Welcome to our North Park adventure!

Well, we've embarked on our excellent North Park adventure, planning to spend the next month - through the end of the year - just 4 houses from Morley Field and the northern rim of Balboa Park. We're renting the back house at Barbara Broderick's new sumptuous and palatial property just off Upas. What fun!

Why? Well, why not? Actually, we're trying a few things out.

First, we've been coming down here a lot over the past year or so, and really like it. So, we figured we would see what it's like to wake up here and act like a local. It's also fun to live like a college student again - we have all the furniture we need, but just a grab bag of clothes and other stuff. All the stuff we've surrounded ourselves with at the Solana Beach house is just not around or in the way. And, it's good to do some change now and then - after all, we've been waking up in the SB house for a very long time.

So here we are, and Lucy is slowly getting used to life without a doggie door. So are we. Doggie doors are - like copiers, microwaves, and garage door openers - one of mankind's greatest inventions. Our alternative is to walk the pup fairly often, which is ok since in about 50 steps we're in the park. Nice. The dear little couch potato will be getting more exercise than she has in the past 13 years.

We celebrated the start of our adventure with Barbara, Linda and Ron (realtor to the stars) Rooney, with some delightful red that Ron had been saving for (we guessed) a bit too long. Oh well. We also had some red and white that Barbara had brought from our Italy trip and her recent return visit. A fitting harbinger of good things to come.

Barbara has been painting her new place like a fiend, and wearing a fair amount of paint in the process. Working with her brother Glenn, the place has already been transformed since she closed escrow just a few weeks agao.

I (Jeff) had a bit of local exercise today. Luckily for me, the Recyclers scheduled a South Bay ride for today. So I hopped on the bike at 0-Dawn Hundred (wearing my nifty NCCC pinks!) and headed off to the screaming downhill on Pershing - through Barrio Logan to Harbor Drive. Then it was down the southbound Bay Loop route to meet Paul, Greta, Dennis, Neil and Brian at Bay Front Park - where we celebrated Dennis' unknown b-day and wore pointy hats on the next leg down to San Ysidro. Rode along the border fence, met the rest of the Recyclers crew at their start point, and then wound our way back north. Nice!

So far our culinary tour of the area has included Luigi's Pizza (NY style!), Lefty's Pizza (Chi-Town), and the Commonwealth Cafe (home cooking place run by a nice bunch of twenty-somethings). They had vegan chili and excellent french fries - plus a nice selection of other comfort food. Tonight we're doing some home cooking with Barbara and our local good buddy Linda.

We took the pup for a long walk in the park this afternoon - through the Bird Park area, where the sidewalks are stenciled with the names of birds seen in this area, including about 20 species of perching birds (what else is there?). Alan Ryan would appreciate it.

Today, we also went to the Hillcrest Farmer's Market - about 10 times the size of the SB version, with tons of munchies - empanadas, sambosas, tamales... but no knishes. Maybe there really is a market for them... also the world's most expensive cup of coffee and lots of delightful produce. The hard part was finding a parking spot, which took a while. It was worth it.

We celebrated with a first dinner in our new domicile.
We're slowly figuring out what we forgot and making a list for our first visit back to SB later this week to pick up mail and say hello to the house.

Tomorrow should be interesting - first day of work from the new location. Have to get up, walk the dog, then head up the 805 to the office. Probably be a short day...