the history of motor less flight.”
A single ukulele can sound puny. But 40 or so ukuleles crammed into a suburban pizza restaurant and played simultaneously create a BIG sound. It’s still a gentle sound because it’s unquestionably Hawaiian, evoking images of the Hawaiian flowers and fish and breezes that are the subjects of so many of the ukeleles songs. But it’s big enough to make you shake your head and wonder: how in the world did this gathering come about?
grabbed some seats for us, which was fortunate, as few remained unoccupied. I was impressed by the heterogeneity of the crowd. Although many looked to be retirees, their numbers were mixed with folks from a range of other ages. Geoff says sometimes school-age kids join in the strumming.
Could the first American version of the margarita truly have been served on the current site of La Jolla United Methodist Church? That’s the story recounted on the wall of the newly inaugurated Bird Rock History Museum (located within the
Up to now, the best way I knew to compare how far San Diego was from other points on earth was to play around with a string and my globe. But I just discovered a much cooler tool: the 
For people who work in the coffee trade, evaluating the quality of any given bean is a lot more complicated than simply brewing up a pot and taking a sip. To evaluate a given coffee’s flavor and aroma, pros engage in “cupping,” a ritual that’s a lot more akin to an oenophilic wine-tasting than it is to the standard American coffee klatsch. Now one local coffee master is sharing the cupping experience with the public.
with individual farmers, to help them earn much more than they would within a local co-op. Patton also has begun to work on serving another basic human need in the growing communities he patronizes, bringing ni simple water-filtration systems.
the other day on the San Diego News Network about the opening of this year’s Summer Organ Festival to finally inspire me to get to the organ pavilion at night.
June 20) in Imperial Beach. If the 4th annual surf dog competition (sponsored by Loews Coronado resort) is anything like the one I attended 2 years, wacky dog costumes will abound, as will amazing acts of doggy balance and fortitude, all cheered on by a crowd of boisterous beach goers.
to Depression, South and his young wife Tanya packed their few possessions into their Model T Ford, drove to the desert east of San Diego, found a mountaintop that appealed to them, and decided to live on it, as simply and naturally as the native Americans who once preceded them. They called the place Ghost Mountain and within five years they’d constructed a compact adobe home that they christened Yaquitepec (after the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico.)
e plunged into several years of serious sleuthing that culminated in her 2005 book, Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living.