There's no place like home...

I hate traveling.  Oh, we stayed in some nice hotels (and one crappy one) and got to visit a place I have never been to before but the hassles of flying and dealing with business travel sucks most of the fun out of the deal.  Spend a week on the road in SoCal (Southern California).  Been to Cali a few times over the past few years, but this time we were as far south as you can get while still having a US zip code.  Tuesday found us crossing the border into Tijuana to visit one of our suppliers, but that was fairly uneventful.  The surrounding town of TJ is interesting (colorful?) but not one I would want to walk the streets at night.  The border crossing was more of a PITA, about like clearing airport security, only the border guards have even less of a sense of humor than your average TSA agent. 

The other two plant trips were typical.  In by 0800, out by 1700.  Long days, lots of notes, talking, writing.  The week is a whirlwind of audits and, after three in a row, things tend to get blurry.  Aside of traveling from San Diego to Santa Anna and changing hotels 3 times, one of my biggest gripes is the mountain of work/messages I have when I get back to the office.  As of yesterday morning, I had over 574 messages, a large number are "repeaters".  Three audit reports, one weekly status report, two inventory updates, two meetings, one conference call and a huge expense statement later, I was finally able to break free after 1830 last night.  This week will be another long stretch.  I'm back to juggling chainsaws.  It's Tuesday and I am already two weeks behind.  At least I am still gainfully employed.  

My road partner and I got to see a lot of the California coastline during our stint.  We drove across the San Diego area from the border to northern SD.  I drove up the coast on I5 to Santa Anna after one audit.  Nice drive, even if traffic was a bit heavy.  IMHO, California traffic is no worse than some of the freeways we have down here.  Not much time to sight see on these trips but on Friday, our flight did not leave until 1300, so we drove out to Laguna beach to see the shoreline/waves.  Weather was foggy/overcast/grey, so the coast was not as picturesque as I had hoped, but we did get to walk the beaches.  Even ran across a pack of woodies at a local hotel/restaurant.  As an old car guy, I recognized most of these classics.  I've been a part of a couple of old car clubs and have done one or two of these "rides" where the group will get together and drive their cars to a town or spot for the weekend.  It can be a blast and definitely draws a crowd wherever you go.  

And appologies for not posting sooner or seeming to ignor everyone's updates/postings.  Been busier than a one armed paper hanger with an itch down here and have not had time to add my lame comments.  Mi scusi!