Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
We’re back
Some thoughts on this vacation and vacations in general, in no particular order:
* If you’re in the predicament of being in San Diego on a weekday and you need to go north, past LA, then leaving mid-day (around 11 AM) and pressing up the 405 works well. I would estimate we lost only around 10 minutes to traffic, mostly from the usual 10-405 snogfest.
* It is in fact possible to see the San Diego Zoo in one day. We did not waste time with the bus tour, which looked to be more annoying than anything else (wait wait I wanted to actually LOOK at the elephants, slow down, nooooooo). We saw everything but the aviary and the pandas, and did it in about 6.5 hours.
* There was a huge line for the pandas, no line at all for the koalas. Stuffed animal manufacturers, please take note. Anyway, it was the line that put us off, adorable as pandas must surely be.
* I wonder if anyone has ever done a study to discover the best time to visit a zoo. It seems like the animals are always sleeping. We had the most fun with the grizzly bears, who were in a playful mood, chasing each other around the habitat and even to an adjacent habitat (through a communicating tunnel), forcing about two dozen humans to run thirty or forty feet to watch them in the second area, only to have to run back when the bears themselves doubled back. I’m not sure what bear laughter sounds like, but I suspect it sounds much the same as the noises they make when running after one another.
Does this tree make me look fat?
It’s not fat. It’s poor posture.
* There’s always just enough annoyance about vacations to make you glad it’s over. “Staycation” is kind of a dumb portmanteau, but the basic thought is correct: you’re likely to be happiest and most relaxed at home. But you can only play so much World of Warcraft before your mind starts to go, right? Right?
D.
Nice picture.
Some enterprising zoo should hire a guy with a long pointy stick. They could charge extra for an ‘awake animals’ tour and then the Pointy Stick Guy would run ahead and poke the animals with his pointy stick just before you got there. All the animals would be awake then. Some would, no doubt, be Enraged, and possibly some would have Mild Pointed Stick Dents, but all in all I think this would improve the Zoo experience no end.
You’d want an extra-long pointy stick for the carnivores.
You could even charge extra to allow people to get there ahead of the Pointy Stick Guy (in the hopes of seeing him get attacked or eaten).