This year I finally broke down and went to Comic-Con. It was a great excuse to get back out to Cali, visit with friends, and bring Steve out to see the west coast.

We started off with our first trip to the San Diego Zoo. It was a long day of walking around, but we saw most of the animals and had a great time. I let Steve take most of the photos since he had better zoom on his camera.

From there we cruised quickly through Balboa Park with just enough time to grab some photos before sunset and grab dinner. We were all starving, so I’m glad that everyone humored me and let me grab pictures. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

On Friday I went to Comic-Con with KC and Kim, while Steve tooled around historic Route 101 and wandered down the coast (I figured I’d only subject Steve to one day of the convention). We all met up for dinner with Pete and his girlfriend for dinner at this Hawaiian place with a great view of the San Diego skyline.

We realized how close we were to the Pacific and ended up wandering down to the beach each night. It was great. Relaxing. The tide was so strong compared to back home!

Saturday we all went to a great sandwich place for lunch that Steve found on the coast. It’s on a cliff in La Jolla with a great view. There are hang gliders and paragliders all over the skies there. More photos here.

Afterwards we all went to Comic-Con. I took a bunch of photos - but not nearly as many as I would have liked. Sunday we headed up to LA and detoured to Temecula for a wine tasting and tour of the Callaway Winery and Vineyard. They had a few decent wines, one or two great wines, but the rest were either “eh” or horrible.

Our hotel in LA was pretty cool. Minimalistic. Comfy bed. Very “Euro” looking. Creepy photos in the elevators. Expensive minibar. Funky sheep in the hotel lobby that would randomly be rearranged when no one was looking. hehehehe

LA was a bit of a whirlwind. We checked out Venice Beach (briefly - it was a moderately frightening experience), dinner on Sunset Boulevard, wandered through the 3rd St Promenade and the Santa Monica Pier before heading into the almost icy water on a very windy and unseasonably cold day. We even stopped by In-N-Out burger to get my annual fix.

The toughest part of the whole trip was the 5.4 earthquake the day before our return flight. Apparently the largest one in almost 15 years? Pretty scary on the 6th floor of a hotel…

The Last HOPE has come to an end. I can’t wait until The Next HOPE. They were originally expecting that this would be the last one (hence the name) because of plans to tear down Hotel Pennsylvania. Apparently the economy is so horrible that those plans have now been delayed - and so they’re planning another HOPE for 2010.

I had a blast. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I ended up having a great time. I missed the Segway racing =( but saw some neat (and otherwise indescribable) “art”. Many of the talks didn’t sound particularly interesting to me, but once I sat down at them and listened for a few minutes I was glad that I went. The more talks I attended, the more I wanted to go to.

The highlight of the weekend was Adam Savage. He only had an hour and I would have happily sat there for several (compared to Jello Biafra who had 2 hours - and no matter how much inspiring and interesting things he had to say, I can only listen to him talk for so long). Adam seamed genuinely humbled and ecstatic to be there. His “talk” was only about 15 minutes, and gave the rest of the hour to the fans for questions. This time spent listening to his stories and talking to the fans in the crowd only increased my respect an admiration for him and the Mythbusters.

Several (but not nearly all) of the photos taken have been resized and uploaded to Flickr here as well as embedded in this journal entry. I may upload more there after I return from my next trip. Until then, I hope enjoy what I’ve uploaded so far.