Prelude to the 2009 San Diego Tour

This was one event that I had been looking forward to all week - I actually didn't have a crazy schedule, so I had time to get excited beforehand.

On Thursday night, my GTI throws a check engine light. I'm annoyed, but fortunately, I already have an appointment with the dealer to change my oil on Friday morning. They can check the car then. While preparing for Friday, I download the latest software for my GPS.

On Friday morning, I hold off on loading the car until after the visit to the dealer. They take a look at the car and identify that I had some sort of vacuum hose go bad, which they replace under warranty. At this point, I'm already 1.5 hours behind schedule. Things are looking up but going downhill quickly.

I rush home to load the car and finish the last minute things - like pack the camera and computer. Finally, I think I'm packed and I hit the road, turn on my GPS and find that it won't start. It keeps hanging every time I turn it on. Fortunately, I have my iPhone, so I plug in the address and use it to navigate. When I'm 10 minutes down the road, I realize that I had left my laptop power adapter at home and I'd need it this weekend, so I turn around to go home to get it. Now I'm an extra 25 minutes late.

Last year, I tried leaving around lunch time and I hit heavy traffic, making it a long drive. This year I had planned to be on the road by late morning and hopefully avoid a lot of the heavy traffic. So much for the plan. I'm finally on the road around 12:45pm and I do encounter heavy traffic. The drive is a slow one and it's a little after 4pm before I arrive. Yuk.

I made it without any further mishap and start relaxing and hanging out with the folks that have arrived. Josh and Rod from Bridgestone were already there and we hang out in the Bridgestone trailer and start taking some photos. The evening light was very nice for photography.



Jason is not doing much better, trying to leave the office and being delayed by his patients, then he encounters 5 accidents and a fire to further delay him on his drive down.



It's late, so we walk the course and then head off to dinner. Dinner was good. We hung out with Rod and Josh and bumped into a whole group that had traveled down together from San Francisco.

We settle in at the hotel and check the weather - it's going to be a dry, cool day.