The Mexican mask & a pith helmet from San Diego Zoo

You don’t need a great idea to stick a blog post up. A picture is prompt enough. This mask was on the wall of a Mexican restaurant near our hotel in Orlando for the Genband Perspectivres14 conference.

I have been to Mehico, just the once. In a previous life I used to go each July to the Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference in the US of A. It was a brilliant annual event although not particularly publicised for obvious reasons. NSREC used to travel around the country to popular holiday spots, often because some places in the USA were cheap in July due to it being low season.

One year we went to San Diego, which never has a low season. Lots of stories including our Chief Scientist at the time missing his flight connection in Chicago because he had been sat at the wrong gate. Arrived hours after us, tired and needing a drink. The rest of us were about ready to hit the hay. There was a piano bar at the hotel called Kelly’s Irish Bar where every night towards the end of the evening we would finish up. The Chief Scientist, John Kerr was a dab hand at the jazz piano¹ and he would sit in during the pianist’s breaks.

We always had Wednesday afternoons off as I recall and we decided to hire a car and nip over the border to Tijuana. It was only afterwards we found out that the perceived wisdom was to not take a hire car over the border. Arriving at Tijuana we drove around trying to find the centre of town. Turns out there wasn’t one.

All we got was a bit of a car park and a few shops. I bought about $40 worth of local currency “just in case”. We had no reason to hang around the centre of Tijuana as there was absolutely nothing there. Driving to the coast we passed large shanty town on the hillsides. A real eye opener to a small town boy from Lincoln.

The Pacific coast, when we got there was quite picturesque and had a large number of bars sticking out on stilts over the the clifftop. We had decided before hand not to trust any food in Mehico but beer was ok and in we trooped to one of the bars. Unfortunately the bar tender whipped out some of the hottest salsa any of us had ever tasted together with some very authentic corn tortilla chips fresh out of the fryer. Didn’t manage to spend half the currency and was saddled with it for years afterwards. May still have it in a drawer upstairs.

The after effects of the chips and salsa were felt for days afterwards:)

On our last day we visited the world famous San Diego Zoo. It’s fame was well deserved. The gorrila enclosure was particularly impressive and prompted me to mention that all we lacked were pith helmets. Well knock me down with a thirty pound sledge hammer if we didn’t turn a corner to find a stand selling pith helmets. I had to buy one of course. Still have it. Must have worn it, oo at least twice in the intervening 20 years. Fancy dress parties.

Pictures below for you delight and delectation.

Other fabulastic travel reads include: