A three-day weekend at the beginning of the semester is an ideal time to relax and have fun with friends before everyone gets busy. For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I traveled with a couple friends down to San Diego. One of them lives in San Diego, which meant that we had a place to stay and a car! By the way, if you take the Greyhound Bus to San Diego, it is only $31 round trip. A deal!
San Diego is the closest place to home I can find on the continental U.S. Of course, San Diego is geographically closest to Hawaii, but it also has a lot of the same features: beaches, hikes, sunshine, and suburbs. Our first stop was Sunset Cliffs, where we watched surfers slice across the face of waves. We also hiked the Torrey Pines trails, which are right next to the famous Torrey Pines golf course that hosts many professional tournaments. From the top of a cliff, you can take a clearly marked path down to the beach. There, we found sea urchins and crabs lining the walls of tide pools. Torrey Pines is also a popular location to see sunset. Our afternoon became more exciting when we witnessed the fire department rescue two men who were stuck on the side of the cliff. We later found out that they were trying to climb 400 feet straight down the cliff to get to the beach. I guess they thought the path we took was not adventurous enough…
When we were walking back to the car from the hike, I noticed the Torrey Pines Science Park. It looked like a new development that was home to a plethora of biotechnology companies. Some of them I took note of were Synthetic Genomics, COI Pharmaceuticals, Avelas Biosciences, and Agilent Technologies. I recognized Agilent because it provided my research lab on campus with several imaging instruments!
Prior to this trip, I did not realize that San Diego was a hub for biotechnology. Now, I am really considering San Diego as a future place of residence! There, I can have the best of both worlds: beaches and biotech.
