San Diego Vacation – Day 1

The morning after our Seder, we left home and began our short Spring Break trip to San Diego, California.

Kai had been looking forward to it, but he was nervous about some things.

“Is the plane going to crash?” he asked repeatedly.

No, I kept telling him. Air travel is quite safe and our plane will not crash.

We had ordered a taxi to pick us up at 6:20 AM. The night before, Kai was anxious about oversleeping.

“You and Mom wake me up at 5:30. I don’t want to be here by myself all week.”

Ha, he was worried that we would actually go to San Diego without him.

The next morning, he had no trouble waking up. He was raring to go.

At the airport, he did fine going through security, and was relatively patient while waiting to board the airplane.

When we stepped onto the plane, he peeked into the cockpit.

“Is the pilot a good one, Dad?”

Yes, Kai, the pilot is really good.

“We’re not going to crash, Dad?”

No, we’re not, I reassured him for the umpteenth time.

He was pretty good on the plane, other than loudly asking what time it was every 5 minutes. He was very concerned about how much longer it was until we landed. But mostly he enjoyed watching some of the ten DVDs we brought to keep him occupied.

When we landed in San Diego, it was sunny and warm. Ah yes!

But when we got off the shuttle at the rental car facility, I saw signs of trouble. There was a crowd of people waiting for cars.

Despite having reserved a car weeks ago, the woman at the desk told me it would be a 15 to 20 minute wait for a car. The large crowd indicated that it would longer than that.

We waited and tried to keep Kai occupied with the iPad. But after awhile he started asking questions.

“How long is it going to be before we get our car?”

I was wondering the same thing.

When the wait went past the 20-minute mark, Kai got more agitated.

“I’m getting very impatient!”

After several more minutes, he got louder.

“THIS IS A STUPID PLACE. I HATE THESE PEOPLE!”

We shooed him out of the building and hoped that waiting in the sunshine outside would calm him down.

It did not.

“I WANT TO GO HOME RIGHT NOW!”

I went back inside to make sure I didn’t miss hearing our name being called.

And after several more minutes, I did it.

I played the “autism card.”

I went up to the manager and explained to him that my son with autism has a very difficult time with waiting.

Thankfully, he was very responsive. He found a car for us.

About the time we were finishing up the paperwork, Kai came back into the building. He saw me with the manager and came over.

“I WANT A CAR RIGHT NOW!”

Yes, sir, the manager told him.

I explained to Kai that we had a car.

“GOOD!”

I tried to brighten his mood by telling him that we even got upgraded to an SUV.

We finally left the rental place and drove to our hotel where we met San Diego friends of Kai’s grandparents.

Dave and Iris took us to lunch. Dave has a very funny sense of humor, and I was glad to see that Kai got some of his humor, much like he is starting to catch on to his grandfather’s humor.

After lunch, they drove us around town, giving us a great introduction to San Diego. We drove to Pacific Beach, downtown, and then to the harbor where we got out and saw some of the ships.



About the time we got to Coronado, Kai started to get agitated.

“How much longer?” he whined.

We explained that we came all this way to see San Diego, and it was nice that Dave and Iris wanted to show us around. We were not planning to drive for long. We would not be going much farther. Still Kai’s complaints grew louder and more persistent.

“I want to go back to the hotel!”

While Kai can hold up well for day-long rides when we are traveling somewhere, he has difficulty with the notion of sightseeing. I think he just sees that as driving around without getting anywhere.

We had only one or two more places to see, but decided cut it short and head back to the hotel. I felt badly for our hosts. I’m sure they understood, but it still felt a bit rude. Iris, a retired speech therapist, did tell us that Kai delivers clear messages, and I’m pretty sure she meant that as a compliment to him.

Once back at the hotel, Kai led us to the place where they kept two blind rescued seals.



Then he wanted to use the swimming pool. We didn’t need to fly all the way to San Diego to go to a swimming pool, but I think our daily afternoon time at the pool was Kai’s favorite activity on the trip.

When he was in the water with Mom and Dad, he was a happy kid.

That evening, we had dinner at a sushi restaurant. My wife liked that the sushi met her high standards. I liked that Kai was well behaved there.

It wasn’t a perfect day. We really never have those. But we had some nice times. We had started our vacation.

Tomorrow: SeaWorld