Visiting in San Diego

By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.

SAN DIEGO, California–It has been my habit that every time I go overseas to visit my family and relatives, I also visit my sports friends, cycling and basketball amigos. That’s exactly what I did when I was in Sacramento and Los Angeles last week. I visited my two Caucasian cycling protégés Anthony Milevsky and Rick Baza, my two loyal riders when we were still in Guam in the 1980’s.

Today, I’m in this beautiful city of southern California visiting my daughter Baby Ruth and her family and my 31-year old bachelor son Philam. I also met up with my cycling acquaintances Gerald Valdez and Raffy Soriano, formerly from Sual and Binmaley towns, respectively. Earlier, I met two of my avid fans during my cycling heydays, Willy Macayana from Bayambang and Joseph Tanzo from Malaybalay, Bukidnon. These four amateur pedal pushers are bonafide members of the Mira-Mesa Cycling Club (MMCC), the most popular among two Filipino cycling groups here in San Diego, headed by Edgar Ortiz of Metro Manila. Gerald said the almost 100 members of the club meet regularly but only on weekends due to time constraints since majority of them work on weekdays. In fact I was surprised to know that even my son-in-law Romel Rapayrapay (husband of Baby Ruth) plans on joining the club and recently bought a sophisticated Trek brand bike, which is made of carbon-fiber and titanium and worth more than $8,000. If you will recall, this is the brand of bike that Lance Armstrong used to conquer the Tour de France seven times in a row. These five guys are really addicted to cycling like me and will ride for fun and physical fitness but not competitively. But Gerald said his other clubmates join many of the races here and as far as the northern part of this big state.

This is my third time to visit this cool place. My first was in 1979 and my second was in 2005. This time I was able to see the world famous Sea World, courtesy of Baby Ruth and Romel. It was really a pleasant and memorable experience to see properly and perfectly sea animals wonderfully obey their trainors to the enjoyment of visitors to the place. These trained sea animals, especially the dolphins and the whales, don’t only swim but also jump and dance but politely acknowledge applauses from the audience. They’re really fantastic, too good to be true.

Despite the scary speculation and rumor that California is most likely to be hit by radiation (I hope it’s very thin) late night of Friday brought by the nuclear power plant explosion in Fukushima, Japan, the residents here are not panicking, expressing fully trust in U.S federal government’s capability to and technology to assist and guide them.

My next destination with Lavinia is Hawaii before finally going home last week of this month. See you there.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK: And Jesus said to them, “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. “Therefore I said to you that you will die in youre sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” Then they said to Him, “Who are You?” And Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. “I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him.” JOHN 8: 23-26

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