PCA conference

I landed in San Diego at about 7 pm local time (though to me it felt much later) and at first, all I could think about was getting my luggage and finding a bed. But as a walked through the terminal to the baggage claim area, my path took me past a wall of windows several stories high. Since it was dark, it took me a while to even notice that the wall was glass, but when someone walked through an automatic door next to me, the warm sweet-smelling air (yes, sweet, even at an airport!) caught my attention and with a shock, I realized I was looking out at a row of palm trees. Palm trees!

The only time I've seen palm trees (at least this variety - they had them in Sao Paulo, but they were a different species of tree and looked very different) is on vacation - I've never lived somewhere where palm trees grow, and at that moment, all the worry about whether my paper was going to be well received, whether I'd learn anything, whether I'd hear some interesting papers, or whether I'd be bored with the whole conference, just fell away and I felt a surge of excitement, as if I was on vacation. I remembered where this conference was going to be held, and looked forward to seeing the city itself in addition to the scholars I'd be spending the next three days with.

After calling home and reassuring my daughter that I was still in California even if there was a message on the phone from the airline saying that my (original) flight had been cancelled because in this country, there's always another flight, I grabbed my bag and looked forward to getting my first glimpse of the city. The bus ride into downtown was over too fast (and I missed some of it trying to show the girl from Australia on my map where she wanted to get off the bus), but from what I did see, the city seemed to sparkle.

Now, I wasn't that enraptured by the city that I forgot that cities look much nicer in the dark, with their lights shining and the garbage obscured by low lighting, but even by the light of day the next morning, the place shone. In fact, the longer I wandered around, the more I wondered why the locals even bothered putting shoes on in the morning, the streets were so neatly swept at all times. (When I left Sunday morning at 5:30, crews were already out sweeping up cigarette butts and other debris – 5:30 in the morning!)

I found the hostel without a problem, and got my room, which was nice and spacious. Worth the money, I thought. Now came the problem that I had realized even before I left Boston – I had forgotten the web print out of the conference, which included the address of the hotel the conference was actually being held at (with room rates of $150/night, it was too rich for my blood, hence the hostel). The best my mind could come up with was the Omni.

I’d seen the Omni from the bus ride, so I headed over there, but the lobby was strangely empty and the conference area had no signage. I realized I was thinking about the wrong weekend – I was going to be at the Omni in Indianapolis, not San Diego. Rooting around in my memory, I came up with the Marriott, and I’d seen one on the walk to the Omni. So I headed over there. But it’s lobby was eerily empty as well.

I was puzzled, and feeling just a bit embarrassed. But I tried to ignore my rising embarrassment and asked the desk clerk if the PCA group was meeting in this hotel. She checked. No PCA. I turned to leave, thinking it was awfully late, but I could wake someone up at home and ask them to look it up. She stopped me, “Wait, it could be at the Marriott Marina”. Oh! Two hotels! Well. Okay. Sure enough, that’s where they’re meeting, and it’s only five blocks away.

The sign that said “PCA” in the lobby of the Marriott Marina was like a beacon from on high, illuminating the prize at the end of a long quest at that point. My feet started to ache as I clutched my bag of goodies on the way back to food and bed.

Despite a mind-befuddling tiredness, I found it difficult to sleep since the restaurant across the alley seemed to need to get rid of every bottle in the kitchen, one at a time, over five minute intervals until about 3 am, but I did sleep. That is, until the bottle pickers came to gather them before the dump trucks at 5 am.

Oh well, I figure sleep’s overrated anyway.