The birds!

After the Comic-Con in San Diego shut down on Sunday evening, Lucas Hackett and I walked north from the convention center looking for a Wendy's that he had seen on a previous evening while in a drunken stupor. We instead came upon a hole-in-the-wall Italian place and decided to take advantage of "pizza by the slice."

The front door was wide open and a pigeon walked into the restaurant just ahead of us. Confused, it promptly flew upwards and perched on a ledge over the front window. Therefore, we had an unexpected floor show to watch with our dinner, involving a man standing on a table with a broom. Eventually giving up, he managed to pick the pigeon up in his hands, jump down off the table, walk outside, and release the pigeon into the wilds of downtown San Diego, safely down the block somewhere. I was very impressed.

However, they didn't clean off the table he had been standing on, possibly putting their "A" health department rating in jeopardy.

Shortly after that piece of pizza, I got on the train to L.A., and ended up sitting in the cafe car, upstairs. This turned out to be a slight problem because it was racing season at Del Mar, and so a teeming mass of humanity got on the train at Solana Beach, the stop near Del Mar. Many members of the mass wanted to purchase alcoholic beverages in the cafe car (where there isn't even much of a selection, just a handful of brands of bottled beer and some random wines), and were being quite noisy about it. However, there wasn't too much unruliness, thanks in part to the two Amtrak police officers who also boarded at Solana Beach, and most of the teeming mass got off the train at Irvine or Santa Ana, leaving the train much quieter for the rest of the trip.

And then on the subway from Union Station to North Hollywood, due to maintenance, the train was operating on the "wrong" side of the tracks for a portion of the trip, confusing people who were waiting in the stations (who were perhaps already confused by the messages about the maintenance that were scrolling on the hanging LED displays). Eventually, the train operator got the hint and made the announcement, "Yes, this is a train to North Hollywood. Yes, we are running on the other side tonight, and every night after 9:00 through this Thursday." Since trains don't run from about 12:30 to 5:00 A.M., I'm not sure why they needed to start doing the maintenance at 9:00. Maybe they're practicing because they're going to start 24-hour operation in the future (I hope, so I can take the last train back from San Diego in the future if necessary).