Spending the Day on San Diego Bay

After riding around the bay from Harbor Island I sat down on a bench next to a man that had lived his entire 88 years in San Diego.  I thought that it had changed a lot since my navy training in 1963!

We had a very interesting conversation about the changes.  We both enjoyed talking about our memories.  I hope I can still sit here and talk about then when I am 88. 

Our conversation was interrupted by his cell phone.  He was waiting by the bay to pick up his daughter from the nearby airport.  I think he would have sat there lost in memory until sunset if his daughter had not called.

When he left he asked to shake my hand and thanked me for talking with him.  I think not so much to simply talk but with someone who valued knowing about his memories, his life experiences that I found to be so rich and fascinating the more he told me about them.

If his daughter had not called I could have talked to him until the sun set.  Long after he left I thought about all my memories of San Diego.  Like him, before I sat down, nobody to share them with yet happy to have them in my mind at that time and place.

San Diego has been a place where the trail of my travels has crossed often since the first time I saw the Pacific Ocean here in 1951 or 1952.  Thinking about it I counted 20 times I had been here and remembered something from each time.  Remembering changes in the place as well as changes in me.

Going to new places and doing new things creates new memories.  Renewing old ones in old places did not seem as adventurous but doing that now seems to bring much personal enjoyment.

James and Julie have an affinity to San Diego and now Dec does also at the University of San Diego.  Maybe Drew and Quinn will too in the future.  

This leg of the journey is concluding.  Soon I will return to Oregon then go to Hawaii and Australia.  Places I have also been many times before.  I am sure that old memories will surface in places I have been and new memories will be made.

Like sitting with my old friend on the bay in San Diego, memories made and shared with someone are the best.  The only thing better is sharing the same memories with the same person for a long time.  Sometimes just sharing them with a stranger where the sharing is simply a matter of the same place for a brief time is satisfying.  

Maybe I should talk to old people more often!  That however is what I intended to do when I sat down next to him.  While I enjoyed his memories, maybe what I gave and what he appreciated when he shook my hand is that I placed value on his memories told to me.  Stories of his life.

On a bike trip across country we all did different things at the end of the daily ride.  I learned that one lady went to a retirement residence and just asked to talk to a resident that otherwise did not have many visitors and would enjoy talking to someone.  Receptionists alway know who that type of resident would be.

I admire things others do.  Like Ironman.  I want to do or be what I admire.  Ironman is something but what the lady on the bike trip did was as inspiring.  Maybe after all these years since that ride in 1991 or 1992 her inspiration finally inspired me to do something similar?

I think we often never know the things we do that inpire others or when, much later, they influence others.  

Do good things and let the inspiration fall where it may.

My thought for the day.

This is the view from where we were sitting.