¡Feliz cumpleanos a mi! It’s my 21st birthday today, and what a great day it has been. I’ll admit, it’s not quite the same as it would’ve been with my long time friends from school and home, but how many times am I going to be able to surf for a couple hours on my birthday? I received some very gracious gifts from immediate relatives, I am totally surprised by their everlasting generosity, thank you so much! One thing I admire about moms and Grandmas is the fact that they’ve planned ahead enough to have a card delivered to whatever location by the time of the actual event - I need to learn this wise skill.
Well, the last couple weeks have been anything but dull. My friends came to visit from Georgia Tech, and unfortunately, brought some of the weather with them. When I picked them up, it was misting – the first form of precipitation I’ve seen since in California. Luckily, it cleared up the rest of the afternoon so we were able to enjoy some decent weather. On Saturday, like I previously mentioned, we went my company’s outing to the zoo, which was amazing. It had been a very long time since I last went to a zoo; my last visit was probably in elementary school to Columbia, South Carolina. We first toured the zoo by bus, with the driver giving us the inside information on all of the animals, as well as a couple stops for behind the scenes encounters. Feeding a giraffe was pretty cool, especially to see the food move down his neck. My favorite animal was the jaguar, he was huge! One cool thing about him was that, unlike most other large cats, he kills his prey by crushing skulls rather than going for the jugular. Apparently, the zoo keepers gave him a bowling ball to entertain him one evening, and the next morning they found the bowling ball broken into golf ball size chunks – some amazing power in those jaws. We had a special presentation before lunch in a private clubhouse with about four different animals, and then a full lunch buffet. Catherine and I ended up sitting at the table where the higher-ups from our company gathered, and I found myself entertaining them with stories of the Lexus event.
Following the zoo, Elicia and Hallie went to meet up with one of Elicia’s mom’s friends in La Jolla. As it turned out, the lady owned a condo in the only high rise in La Jolla, where she said she bought her pad for $600,000 in 1980. I can’t imagine what kind of money that place is worth today, but it has windows that run the length of the condo as well as windows that turn the corner and run the width of it on one side. It had a view of all of downtown La Jolla, Seal Beach, all of the beaches running north towards Torrey Pines, and all of the incredible mansions in between. She had a telescope that we used to check out some of the most amazing houses I have ever seen. Another interesting point from that visit was seeing her interest in petrified wood. She had multiple chunks and slabs of beautiful brown rock, with a marble-like texture. Some were table tops, others were just pieces to accent the room. She said she bought a two foot section of a tree for about $60,000, and she told her kids if they ever needed money bad to have it sliced into thin pieces and sell the pieces. Elicia and Hallie had the pleasure of staying there by themselves a couple of nights, what a treat!
In the weeks following my longboarding outing, I found that I had much more confidence on the shortboard too, and have been having a good bit more success in getting up than the first couple months. A recent change to one of our surfboards was the addition of a custom shaped mahogany fin for the oldest board. I tried to do some research on the board, but could only dig up the fact that the finbox on the board was from the late 60s, and a replacement for this specific fin box would cost $120 or more. So I modeled the fin (through a fairly complicated process) in a 3D modeling program at work, and sent my dad the file with some other drawings to give him the dimensions. His friend Tom Lang just happened to have some mahogany laying around (we needed a dense hardwood to make sure the fin would hold up to the stresses of surfing), although it wasn’t quite large enough to exactly follow my design, the fin turned out great. It’s got the vintage look that the board needs, thanks dad! I surfed on it yesterday and it tracks great.
The weekend following my Georgia Tech friends’ visit, Andrew (my roommate), Adam(summer ATA intern), Adam’s friend Stew, and I went to Fontana, California, to the California Motor Speedway for the ZoomZoomLive Mazda promotional driving event. It was tough getting up to get there by 8:45 am because we all had been to a Halloween party the night before until about 3:30 am. The event was fun but for some reason I just wasn’t as impressed as I was at last year’s event in Atlanta. I did manage to beat the target time on the Mazda Speed6 course and held the lead for the hour for a little while, until I was knocked off by a few hundredths of a second by Stew. He was the leader for most of the hour until a guy knocked him off by a few more hundredths. Afterwards, we went to one of Adam’s friend’s apartments in Santa Monica, then went to a USC Halloween party in Brentwood, just outside of Beverly Hills. I dressed the same as I had the night before, as Dog the Bounty Hunter. The kids’ house that we were at was redunkulous – it was the size of my parents’ house for just two rich college kids. Apparently, rich kids like this are a dime a dozen at USC (I guess that’s what comes with colleges that cost $40,000 a year).
The following weekend, I had another round of visitors – Laura Faires and April McNeely, some of my good amigas from high school. Their trip couldn’t have turned out better. They got here just after one of my indoor soccer games finished, I took them back to fresh out of the oven marinated chicken dinner, and then we hit the sack. The following morning, we went on a short hike in Torrey Pines State Park to see the unique trees (not incredibly impressive, but still a nice morning). Following that, we went to La Jolla and browsed some of the shops, checked out Seal Beach, and enjoyed the sunshine. We went to the Yardhouse downtown for dinner, which was amazing. Following the Yardhouse [which supposedly has the largest selection (240) of beer on tap in the world], we rounded up the rest of the co-ops and went to La Jolla Shores for a bonfire. I’d been wanting to have a bonfire on the beach since I got to California, and this weekend would bring two beach bonfires in two nights! The next morning, Laura, April, Andrew and I went to LA for the grand tour of Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Malibu, and all of that good stuff. I had only been in that area once before when Adam Rollins gave dad and I the tour, but it wasn’t too hard to navigate. I thought it was humorous to see how much stuff April and Laura bought from the UCLA bookstore just because it said UCLA on it. I was glad to find out after an hour of driving north through Malibu that I did indeed remember where Neptune’s Net was - everyone was really hungry and I wasn’t positive we were on the right track. Fortunately, we were rewarded by not only stuffing our mouths with some delicious seafood, but by an amazing sunset right on the beach. April said that it was the prettiest she had ever seen, and I would have to agree that it was up there. On the way home we stopped by Hollywood to try to see some of the weird people I had been telling them about, and we did see a few, but not as many as I had hoped. It was dark by that time, or else I would have taken them to Venice Beach where I saw all the weirdos. We made it back to San Diego by 11:30 pm, just in time to change clothes and head to Black’s Beach for a very unique event. Every full moon, a group of people gather on the beach to form a drum circle around a fire in celebration of the natural light. It was super foggy and we had to drive really slow to find a parking spot, but there were hundreds of people there. The hike down to the beach took about 15 minutes, only to find a huge hippie party at the bottom! A huge bon fire, tons of drums, people dancing (a few in the nude), fire jugglers – it was awesome! We soaked up the atmosphere for a couple hours and then went to hit the sack. Eric, Laura, and I cooked breakfast around 3 am, then Eric and I both got the chance to get a massage from an up and coming massage therapist. I’ve never had a Swedish massage before, but I think it did the trick because I can’t recall the later half of the experience because I was slipping in and out of consciousness.
Meanwhile, during the work week, I have been doing a number of different things for my job. The test setup of the payload adapter, that I designed, drew up, and assembled, was being utilized in the lab. We did a number of different kind of tests, including pushing and pulling on the payload adapter with up to 6000 pounds. Unfortunately, we didn’t take the actual part to failure because it managed to support three times more than it was designed to. I have been put on hold on my part of the project with Rocketplane Kistler on the NASA contract, but have been recently given a new assignment. I am now working on finite element modeling the body of two different kinds of antennas that are on the F-15 fighter planes. If you pull up a picture of one of these planes, you will see these little white domes on the ends of the wings – underneath those domes are the antennas that I am working with. It’s pretty neat to think that even though I work for an engineering firm that only has about 75 employees, I can still work on such great projects!
Last weekend, I went to Irvine to participate in a birthday celebration of one of the girls that I met in Spain (Leyla). It was great because for the first hour or so, the guy-girl ratio was like 1-15! On Saturday, Andrew and I went on a road biking expedition in some of the hills east of where we live. Apparently, we picked a good road because everyone that we saw driving was just cruising. On one of the windy down hills, I got up to 47 mph, it was exhilarating! Sunday, I kept busy by playing soccer at 8:30 am, heading straight to church, going for a couple hour hike, then biking to the beach to watch the sunset.
Thanksgiving break this year was full of fresh air and breathtaking views. I drove to Yosemite National Park after sitting in the armpit of California (LA) for 3 hours of slow traffic. Needless to say, after that frustrating experience, I was ready to get away from concrete and smog for quite some time. It couldn’t have turned out better, as I unknowingly set up camp at the campsite nearest Half Dome – one of the best known parts of Yosemite. Thursday morning, I started the day off with an 8 mile hike up to the Upper Yosemite Falls. The amazing thing about Yosemite is its unique landscape. These sheer rock walls go straight up out of the valley thousands of feet. I traveled in both directions afterwards and the scenery looks nothing like Yosemite Valley. By the end of the day, the park was teeming with people – lots of Asians and Indians – but not overcrowded by any means. I’m sure it’s going to be a zoo next summer when the rest of the family and I go to check it out again. One thing that I’ve noticed about traveling alone is the fact that you meet so many more people! Everyone that I passed on the trail was incredibly nice, one guy even gave me a cookie as I passed him during his rest. I got a really good vibe from the park overall. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the same things over and over. It was chilly at night, but I was camping next to the car and I was smart enough to bring an extra comforter to lay over the top of my sleeping bag. As I waited to be seated at one of the restaurants in the valley, I watched the NFL game in a nearby lounge and met a guy from Oakland who works with the Oakland Raiders. It was a bit lonely sitting at a table by myself, but looking at the unbelievable amount of stars made me forget about any loneliness I might have felt. I curled up and slept in my warm cocoon for much longer than I anticipated, making it at very relaxing Friday. I drove through the northern part of the park, which reminded me a lot of Yellowstone. I then drove south through Fresno and then into King’s Canyon National Park. I slept there on Friday night, and toured Sequoia National Park on Saturday. The trees in the mountains there are incredibly large. The main attraction of the park is the General Sherman Tree, which is the largest tree (by volume) in the world. On my way home, I stopped by Catherine’s house in Temecula for a movie. My trip to the mountains was a wonderful break from the concrete and traffic from the city life.
Hayley Rhodes (the girl who I traveled with after Spain) is coming out next weekend to visit for a few days. I’m hoping to get her to rent a longboard so maybe she and I can all surf together. The end of my fall out west is sneaking closer and closer every day, I’m going to make an effort to get to the beach as much as possible before it ends! I am looking forward to a busy break full of friends and family, it will be very nice to see everyone again. My plans for the Christmas holidays are as follows –
December 15th – fly from San Diego to Jacksonville
December 17th – run half marathon in Jacksonville in honor of my mom’s fight with breast cancer
December 22nd – drive to Michigan for Christmas
December 27th – return from Michigan
January 7th – Move in to Atlantic Station in Altanta
