The Best Places In San Diego!

One of the things I love about San Diego is that there is no shortage of places to celebrate Independence Day. I’ve watched fireworks from a dinner cruise on San Diego Bay, the birds eye view from Mt. Soledad, La Jolla Cove (where you can see fireworks all the way up the coast), and the less crowded Mira Mesa. By the way, if you plan on heading to La Jolla, including Kate Sessions Park and Mt. Soledad, plan on going at least 3 hours before dusk to have a chance of getting a parking spot.

To see the full list of activities for the 4th of July, the Union Tribune has put together a great resource of information.

Where’s your favorite place to celebrate the 4th? Share your comments below.

Have a great 4th of July Weekend San Diego!

If you have dealt with health issues, chances are you’ve learned that our immune system needs to strike a delicate balance. Sometimes it fails to detect or respond to foreign viruses and bacteria. Other times, it overreacts and kills off the good cells we need in our body, resulting in life changing auto-immune disorders.

Allergies are another form of an immune system disorder. Fortunately, our own La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology is a one of only a few non-profit research institutions in the world working to understand our immune system’s response so we can learn to prevent, treat and cure immune system diseases.

To give you an idea on the work being performed by the La Jolla Institute, their background page notes their researchers have developed a breakthrough for Type 1 Diabetes, created the world’s largest database on how the immune system responds to infectious diseases, are working on antibodies that can protect us in case of a biological terror attack, and are fighting against Lyme disease.

The La Jolla Institute of Allergy & Immunology was established in 1988 and now employs over 200 staff members. You can read more about the faculty members, their research, and their publications on the web site.

This is the ninth article in my weekly series about the biotech institutes that line the Torrey Pines Mesa.

Seminars at the La Jolla Institute of Allergy & Immunology

Directions from Google Maps to 9420 Athena Circle 92037

You can help the La Jolla Institute by attending their 20th Anniversary Gala.

If you have not visited the North Coast Rep, now is the time to make plans. Next month, the North Coast Repertory Theatre will offer three performances over two nights of Dick Enberg’s McGuire.

Al McGuire was the colorful college basketball coach, whose final game in 1977 resulted in the 1st ever NCAA College Basketball Championship for Marquette University. He went on to become a college basketball and Olympic commentator bringing increased attention to the sport he loved, with his charismatic personality. McGuire left a lasting impact in American sports when he passed away from leukemia in 2001.

Our own, Rancho Santa Fe resident, Dick Enberg wrote a one-man play as a tribute to his friend. Enberg, who is the winner of 13 Emmy Awards, nine National Sportscaster of the Year Awards, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, will participate in an audience discussion after each performance at the North Coast Rep.

Learn more about ‘McGuire’ by Dick Enberg.

Buy tickets to McGuire, which is playing on Monday, August 18th and Tuesday, August 19th. As of this post, the Monday night showing is nearly sold out.

Directions from Google Maps to the North Coast Repertory Theatre at 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive 92075

Every once in a while I like to share quotes from those in other parts of the world that put San Diego front and center. Read them and then enjoy the fact you live in San Diego.

Tech Guy from Washington, D.C.: “San Diego was one of the cleanest and nicest cities I have ever seen. The climate was very nice… a breezy 70 degrees or so. Wednesday was actually chilly because it was overcast. What a contrast to the humid/hot weather I came back to. This is definitely a place worth visiting and I daresay it looks like a nice place to live.”

Seattle Times and Chicago Tribune Travel Article: “Once upon a time, San Diego was known mostly as a playground for families…Yet somehow, under the radar, San Diego also has become surprisingly hip.”

United Kingdom’s Times Online: “Los Angeles itself is also something of a shock for the first-timer – as sprawling and strung out along gridlocked freeways as you imagined. Still, for those who want to get all the pluses of southern California (sun, sand, surf and so on) with none of the minuses, help is at hand. It’s called San Diego, and now, thanks to Zoom, you can fly direct to it from Gatwick.”

If you didn’t catch the previous post of cool comments about San Diego, you can read it here.

If you have worked with a Fitness Trainer or if you’ve read articles about fitness in your local paper, chances are the San Diego based American Council on Exercise had something to do with it.

Founded in 1985, today ACE is one of the largest fitness certification, education and training organizations in the world. They have certified over 200,000 fitness professional around the globe. They have created one of the most referenced fitness information web sites, which includes all of the information you could ever need on the proper form for weightlifting, stability training, yoga poses and more.

Their exercise library lists multiple resistance training exercises for each muscle group allowing you to find a variety of exercises that work best for you. On their Fit Facts page, there is documentation on how to choose a fitness trainer, what exercises to perform when you are pregnant, and how to manage an exercise program for several different health challenges, including arthritis, heart disease, and stroke. Their Fit Facts page also provides resources for Nutrition, Supplements, and Kids Fitness issues.

Considering that new studies often result in changes to fitness and nutrition recommendations, you can stay up-to-date on the latest in health and fitness from American Council on Exercise.

If you think that is a lot of information, they also have a section of Frequently Asked Questions on Health and Fitness as well as over 2,000 healthy recipes.

This goes to show that not only do San Diegans do a great job of living a healthy lifestyle, which we’ve discussed in previous posts, but we also do a great job of trumpeting the need for rest of society to live a healthy lifestyle through San Diego based organizations, such as the American Council on Exercise and companies, such as Jazzercise. To read about other ’started in San Diego’ firsts when it comes to health, I’ve created a new category called Health / Fitness / Nutrition. Enjoy.

San Diego International Airport is the home to many firsts in aviation history. The good climate in San Diego contributed to its attraction for many of the developments in both military and passenger aviation. In a future post, I’ll talk more about the military aviation in San Diego.

The San Diego Airport has been known as Lindbergh Field since 1928, when the airport first opened. A year earlier, aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh took off from San Diego on his Spirit of St. Louis, built by San Diego’s Ryan Aircraft. Lindbergh flew on to St. Louis, New York, and then on to his history making flight across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris, France.

To celebrate its 75th Anniversary in 2003, the San Diego Airport Authority released video chronicles about the history of Lindbergh Field. The nine video chronicle, each about two minutes long, takes you from the beginning of aviation in San Diego, which led the way for the United States, to current day aviation. I’ll note a few tidbits that jumped out at me when watching the videos.

I was surprised to learn in the second video that it was a San Diegan, John Joseph Montgomery, who flew the first manned, heavier-than-air flight in the United States. It took place in Otay Mesa in 1883. You can visit the hilltop where Montgomery made the first flight. Subsequently, the life of this San Diego aviation pioneer was featured in the Hollywood movie Gallant Journey. You will also find the I-5 through the South Bay is named the John J. Montgomery Freeway.

The second video also surprised me when it noted San Diego’s Ryan Airlines started the first ‘regularly scheduled’ airline service in the country. You can read more about Ryan Airline’s founder at the National Aviation Hall of Fame web site.

In the fourth video, you will learn that our own Lindbergh Field became the first federally approved airport in the country. The year was 1928.

The American Heart Association has released its list of most heart friendly and least heart friendly cities for women. San Diego County is 8th best in the country. Twenty-two factors were included in the analysis, including risk factors (we probably scored quite well here due to our fabulous living environment and our generally healthy lifestyles), current state of heart health for local residents, and heart disease statistics.

From my personal experience, I can certainly tell the difference in heart healthy lifestyles between my previous hometown, the Philadelphia metro area, and San Diego. When I got in my car to drive across the country, I was in great shape relative to my peers. Once I arrived in San Diego a week later, I found myself to be well out-of-shape compared to my peers. I also went from having a donut shop and hoagie deli on every street corner to being at a loss for finding donuts and hoagies in San Diego. If you’ve moved from another city, share your comparisons relative to the healthy lifestyle we find here in San Diego.

This is the eighth article in a series of weekly articles I am writing about the Science Institutes that line the Torrey Pines Mesa. As you may have gathered by now, one-by-one, new institutes were being created on the Torrey Pines Mesa. Heading into the 1980s, this gathering collection of world class institutes, employing many of the greatest scientific minds around, became a magnet for other researchers and organizations who wanted the opportunity to exchange ideas and collaborate on developing new scientific discoveries.  When a growing mass of individuals and organizations work in close proximity, it is shown that the sum is greater than its individual parts.   Not only is there an exchanging of ideas and collaboration among scientists, but there is also a network of suppliers and organizations that develops in the local area to further support the scientists.  San Diego was now on its way to developing a world-recognized biotech cluster.

In 1985, this development got a boost with the creation of Read the rest of this entry »

Since many San Diegans love to play in the ocean, I figure many of you are familiar with wetsuits. Did you know it was a San Diegan who designed the first neoprene wetsuit? I came across this when I wrote last week’s post about the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. As you may recall, Scripps does a lot of research in the ocean. To help facilitate the ability of scientists to perform their research, Hugh Bradner, a Scripps Physicist who had once worked on the Manhattan Project, developed the modern wetsuit.

This week, I researched more about Hugh Bradner and found he passed away last month. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote a nice article on his legacy. Wikipedia also makes mention of him as the father of the wetsuit.

It turns out he didn’t have much success in his attempt to patent his invention or sell it to the Navy. However, shortly thereafter, a couple of California entrepreneurs found the right market in surfers and developed what would become Body Glove and O’Neill.

Now, every time I go out in the cold water, I’ll know it is a San Diegan whom I can thank for keeping me warm.

You may have seen him in the morning on The Today Show or Good Morning America. Maybe you saw him in the afternoon with Dr. Oz on Oprah or The Tyra Banks Show. Geez, maybe it could have been VH1 or Entertainment Tonight or CNN. The person whose face has been popping up everywhere to help people build their six-pack abs and a healthy diet is San Diego’s own Jorge Cruise.

You can read Tom Blair’s interview with the former UCSD student in the June issue of San Diego Magazine. Cruise has written three books, which have made the New York Time’s Bestseller List. His health video clips on YouTube have been viewed over 750,000 times!

To tell you the truth, I must be living in a cave since I had not heard of Jorge Cruise until I read about him in San Diego Magazine.

You can follow Jorge Cruise through his blog or visit his web site. You can even join his online club to get continuing support to reach your health goals.

On another, “it started in San Diego” note, San Diego magazine was supposedly the first city magazine in the country. Until recently, their web search description noted they were first in the county to create a localized magazine. Although I was not able to verify that anywhere else, I didn’t find anything to the contrary. It goes to show that San Diego is a trendsetter, just another great reason to live in America’s Finest City.