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San Diego For Free – Canyon Hikes, Exploring the Peaks and Valleys of San Diego County

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

San Diego has an amazing breadth of natural features: coast, mountains, deserts, oceans, lakes, rivers, and much more. If you’re looking for a good way to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with the natural side of San Diego County check out the Canyoneer Hikes from the San Diego Natural History Museum.
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San Diego For Free – Biking the San Diego Bay

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

Website: www.sandag.org/bayshorebikeway

Neighborhood & Address: San Diego, National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, Coronado; Detailed map here.

Best For: Outdoor enthusiasts, bicyclists, nature lovers, bird watchers

Hours: Free all day, every day. $4.25 for ferry if you prefer not to bicycle round-trip

The San Diego Bay is one of many iconic natural features of the regional geography. The bay is about 12 miles long, from San Diego in the north to Imperial Beach in the south. On the east side of the bay lies National City and Chula Vista and Coronado is about a mile across the bay to the west.

A wonderful feature of the San Diego Bay is the Bayshore Bikeway, a 24-mile bicycle-friendly loop that goes from Broadway Pier on the downtown San Diego Embarcadero around the entirety of the bay to the south-east, before returning north along Silver Strand Boulevard and ending at the Coronado Ferry Landing.   [Read more…]

Still Loving San Diego and Its Children After 50 years

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Looking at a picture of me on stage at the Lyceum Theatre, honoring a couple of girls who had written a remarkable play, I couldn’t help but reflect on my fifty year love affair with San Diego and its children – going back regarding the city to when I first laid eyes on the place, after flying here with my University of Arizona Wildcat basketball team back in the 50’s. The raw beauty I observed on the ride from the Grant Hotel through Balboa Park on what was then 395 (now 163) absolutely mesmerized me. So it was easy for me, after earning a couple of degrees, to leave the burning deserts of the Old Pueblo and head to a town where there existed cool ocean breezes.

I arrived in a rusty 49 ford with my mother at my side because she was afraid I would fall asleep on the drive. My wife and kids had preceded us by a couple of days.   [Read more…]

Homelessness in San Diego: My Friend, Bobby

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Last night, my friend, Bobby, died. A San Diego, CA native, Robert Eugene Ojala, 56 years old, was homeless. Bobby was grateful for the hospital and residential hospice care he received which enabled him to spend his last several weeks indoors and free of
pain. After run-ins with the law, Bobby found Jesus and changed his attitude about life.   [Read more…]

San Diego City Attorney Backs Out of ‘Equality Nine’ Prosecution

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More than two years after the arrest of the “Equality Nine” ― activists who enacted a sit-in at the San Diego County Clerk’s office and demanded that marriage licenses be issued to same-sex couples ― six of the members have been vindicated.

The legal proceedings against them ended with a “motion to dismiss” by the city attorney yesterday.

The activists said they see the end of this case as a victory in the struggle against restrictions on free speech, the inequality of LGBT marriage rights, and an overzealous San Diego City Attorney.   [Read more…]

We Un-Nominate San Diego as Convention City for GOP If Hurricane Hits Tampa – We’re Still Paying for the 1996 Republican Convention in San Diego

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We un-nominate San Diego as a convention city in case Hurricane Isaac forces the Republicans to flee Tampa. What?

Today’s news had two items of interest: Hurricane Isaac barreling toward Florida just may disrupt or adversely affect the Republican Convention being currently set up in Tampa. Romney & Co may have to relocate their shindig.

The other bit – actually an editorial in the U-T San Diego – had this headline: “If Isaac Roars, San Diego Should Welcome GOP”, and goes on to declare:

“But if the worst should happen, and Republican officials are suddenly forced to relocate the GOP national convention to begin Monday in Tampa, we nominate San Diego as the new convention host city.”

It goes on and gets into what’s available here:

“The logistics in moving the convention anywhere at this stage remain monumental, of course. While the San Diego Convention Center is not booked this week, the halls are busy with preparations for events the following week.”

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San Diego Cancer Survivor to Swim English Channel

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By Danny Cappiello 

Swimming twenty one miles in cold, rough water seems like an impossible feat. But I guess everything is relative. When you have battled cancer and won, very little probably seems impossible. That is the very perspective Allison DeFrancesco has and that is why she has decided to swim the English Channel this September.

Going into her senior year of college, Allison, a native of North County San Diego, was struggling with health problems. She did not know what was going on and threw herself into her collegiate swim training at NYU. But her health did not turn around and she eventually had to have it checked out. She graduated college early and came back to San Diego to get medical attention. Before she could figure out what was happening with her body, she learned some difficult news. Her college coach, Lauren Kyle Beam, had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Lauren was pregnant and lost the baby to the disease. Shortly thereafter, the next wave of bad news hit Alli. She too had cancer, a classic case of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Although diagnosis and treatment started for Lauren only a month or so before Allison’s, the coach and mentor stayed true to her role. She coached Alli through the process, encouraging her to stay positive, remain true to herself and to question the treatment options. All of this, especially the last piece if advice, proved crucial to Alli’s struggle. As it turned out, she had been under-diagnosed and therefore her treatment was not working. She sought out second opinions and her care was eventually transferred to the UCLA Lymphoma Program.   [Read more…]

Mayoral Candidates Debate the issues at Ocean Beach Town Council

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DeMaio and Filner lay out their divergent views on the role of government in San Diego.

The Ocean Beach Town Council welcomed San Diego’s two mayoral candidates to its monthly meeting at the Masonic Center last night in the latest in a series of debates ahead of November’s general election. Not surprisingly a packed house gathered to hear what the two aspirants to the city’s highest elected office had to say about their plans for the city should they be elected.

The format for the discussion was very lax with seemingly few rules. As requested by the two candidates, members of the audience were asked to submit questions for the candidates, which were then selected by members of the Town Council board. After making a brief opening statement, each candidate was then given ample time to answer the questions presented.

“Our city government has failed us,” Councilman Carl DeMaio opened. “They ran up a mountain of debt, they cut our services, they raised the cost of living through higher water bills. They let our city infrastructure, our streets, our sidewalks, our facilities, fall apart.”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Huge Impact of the Republican Medicare Plan in the San Diego Area; It Ain’t Pretty

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Sorry, gang, I’m taking a day off today. I had a little medical “procedure” yesterday, and need to take a day off from typing. I’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I hope you’ve got a rather large cuppa joe at your side, because I’m sharing a report issued by the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that details just what the “Republican Budget” has in mind for seniors and people with disabilities who happen to live in the San Diego area.

The budget passed by House Republicans in April 2011 makes radical changes to Medicare. The Republican plan raises costs for seniors and individuals with disabilities enrolled in Medicare, reduces their benefits, and puts private insurance companies in charge of the program.  For current beneficiaries, important benefits – such as closing the hole in  Medicare’s drug coverage – would be immediately eliminated.  For individuals age 54 and under, Medicare’s guarantee of comprehensive coverage would be replaced with a “voucher” or “premium support” to buy private health insurance.  By design, this federal contribution does not keep pace with medical costs, shifting thousands of dollars in costs onto the individual.

This analysis shows the immediate and long-term impacts of these changes in the San Diego metro area.  The Republican proposal would have adverse impacts on seniors and disabled individuals in the region who are currently enrolled in Medicare.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – It’s a Bad Day for San Diego’s Little People

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San Diego Schools Busing Program Gets Ugly…Yesterday’s snail mail brought myself and the parents of 22,000 other school aged children in San Diego a letter from the SDUSD Transportation Services Department demanding payment for the coming year’s busing within the next couple of weeks—or else. Dated July 31st (Yesterday was Aug 6th) and signed by Gene Robinson, “Director of Transportation and Distribution Services”, the letter also incidentally mentions that transportation fees for a single student will rise from last year’s rate ($420) to $500. A family’s second child gets the discounted rate of $250; additional children are not charged. The “or else” part of the letter is that, if you don’t happen to have that much cash laying around, your child will not be riding the bus this year. Programs allowing for monthly payments or by the semester have have been eliminated, so it’s all or nothing.

“Payment in full for each student must be received by the Transportation Department no later than August 24, 2012.”

Parents of students who are exempt from transportation fees, like those who are in certain classes of Special Education programs and Free or Reduced Lunch categories, still have to obtain certification and submit it to the Transportation Department by the August 24th deadline. I wish all those parents good luck in getting SDISD to process their paperwork prior to the deadline. Apparently different divisions within San Diego Unified are incapable of talking with each other.
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In Wake of Prop B, Filner Sidelines Pension Refinance Plan

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Candidate accepts the will of the voters; critics accuse him of abandoning his principles

Mayoral candidate Bob Filner is taking heat again this week for saying that he would go along with the law. Last week he was challenged for saying that as mayor he would enforce Prop B—the so called pension reform initiative that he so vehemently opposed during the primary—and essentially flip-flopping and supporting the controversial plan. This time he’s being accused of abandoning his own principles.

During the primary Filner touted a plan to refinance the pension debt, issuing 30 year bonds to do so. It was a plan he claimed would save the city $500,000 over the next 10 years, citing all-time low interest rates and comparing it to a homeowner who refinances his or her mortgage and in the process cuts the interest rate they pay nearly in half. That’s a lot of money the homeowner gets to keep.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The San Diego Mayoral Contest Heats Up; Poll Shows Filner with 8 Point Lead

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The 2012 mayoral contest here in San Diego is front and center in the news today. Polling results released yesterday show Rep. Bob Filner with an 8 point lead over City Councilman Carl DeMaio. According to San Diego Politico, the race currently stands at 40% – Filner, 32% – DeMaio and 29% – Undecided. These polling results (which are likely drawn from internal Democratic surveys) closely mirror party registration in San Diego. Other polls reportedly show Filner in the high 30s and DeMaio peaking in the low 30s.

Voice of San Diego has an article up this morning that leads by quoting former Filner opponent and modern day China-phobic economist Peter Navaro calling the Congressman “the Grand Canyon of assholes.” The VOSD piece focuses on the narrative that candidate Filner’s abrasive personality is a political liability; it does explore the roots of his willingness to be combative–his roots in the civil rights movement–but the overall thrust is not particularly complimentary.   [Read more…]

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