(I am back tracking a bit, but I need to write something about my time in San Diego.)

Kit arranged a Barbeque for me at her house on the evening of Tue 6th Sept. It was a great chace to do some catching-up with many old friends. (Thanks to Kia and Zoe for taking the photo.) Then I was able to visit the San Diego CareFusion site on Wed and went to lunch with some more old friends. And then again on Thursday Lunch! And in the middle I was able to put faces to many folk I had worked with previously, but only on the end of a telephone. I was really touched by the generosity of all the folk there. I had half expected some stoney looks (since I was at least partially responsible for the stuff they are having to pick up now) and some frowns at the fact that I am now swanning around the world - but not a bit of it. Everyone was so friendly and positive about my trip. I just can't thank them enough. And, of course, a special thanks to Kit for helping to arrange it all.

With some much time being spent with friends, I didn't get much chance to explore San Diego, which is why there are few photos of it. (By the way BobB - you do realise that I will bug you until you send me the photo of Wednesday Lunch. :-) Nevertheless, I do remember SD as a lovely city. I also did get to try a Fish Taco (as suggested by Chris H) at the Karl Strauss Brewery - very nice. Also, in keeping with current trend, I left a minor disaster behind me. Apparently I left Calafornia, Arizona and Mexico with a major blackout yesterday. Whoops - I was only trying to recharge my phone.

Of course, this also represented the last step in my USA Road Trip. Isoroku Yamamoto (architect of the attach on Pearl Harbour) is reported to have said that, if ordered to fight, "I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years." He had previously been able to witness the capabilities of this tremendous country. This statement has been made all the more real to me by the scale of the available resources; both natural and human tallent. It is an emmense place and if it is focused on one objective can do correspondingly emmense things. On the other hand, (and as an ignorant outsider,) I just had the sense that it doesn't have a consolidated focus right now; there just seems to be a lot of bickering.