...the Sunday before
Gill and I have a pretty uneventful flight into SAN
and grab the shuttle to the hotel where we find Jen and Neil waiting to welcome
us outside. We get checked in and find that we’ve been given an
upgrade, although things don’t go quite to plan when we find that someone else
is already ensconced in the bedroom we’ve been allocated... a little
negotiating and explaining to the chap who’s just checked us in and given us
the upgrade, results in the hotel sending a security guy up to the disputed bedroom
to discuss the matter with the squatters while we take up residence in the
attached lounge awaiting news of our room... after some time I head back
downstairs to ask the same chap on the front desk, who’s forgotten me again
(it’s great fun telling him the story all over again) if we’ve made any
progress - blank looks - at which point the duty manager appears to let us know
that they’re going to give us the room on the other side.... so we head over to
the hotel restaurant for some potato skins as we’re in the mood for something light
and our body clocks are now well and truly buggered... the starters are
enormous - mental note for later - American portions.
After dinner we get the keys to the room and
we’re finally able to unpack, relax a little and then crash for the night...
...until I find myself wide awake at 3:30am, and unable
to go back to sleep, so I get up and fold up 100 exchange puzzle boxes that
I’ve carried over flat-packed... then I crash again.
Monday
We meet Jen and Neil for breakfast at the deli in
the hotel complex where we run into the Udalls.
Neil ran us around to the T-Mobile shop to pick up
some US SIMs... which it turns out works well for my phone, but not for the old
iPhone we’ve brought along for Gill...so Neil takes us to Best Buy to buy a
burner - yup we’ve gone all gangsta!
We head across to Coronado Island for a lovely walk
on the beach so that Gill could dip her feet in the Pacific (tick) before
having drinks out on the patio at the lovely Hotel del Coronado - it is
gorgeous and we make sure we wander past and admire the stunning original
mahogany bar counter still running the length of the main bar.
After some bagels for lunch Neil and I spend the
best part of the afternoon assembling my exchange puzzles and their associated
packaging before meeting up for dinner at the Claim Jumper which gets rounded
out by the largest slices of Salted Caramel Mud Pie known to man... it wins.
Work starts in the morning...
Tuesday
I grab us some snacks from the lobby shop for
breakfast - mental note: that doesn’t really work for me. After breakfast the
girls meet up to go to the Gaslamp District while Nick, Saul, Neil and I head out to pick up a
U-Haul van to collect all of the puzzles and sundries that have been posted to
Peter Grabarchuk ahead of IPP38. Nick appears to get himself a bit
lost arriving just after us even though he cruised effortlessly past Neil and I
in the U-Haul on the motorway while we pedalled for all we were worth!
Peter has half a garage full of boxes which we duly
sort through and load up so that we can take them all to the hotel in readiness
for the oncoming deluge of puzzlers wanting to be reunited with their puzzles.
Part of the load includes a few cabinets for a
couple of displays in the Design Competition room, so Neil, Saul and I spend
some time assembling cabinets... the first two go together well - they’re new
Ikea cabinets so they have tools and instructions... however we struggle a bit
with the other two cabinets as they don’t seem to have any fittings... happily
they show up a little later and we’re able to assemble them with a pair of baby
Leatherman’s.
Neil and I return and gas-up the U-Haul and then
find it’s going to take an Uber way too long to come and get us - we are out in
the sticks at the end of the runway, after all... so we walk briskly back to
the hotel where I arrive 5 minutes late for our first official on-site meeting
with the hotel staff who’re going to be looking after us for the next few days.
We spend a while talking about the ethos of IPPs and what we’re all about and
they seem genuinely interested and want to take a peek into our little world...
best line of the meeting goes to the Executive Chef, Brandon (never trust a
skinny chef! - I trust Brandon!) when he promises we’ll be getting American
portions at the buffet after we express concerns about running out of food at
the dinners and reception. (And he delivered on his promise!)
Nick had offered to take Neil, Jen, Gill and I out
to dinner in return for helping out on the Tuesday and asks us where we want to
go. Not knowing the neighbourhood well yet (I’ve been there two days) I have a
brainwave and ask Chica Banan for a recommendation... and we book a table at
Top of the Market for later that evening. Turns out it is a fantastic seafood
restaurant on top of an old fish market with a stunning view over the bay - at
sunset... Nick may well have paid through the neck for a couple of man-days of
labour but we had a wonderful dinner - followed by a lovely warm walk back
along the seafront to the hotel.
Wednesday
Wednesday sees the official opening of registration
for IPP 38 and also the SOAP’s Fabric and Fibre tour that Jen and Paulette have
been planning for the best part of a year... there is plenty of excited
catching up with friends before the bus heads out in search of fabric, fibre
and beads... they are not disappointed.
We set up the registration area and agree a process
which then subsequently gets tweaked several times over the next few days and
we’ve all got it pretty well-oiled by the second last day of IPP.
While we’re handling registration a new Chico Banan
video gets posted telling us that the man himself has been spotted heading for
the Mexican border... and then in unrelated news, Big Steve posts from LAX
where he is about to board a plane to SAN - concerned for his safety, one
well-wisher (OK, it was me!) tells him to “Stay safe, brother”.
After registration closes for the morning we help
Brian, Kellian and her mom get the Design Competition room set up - the
well-oiled machine makes short work of it all.
After lunch with some of the gang, Neil and I head
out to find him a whistle from the magic shop that Jen and Gilly found the
previous day... at the shop we intended to visit we find they don’t have any in
stock and they direct us to another shop in the Gaslamp District - we feel the
need to refuel on ice cream before heading into the centre of town - American
ice cream cones are large - mental note number two.
At said magic shop we find they’re closed, a bit of
a drag, but it will allegedly reopen a little later, so we head for a
Starbucks... at the appointed time we return and hang around a little for the
coolest magic shop dude to arrive back and let us in... Neil finds his whistle
and I grab a really unique deck of cards for Wil.
Gill and the girls return a little exhausted from a
wonderful day trip with their mates from around the world... happy wife, happy
life. :-)
We do a few more hours on the registration table
where I generally set myself up at the end of the table, offering free Wi-Fi in
return for volunteering to help out around IPP... I manage to sign up plenty of
volunteers without annoying too many people... actually I think I only ended up
offending one person so I'll take that as a win, given the job! One major upside
of doing this is virtually everyone had to wander past me at some point so I
got to see all of my friends just after they’d registered... a pretty efficient
way of saying "Hi!" to everyone, it turns out.
When registration closes we have dinner with the
Pawliger clan and I lose a fight with Helen to at least contribute to the
dinner bill - thanks Helen!
Back in the lobby I find Big Steve who’s arrived
from LAX - he’s buzzing having seen the latest from Chico on FaceBook so we
catch up on the latest developments on the tongue depressor front - it’s an
exciting time to be a tongue depressor collector, apparently.
I have a nice chat to Brian and Frank before heading upstairs to crash for the night.
