Pun City Ventures to The Whale's Vagina

It's been a while here, so this blog figures it's time to share the trip experiences it had. As you may know, the plan was to head to the WCC tournament in San Diego, head up to Los Angeles for a day, then out to Las Vegas for the Mountain West Conference tourney.

March 7th was the first day of the trip. Here is its story.

Flew out at 6:10 AM Central, which was rough. Luckily for Pun City, Inspirational Website was gracious enough to give this blog a ride to the airport really freakin early. This blog was flying to Denver, then connecting to San Diego. Flights were pretty uneventful, which was good. Frontier Airlines came through in this case, which is weird considering they're about to file for bankruptcy.

This blog got to San Diego fairly early (about 10:00 AM), then got a rental car. Luckily they were out of economy cars at Enterprise, so this blog got upgraded to a Mazda 3 for free. This blog then went to see where it would be staying, which was very centrally located in the downtown area.

This blog then checked out the University of San Diego campus, figuring it would get the lay of the land before the night's games. This blog walked forever around campus, primarily looking for a bookstore that Pun City now believes was a misprint on the campus map. That wasn't the worst thing in the world, and this blog did get a bunch of exercise. Among the highlights was discovering that there is a common area where they have free newspapers. Pun City grabbed a USA Today and read it in the Mazda 3.

After casing the very hilly campus, this blog went back to where it was going to stay (a friend of Inspirational Website's condo). The host for the evening had yet to arrive, so this blog decided to walk around and try and find a restaurant. The initial goals were 1. A spot with affordably priced food and/or beverage; 2. Ideally a place to watch the game; and 3. A spot hopefully nearby.

A large amount of walking soon added another goal: somewhere to sit down. Pun City soon realized that there were not really any eating establishments within walking distance of the condo. Some Italian place that looked expensive, and a "deli" (glorified convenience store) with some lawn furniture set up on the street. This blog tried to find something else, it really did, but the "deli" won out. In the end, its proximity to the condo, seating, and available beverages ended up being the deciding factors.

Pun City sat for a while, topped off a lemonade, and strolled back up to the condo. This blog snoozed in the car for a while until the host called up and said she was there. Pun City initially had some trepidation with the arrangement, after all it was basically staying with a stranger. But the week's host turned out to be pretty cool after all. She went way above the call of duty and cooked up some chicken-pesto-noodle dish for dinner, which was very good. Soon after dinner, it was back to USD for the night's games, Loyola Marymount vs. San Francisco, and Pepperdine vs. Portland.

Despite being a "sellout," the arena was about 1/4 full and the 2 scalpers were selling tickets for under face value. Pun City was watching USF head coach Eddie Sutton intently, knowing this could be the final game of his illustrious career. (Sutton had come back for the 2nd half of the season, after USF's head coach had mysteriously "taken a leave of absence." He mainly deferred to his assistants, and it seemed like he was trying to audition Robert McCallum to be his replacement. (As it turned out, it didn't work, Rex Walters was hired between then and now).

San Francisco closed out the win, taking a 7-point lead with 6:32 remaining, then cruising to a 79-60 win.

Pepperdine then took out Portland. This game didn't have much. Of note were Jack Sikma's son playing for Portland as a freshman; Portland starting the only native Japanese player in Division I, and this blog noticing that Pepperdine's logo, when looked at from a certain angle, seems very similar to Miami of Ohio's.

Other points of note from "The Slim Gym," USD's Jenny Craig Pavilion:

-The arena served actual Mr. Pibb on tap. This wasn't Pibb Xtra, it was genuine Mr. Pibb. Pun City hasn't seen that in a long time.

-Pun City got a picture with the Geico gecko, plus a free caveman can cooler. (Geico was the main sponsor of the event).

-Despite having seats in the 2nd-to-last row, Pun City was able to sit in the 2nd row for both games, simply by finding the section where a non-playing team's fans belonged.