New Bikes and SeaWorld

It's been a week since we discovered our bikes missing.
With the grieving process complete, we are ready to search for new bikes.
We found 15 bike shops, new and used, and spent over 7 hours driving around San Diego for the perfect match.

Ironically, the last shop of the day - UC Cyclery - was the place we found our beauties, but we decided to sleep on it before making a final decision.

Now if you go to their website, you'll see that UC Cyclery is currently offering $1000 off many of their bikes and interest free financing! We were doubtful we'd buy anything here - knowing they cater to high-end customers and we planned on spending a very, very, very, very, very small fraction of that.

Thankfully, we discovered that UC Cyclery had a few bikes in stock in our price range.

And best of all, they treated us just as kind as if we were buying $6000 bikes.

Many thanks to Dave, the owner, for greeting us, being sympathetic to our situation, and for catering to our low price range.

Extra special thanks to Dennis, the bike-fit guy, for geometrically fitting our bikes to our bodies, and telling us about cool places to see as we head east.

And to Steve, the accessory king, for patiently adding racks, pedal straps, bottle holders, and dealing with our color matching desires - - all at no extra charge.



Onto SeaWorld!!!!

We woke up the next morning excited to ride the 3.5 miles from the hostel to SeaWorld - glad to avoid the additional $12 parking fee for vehicles - - Yippee!

We arrived 30 minutes after the park opened, and actually spent 20 minutes - not to purchase tickets - but check into the park.

Once we were in, immediately to our right was this...


I'm glad to know there is a spot for your lost items, especially your children. Whew!

The park was similar to any adventure park - very clean, perfectly landscaped, bright colored sets, conscession and souvenir stands, and big name sponsors. Anheuser-Busch was tastefully stamped all over SeaWorld San Diego, particularly its most popular attraction - The Shamu Show. I didn't realize that Anheuser-Busch has a Busch Entertainment Corporation division, which actually owns and operates SeaWorld(s).

And it was interesting to pass a greens guy cutting a few squares of dead grass and replacing them with lush green sod.

But this was going to be a great day. We were excited to see these smart aquatic animals.

On the day we went the park offered 4 shows, each about 30 minutes long.


Dolphin Discovery was the first one, and probably my favorite. We entered "Dolphin Stadium" and were greeted by a guitar man named Paul. He was a jovial guy strumming and singing classic songs between a 55 degree pool of salt water and a lighthouse. I suppose he was the opening act for the dolphins - and he was quite entertaining. Richie and I sat in the "nose bleed" section of the stadium. It tends to be less crowded and you can't beat the views. We were thankful for our decision because the first 12 rows of the stadium are called "The Soak Zone." And Paul warned everyone by singing "The Soak Zone Song" that started like this...

If you are sitting in the first 12 rows
There is something you oughta know
There's a 50-50 bet
You'll get 100% wet

Two Pilot Whales

There were 3 Bottlenose Dolphins
(this picture shows only one jumping really, really high)

The next show was Clyde and Seamore's Risky Rescue featuring an enormous sea lion named Clyde and a smaller sea lion named Seamore. The cutest part of the show was an otter named OP.

Now we aren't big TV buffs, so this show was a bit cheesy and hard to follow with all of its TV references.
We had to remind ourselves that it is about the animals and their talents - not the rest.


Pets Rule! was the third show on the list and the most diverse. Despite the incredibly colorful set, this show was about the animals and how hard they have worked in training. I don't think I've giggled this much in a long time or said "Wow - look at that!" so much.

The performers ranged from dogs and cats (Yes, cats who walked across tight ropes 30+ feet in the air and cats who used two paws to pull themselves across a rope while dangling), pigs and ducks, pigeons and doves, and more!



One of the head trainers came on stage before the show and said they were adding 2 "new acts" to the performance. He said the new additions have been training for over 2 months and have one last test - - completing their task in front of a live audience.

One of the two new additions were a batch of ducks. They had to walk from one end of the stage to another - and they did it beautifully!
And the second was a 9-year old lab who was trained to climb a set of stairs into a treehouse and pull a weight (attached to a rope) all the way to the top.



And finally, we watched Believe: The Spectacular Shamu Show. This was a heartwarming story of a young boy who dreamed of working with orcas - so much that he carved a whales tail out of wood and wore it around his neck. It was a major character in the show, too. And you guessed it - there were 5-6 vendors selling versions of that wooden pendant after the show.


Here is SeaWorld's description of the show:

Believe blends unique killer whale behaviors with elaborate set pieces, state-of-the-art multimedia, music and choreography. Believe takes guests on a journey in which anyone believes they can connect with these magnificent mammals. This inspirational show also accentuates the close relationship SeaWorld trainers have with the killer whales, and will amaze you with a series of exciting behaviors.

While the large rotating screens were cool, we would have been just as fascinated with simple tricks. Orcas are HUGE creatures - and smart!

There are 7 orcas at SeaWorld San Diego housed in 5 partitioned tanks totalling 7-million gallons of salt water, 3 orcas were used in the show.

We must share that they "Shamu Splash" portion of the show was a little cult-like. There was even a dance that the crowd relished in! It was almost like being at an LSU game when the band is marching onto the field and they play the fight song... Dah-dah-dah-dah... Boom, boom, boom, boom... You get goose-bumps and the adrenaline just starts flowing.

By the way, the orcas could splash 17 rows high. We were glad to be in the "nose bleed" section, again.


It was a great experience for us - and it was nice to see a nice variety of marine life, including turtles, to satisfy our fascination.