The Saga of the Human Billboard and the Friendly Construction Workers

I'm in the midst of final exams. It's a time of the year I actually enjoy for its freedom of time management. For the most part, I can plan my day however I like. As long as my plan includes twelve hours of studying, that is. But it's nice anyway.

But I didn't start this blog to reminisce about the pleasantries of final exams, time to get down to business. There are two stories I would like to share with you today. The first consists of events which occurred two days ago while I walked back to my apartment from campus. I was approached by one of those advertisey people who hand you things you don't want. Mitch Hedberg says these people are implicitly saying to you, "Here, you throw this away." Sure enough, the guy who walked towards me, his face painted a menagerie of green and darker green, held out some coupons for a new kind of gum he was pushing. I was ready to keep walking, but he caught my attention by asking me if I wanted my face painted. I thought. Not particularly, I think is what I thought. But then he told me he would give me twenty dollars if he were allowed the pleasure of painting my face. I don't remember what happened after that, but I walked away with a face painted pink and a crisp twenty dollar bill in my hand. They also stuck a sticker on my forehead to complete my status as a human billboard. I went home and washed off the paint and put the sticker on my wall. I feel like I should have told them, I would have done a lot more for twenty dollars.

And now, on to the thrilling case of the friendly construction workers. So last night, I went to a running store and purchased a fancy new pair of running shoes so I can continue this battle between self-torture and rational thought I optimistically call determination. They had a foam roll in the corner. I was originally introduced to this training mechanism in London when I was part of the rugby team. You put the roll on the ground, then put a body part on it and roll back and forth. The theory is that you roll the knots out of your muscles or something like that, but I just know it feels really amazing. But the foam roll cost 25 dollars! Can you believe it? I decided not to buy one and instead search for a makeshift foam roller, like a piece of PVC pipe or something.

I went running this morning to test out my shoes and guess what I found? A big box of PVC pipes just laying on the sidewalk! They were with some other construction equipment, but I figured they were scraps. They were all slightly bent, but I thought I could at least find one which would roll well enough to work. I continued on my run, but stopped by the PVC cache on my way back to my apartment. There were some construction workers there this time, so I asked them if they were using the bent pieces of PVC pipe. They were, but they offered to cut me a straight piece of pipe from some longer sections nearby! It was a Christmas miracle! The guy who cut the piece for me asked me whether it was for a class project, and I told him it was for exercising. He said his doctor prescribed him the same thing to get rid of his "Planter fa-see-see." He also helpfully suggested they make good bongs. Just goes to show you, construction workers have a lot to offer the world.

No-Shave November

"Is that kid wearing a fur coat on his face?"
"Can he see out from behind that thing?"
"...Is there a bird living in there?" (Yes, there was.)
"He must have to blend all his food and suck it through a straw to get it into his mouth...."
"That man must be from OREGON."



These are just a few of the varied whispers which have followed me and my new beard around campus during the month of November. It has proven a noteworthy, if heavy, addition to my face and to the university as a whole.

The occasion for my brazen disregard towards facial tidiness is, of course, No-Shave November. In case you are unfamiliar with No-Shave November, it is a bi-annual celebration of all things beardly during which participants forgo shaving their facial hair for one month. And what a glorious, monumental, life-changing month it is. Believe me, I speak from a position of considerable expertise at the moment; a thick, healthy beard has the power to bring you up a few notches in the world. My first day with a beard, a local restaurant paid me to sit inside and eat their food all day (they posted record sales). On my fourth day with a beard, a woman stopped her car in the middle of a crowded intersection just to shake my hand. On my tenth day with a beard, the USC sorority houses had a bidding war over which group of ladies were to be permitted the honor of cleaning the lustrous locks on my countenance (it took fourteen bottles of shampoo). Nowadays, my face is so warm that I have to bring several water bottles to school in the morning just to replenish all the sweat emanating from my golden beard. But it's all worth it. My vivacious beard is the gift which keeps on giving. It saved a cat stuck in a tree last week, and I think the cat is still in there somewhere. Yesterday, I found twenty British pounds buried in it. Needless to say, I was a little confused: doesn't my beard know we're in America? But I think it's best not to ask questions. At this point, it accounts for about 40 percent of my total body mass, so I'd like to avoid any type of serious confrontation because, let's face it, it could get pretty hairy.

I think I've made it glaringly obvious by now that I don't have anything important to do tonight. I haven't written as often I would like to, but believe it or not, this nonsense takes time.

But life is good. Despite my pathetic attempt at facial hair, my days have been happy. School is going well. I'm looking forward to my big Thanksgiving trip, and can't wait for Christmas. Mom and Dad, I'll see you before you know it.

DA BEST BIRTHDAY EVAR!!!!!!!!!11!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!1

As indicated by the title, this post will be regarding my best birthday ever, namely the one which occurred yesterday at whatever time I was born 21 years ago. It will be difficult to write this post because my typical blog voice doesn't allow for any genuine emotion. I usually cast my experiences in such a way that I can deal with them from a standpoint of amused skepticism and flesh out the irony in my experiences. But since I really do think this was the best birthday ever, I am forced to alter my speaking voice for this post, so please don't be surprised if I write honestly and directly, instead of my typical style of circuitous cynicism.

This weekend, I went backpacking as a guide for my outdoor adventure group, SCOutfitters. We went to a mountain called San Gorgonio, the highest peak in Soutern California at 11-something. At least I think it's the highest. I guess it depends on what you consider Southern California. Anyway, it's not important. It was a mountain. Laurenne was planning to come visit, so on Friday night I drove to Union Station to pick her up. I called her and told her where I was, and as she walked over I got out of the car and gave her a big hug. We loaded her stuff into my trusty red truck and were about to leave when she pointed to a guy nearby wearing a hat, a big pair of sunglasses and a scarf pulled up over his face. I agreed he was a funny-looking guy, and got in the car, ready to go, as the guy walked slowly over towards me and stopped in front of me. I was apprehensive as I stared at him. In a moment I don't clearly remember, I reached up towards the scarf and pulled it down to see Nick's grizzled face smiling at me. I immediately jumped up and gave him a big hug, laughing and shaking my head as they explained that Nick decided to come down from the Bay Area for the weekend to come backpacking and help celebrate my birthday. I could not have been happier to see him, and will remember that happy, blurred moment of recognition for a long time.

I brought them back to my apartment and invited a few friends over for a small birthday gathering. It was a really spectacular night; I have a lot of very good friends here at USC. We splashed in the pool and played video games and had general good times. At one point I believe I climbed up on the roof. Near the end of the night, Jeff, Louie, Michael, Brian and I decided we needed some donuts from Spudnuts, a shop nearby. But I had a problem: Laurenne and Nick had already gone to bed in my room, and I didn't have any shoes. (It was a pretty weak argument. I'm pretty sure they weren't asleep. And my shoes might have been in the living room, I don't think I actually looked.) Nevertheless, no shoes. And so, in an act of fraternal love rarely seen outside of the Greek system, Jeff and the others offered to carry me the two blocks to Spudnuts on their backs. The trip there went pretty smoothly, though Jeff told me he has bruises on his body from carrying my heavy, pointy frame. We got to the donut shop, bought some donuts (pretty typical thing to do at a donut shop, actually) and continued on our way. Brian took a turn right off the bat, and I fed him some donut because I was very appreciative of his hard work, and then I was on Jeff's shoulders, and the details are a little bit blurry but I don't think it takes much of an imagination to figure out what happened next. That's right. A homeless man jumped out of the dumpster, grabbed my donut and ran off down the alley with an alacrity which, at the time, struck us as profoundly remarkable and rare to see from a dumpster-living man. No, that didn't happen, that's ridiculous. I fell off of Jeff's shoulders in the alley behind our apartment and scraped up my elbow. It's not fair to blame it on Jeff, I think I probably wanted to fall, or else I was too mentally weak to resist the obvious, captivating danger. Either way, I was bleeding on the ground in a filthy alley, laughing my head off and wielding a half-eaten donut, which miraculously endured the fall unscathed. Good night.

The backpacking trip was an experience. My good friends Louie and Emma signed up for the trip as participants. With them, Laurenne and Nick, the other two guides Simon and Warren, and Simon's girlfriend, I knew seven of the eleven other people on the trip. Obviously this contributed to my enjoyment of the trip, but I certainly don't think I was the only one who had a good time. Every person on the trip had a positive, upbeat attitude. It seems to me that people who like the outdoors tend to like each other. This has certainly been my experience with SCOutfitters thus far, and this trip was no exception. We had tentatively planned to summit the mountain, but for a few different reasons, this didn't happen. Instead we stayed up late playing Taboo and speaking truths in a very cramped tent late into the night, taking a nap in the morning after breakfast, and enjoying a leisurely hike down the mountain on Sunday. I don't think anyone had a problem with the situation, we were all just happy to be outdoors. Everyone got along really well and we were a tight-knit group. I'm proud to be part of the group which enables this to happen, and I hope to continue bringing this to USC in the future.

I forged new friendships with Ben, Hans, Chelsea and Christine, all of whom are very cool people I was glad to meet on the trip. I definitely strengthened my friendships with Louie and Emma during the night we spent together in a hot, steamy tent. Emma told us before we went to bed that she gets very cold and was willing to permit mild molestation in the night if it kept her warm. At one point Emma climbed in my sleeping bag and whispered "Happy Birthday," which holds a spot in my top five birthday presents, though I suspect she was more motivated by the cold than rampant sexual attraction. It must have been about two hours before dawn when we all realized none of us had slept more than twenty minutes the whole night, each staring at the roof of the tent thinking the others were asleep. It would have been funny if our neural receptors for humor weren't frosted over. We spooned for the rest of the night, periodically rotating to keep an even heat. And we promised nothing which happened that night would ever leave the tent (but I think there was a clause at the end about detailed blog entries being 'ok').

During this trip it once again became clear to me how special are my friendships with Nick and Laurenne. They are both astounding people; I feel lucky to know them. Their presence, their energy, was infectious for the whole group. I felt we were very attuned to each other, in our thoughts and in our actions. It is very rare to find such good friends. At times during their stay we were all involved in complex arguments about the nature of self and reality, and at other times we were throwing temper tantrums, or tackling each other. Their visit was unspeakably enjoyable, and relaxing, and just plain wonderful. Thanks, guys.

When I got back yesterday from the camping trip and reconnected with the world, I found I had an absurd amount of birthday greetings and I'm very lucky to have so many caring people in my life. I've gotten birthday cards in this godforsaken hellhole of a city (just kidding) from many members of my extended family, each of whom devoted time to making sure I had a good birthday and to let me know they were thinking of me. The quality and quantity of relationships in my life is truly astounding, and I am sincerely grateful to everyone who took some time out of their day to wish me happy birthday. I don't like to speak so honestly, so you better appreciate my thanks. I'm most thankful to my family, each of whom called me to check up and see how things were going. I had good conversations with all of them and am very lucky to have such a supportive family. My grandparents and Aunt Maxine all got in touch and let me know they were thinking of me. All in all, there was a lot of love thrown in my general direction, and I'm all covered in it now, and it feels nice.

Whew! That was quite a blog post. Very long. Very touchy-feely. Especially the part about Louie and Emma. Lots of touching and feeling. I need to do some work now. I'll try to write again soon.

The Inner Circle

My roommate Jeff works for the Daily Trojan, the on-campus newspaper. Over the past few weeks, he has shared with me glimpses of his access to the coveted inner circle of college football. As I mentioned earlier this year, I got to go to a football practice with him and hold the recorder in front of Matt Barkley while he talked about how relaxed and carefree he was about taking over the starting QB position. Yesterday, as I was climbing into bed around six pm, Jeff had a media conference call for an interview. I sat up as he punched in a secret password and was allowed access to the call, and listened in awe as he became quick friends with his interviewee Jahvid Best, the starting runningback for Cal. (The article from this interview ended up on the back cover of the Daily Trojan, with a picture. In color!) And today, he brought me the greatest gift of all: chicken wings from the football team's private catered dinner, served every Thursday before an away game.
Technically Jeff wasn't responsible for getting the leftovers. My other friend (yes, I have two) works as a manager for the football team, so he brought the food home and gave it to Jeff. Apparently each week a different senior gets to pick a pre-game meal for the team, and Taylor Mays chose chicken wings from Wing Stop. And now they're in my kitchen.
Hmmmm. When I say it like that, I feel a little bit creepy. I'm not trying to stalk the football team (though today I did see Pete Carroll parking his car. And I accidentally memorized his license plate number). But it just so happens I've had some cool connections with people and events which have made national news this year, and it's neat to be so close to the action and see things unfold. Especially when it's seen through that tiny grate above the racks for the shoulder pads in the football locker room. That's prime viewing area.

Respite

I made it! Four midterms later, I have the rest of the week ahead of me with no tests, no homework due, no responsibilities. No showers, no sleep, no laundry. No going to class! No brushing my teeth! NO LEARNING!

No, just kidding. It won't be all fun and games, but it is definitely a relief to be done with those tests. I celebrated by eating zucchini bread, peanut butter and an apple for dinner tonight. Every combination of those three foods was a winner.

As for my tests....Two of them went pretty well. One went kinda well. And the last one...let's not talk about the last one. But really, it was awful. I haven't gotten the score back yet, but I'm expecting the worst. But it's ok, I'll just study extra hard next time.

This weekend, I printed out a bunch of quotes and pictures and equations and random things, and taped them all around the apartment. It is my first (in my life, I think) concerted attempt at decoration. I've always kinda had the idea to tape quotes and things to my walls, but this idea was especially encouraged this year by my General Education course, in which we're discussing the significant impact your environment plays in the shaping of your personality, your character, your thoughts. Essentially, everything about you is shaped by the environment in which you live. And I don't just mean how much money you make or your geographical location, but every little thing with which you interact during the day, like a teacher or a television show you watch, or even a doorknob. It's important be be aware of what goes into your mind, otherwise you might not like what comes out. It was this idea which spurred the quote-taping. Some of my favorites:

"If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it."
"When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear."
"love the world you find"
"Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary."
"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."
And I taped Coulomb's Law and Gauss's Law onto my door under a picture of each of these physicists in order to help me remember these concepts. And because they're damn good-looking men.

Down to Business

Three midterms! I have three midterms in one day! It's ridiculous!

This Thursday, I have a materials science midterm at 8 am, which will cover four chapters in the book, analyzing different crystal structures, defects, diffusion rates and a whole bunch of other stuff I haven't studied yet. Later, at two, I have a midterm in dynamics which will be over some hardcore kinematics and Newton's Second Law applications. Finally, at five, I will have a physics midterm covering electric fields and Gaussian surfaces and some other stuff I'm about to start studying.

College is very busy, but I'm enjoying myself. Time is passing very quickly. I'm sorry I don't have time to write as much as I would like. But I brought some pictures to show. They are of the banana bread we made the other day, and a meal I had a couple days ago which was really big, and the pool this morning at seven when I got up to go running. It was very foggy and eerie, so I took a picture.

Back to School

My computer is broken at the moment. I don't know how it happened, but I can't boot up into Windows Vista. Luckily, I can access a Rescue and Recovery section, which allows me to access the internet, but not to use any applications, so I have limited abilities. I can get to my email, I can't get to Facebook, and apparently I can write blogs. I called Lenovo Support yesterday and ordered a Recovery CD for 50 bucks. It should be here sometime this week, and hopefully it will fix my computer.

I haven't blogged in a very long time! There have been plenty of things I wanted to write about since I've been at school, but I simply haven't had the time. I'm happy to be back going to class and apparently doing something with my life, but it does make it more difficult to do the things I like, such as keep in touch with friends and practice my many hobbies.

Anyway, school is going well. I'm in five classes: four are engineering courses, and the fifth is a general education requirement. I like all my teachers, and the workload is not as heavy as I expected for this type of schedule. Typically, I have homework due once per week for every class, and the material has all been within my grasp so far. Time has passed quickly; it always seems to when I'm at school. I have two midterms next week! It is definitely hard to believe, but I've already been here for over three weeks and am well into the semester.

My living arrangement is very good. My roommates and I get along very well. Jeff and I were worried about the roommate assigned to live with us this year by random selection, but we definitely lucked out. Our third roommate, Moises, is a very cool, friendly guy who has taken on more than his fair share in keeping the apartment clean. We couldn't have asked for a better roommate. And the pool! We have a pool! I can't upload any pictures right now or my computer might explode, so you'll have to trust me when I say the pool is the size of a football field and forty feet deep. That might not be technically true. But it definitely fits into the category of 'pool' rather than 'bathtub' or 'puddle.' I've swam in it almost every day since getting to school. It has been great for making friends, since it provides a reason to hang out in the common area in our apartment complex, and we've had a couple parties in which it has played an integral part. Our apartment complex (called Stardust, I should have mentioned. Isn't that a weird name for an apartment complex? Especially one that's not imaginary?) is very close to Figueroa, a busy, commercial street lined with tons of fast food restaurants and businesses. I live just down the street from a Bank of America, where I can closely monitor my plummeting bank balance, and one of my favorite restaurants, Pasta Roma, where I can buy a twenty-dollar pizza to assuage my monetary woes. It's a pretty great setup. The only downside is our distance from campus: probably a fifteen-minute walk. I've learned how to ride my longboard enough to get to class and back without any major head trauma or other fatal injuries, so it takes me about seven minutes to get to campus.

The longboard was a good purchase overall. It looks very nice when I walk around campus cradling it in my arm when I'm too frightened to try to ride it any more, and on those occasions that I do ride it, I can feel it is a benevolent spirit and doesn't really want to throw me at the ground. But throw it does. For a couple of reasons: the trucks are very narrow, making it super tippy and difficult to balance, and the wheels are a bit smaller than normal longboard wheels, so it hits bumps in the sidewalk pretty often and stops in its tracks. It did this most notably a few days ago while I was with my friend Louie. He said I flopped like a fish as I hit the ground. I wasn't very scratched up though, which, as engineers, we attributed to the fact that a large surface area of my body struck the ground all at once, preventing the force from concentrating at any one point. Thank heavens for that. I'll stick it out with the longboard until I can afford to buy something better. I would like to stick with boarding, but I think I want to get a regular skateboard, rather than a longboard. That way, I can jump over curbs and stuff instead of stopping to get off and lift my board onto the sidewalk. I've seen guys ollie the curb, and they are by far the coolest guys on campus.

My roommates and I made banana bread yesterday. It turned out really good, and I don't know why. I really expected to mess it up, but it tasted delicious, so I'm going to try again today and see if I can't achieve more typical results.

I'm running out of money, as I mentioned before, so I think I'm going to return to my old job setting up banquets at the University Club. It pays pretty well and I get a free meal every time I work.

I'm joining the Marathon Team.

The SC Outfitters trip to Sequoia a couple weeks ago was really fun. The first day we learned a bunch of handy stuff about tying knots and reading a topographical map. A few of the guides are trained as Wilderness First Responders, and they want us all to go to a camp over Winter Break so we can become WFRs (called Woofers) too. The second day, we went on a 14-mile hike to the summit of Alta Peak at 11,204 feet. On the way up, we found an abandoned campfire smoldering on the side of the trail. It was on top of a ridge, in sunlight. I think if we had left it, the wind would have picked up in the afternoon and it could have ignited a fire in the dense forest below. We stayed there for about 45 minutes to mop it up. It was a good opportunity for me to share my knowledge with the group. I gave a short talk about how it's not enough to bury your fire, since that doesn't put it out, and how holdovers can last for a very long time. Since we didn't have enough water to spare on the fire, we each had to pee on it in order to extinguish it as much as possible. I peed on it first, then mixed it around, and spread it out to let some heat escape. Ten minutes later, we pushed it all back together, and peed on it some more, and spread it out again until there were no smokes left. I didn't feel completely comfortable leaving it there, but it was right near the path, which was pretty busy with hikers, so we figured they would help out if it sparked back up again. On the way down, there were no smokes again, so I think we did a pretty good job.

I've become a weekday vegetarian this year. I want to feel lighter (not necessarily be lighter) for climbing and running and general health, so I've decided to only eat meat on the weekends. Or special occasions, like when we go out to dinner. Or when I have some pizza left over from the weekend which has meat on it, like today. I'm the worst vegetarian ever.

Yesterday, I went out to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market with a friend of mine. We ran on the beach and shopped for produce. It was a pretty splendid time. We also wanted to adopt a dog, but neither of our apartments allow pets. We are both super bummed.

I'm continuing my work with Professor Stephen Lu on the World Classroom and iPodium this semester, and applied for a 1500 dollar research fellowship to continue this work. I'm excited to see it get off the ground, and I think I am part of a pretty strong team to make this happen. I'll tell you more about it later.

I think this is a pretty long blog. I'll tell you about the rest of my life at a later date and time.

Football Practice

My first week of school has been quite enjoyable. My professors all seem very nice, I have had almost no homework, and I have a swimming pool in my apartment complex. Life is good.

Today, I went with my roommate Jeff to the USC football practice. I was curious to see the practice of such an elite team, and since I was on Jeff's journalism squad, I was allowed entrance to the field. I was struck by how similar the practice was to those of my high school. Granted, our defensive ends couldn't crush rocks with their bare hands, but the structure of the practice, and even the guidelines the coaches yelled at their players were very familiar. I really miss the game.

After the practice was over, we rushed in with all the other journalists to speak with Matt Barkley, a freshman who was recently named the starting quarterback over sophomore Chris Corp. As we walked over, some of the other players tried to tell us they were actually the new starting QB, and the D-line broke for the locker room on a chant of, "Leave Barkley alone!" Nevertheless, he was surrounded four or five deep with pushy reporters. I held the recorder and got jostled by other perturbed reporters trying to get in on the action. It was interesting to be in such a locus of national attention.

We went to speak with Pete Carroll afterward, and Jeff was able to ask him a few questions himself, which was pretty neat. Pete's a very nice guy. He was taking pictures with people and signing things for a long time after practice ended. We also talked to a wide receiver about his thoughts on Matt Barkley. All in all, it was a pretty raucous good time.

South Sister

I climbed the South Sister up near Bend, Oregon, yesterday with my uncle and cousin and a bunch of other people, continuing my quest to climb every semi-difficult peak within a reasonable distance from my home. I think it and McLoughlin were the only two which fit that criteria. So I'm done, I guess.

It was a fun climb though. We woke up at four in the morning after carbo loading the night before with Katie, a girl my Uncle John works with at Les Schwab. We packed up all our stuff (except my turkey sandwich, which I left in the fridge on accident) and drove to a parking lot, where we met everyone else coming on the hike. John said he thought ten people would show, at most. We ended up with sixteen in the parking lot, a huge group. One of the other hikers had invited a few people, who had invited a few other people, and we had sixteen when it was all said and done (and a dog, who will play an important part in our story later on).

We got on the trail around six thirty or seven, and about a mile in one of our hikers decided to turn around. She had been battling the flu all week and didn't quite feel up to it. The rest of us carried on, eventually splitting into smaller groups. I hiked with Uncle John and Sean most of the way, responsibly bringing up the rear. The hike began in a rich forest which gradually petered out into rock and snow. We three stopped near the treeline to take a drink of John's patented energy mix, called Full Blown Extreme. We couldn't keep from laughing about the name every time it came up, but after drinking some of it the hike definitely got easier. Mostly because the unicorns bounding across the snow and the blood vessels bursting in my eyes were distracting me from the pain in my legs.

After a long scramble over loose rock, we finally climbed into the caldera on top of the mountain. South Sister is an active volcano, growing by some ridiculous amount of millimeters per year, and the caldera on top definitely supported its status as a volcano. The trail led us around the caldera about halfway to the real peak of the mountain at 10,358 feet. Woohoo! We took some pictures and had lunch with our group.

The hike down wasn't too eventful, aside from the various aches and pains which began presenting themselves as the day wore on, most notably the chafing. Uncle John calls the trail the "Howdy-Hi trail" because there are so many people, and we certainly greeted plenty of people. Sean and I told everyone we met they were almost there, even the ones at the trailhead. I think they appreciated the gesture.

Near the top of the mountain, there is a large glacier off to one side of the trail called the Lewis Glacier. I decided I would slide down it. I jumped off the path and ran down onto the snow. As I ran and slid, I was sure to steer clear of man-eating crevasses, of which I saw at least one. The snow wasn't great for sliding. I kept running and sliding, but I would eventually slow to a stop. After about two hundred yards I reached the bottom of the glacier and climbed back up to the trail. Immediately some cool hiker dudes asked me, "Was that as fun as it looked!?" Several more greetings along the lines of "Righteous, dude!" and "Sick moves, man!" followed. When Uncle John caught up, he told me it was a pretty dangerous move, and repeated what my football coach told me once, that I'm the dumbest 4.0 student he's ever met. It's a title I wear with pride. Apparently my other uncle, John's brother, Dan, did a similar move once and ended up spending the night up on the mountain with his friend, who fell into a crevasse and broke his leg. I'm glad I didn't know that before I ran down the glacier.

Sean and I made it down the mountain at about the same time. We jogged many of the steep parts. It's easier and faster to let gravity do the work rather than resist with every step. We waited for about ten minutes, and Uncle John and Sean's uncle, Carlos, showed up together. We all got a drink from the cooler and sat around waiting for the rest of the group and talking. I walked into a nearby lake.

We realized after about a half hour at the bottom that there might be a problem with a couple of the girls with whom we were hiking. They were the first on top, but everyone else had reached the bottom and they were nowhere in sight. Uncle John called them and discovered that their dog was refusing to walk any further. The rocks must have been really hard on his feet at the top, and he was really hot. John organized a rescue party and headed back up the mountain.

I'm not sure what happened up there because Sean and I were asleep in the car. But the smell of John's shirt corroborated his story of carrying the seventy-pound dog, with Carlos, for over a mile down the trail. The girls were very happy for his help and immediately rushed the dog off for emergency veterinary care. If such a thing exists, we're not really sure.

So all in all, the trip was a huge success and I'm very grateful to Uncle John for taking me up with him. The hike was 11 miles roundtrip, with a 4900 foot elevation gain. So that's 9800 feet elevation gain roundtrip. Pretty serious stuff.

Fanny Pack

Laurenne, I need pictures of your glorious fanny. Pack.

This is a post regarding an excellent creation of mine. Over the past three weeks, I have been hard at work knitting a fanny pack out of recycled plastic bags brought home from England. I completed it on the train ride to Utah, and gave it to Laurenne amid jubilant, crazed yells of appreciation and adoration for my extreme knitting talent and creativity.

First, I had to make the yarn. I took a plastic grocery bag, and folded it twice so it was layered four times. Then I cut off the bottom seam and cut the bag into one inch strips until I reached the handles, which I threw away. After I had these strips, I looped them together and voila, I had plastic yarn.

My mom had to teach me how to knit. I know, it's embarrassing that I didn't know how to knit, but now I do. I practiced a bit on real yarn, then got to work on the bag, my work loosely based on a paper prototype I made. The knitting took a long time. As I finished the first couple sections, I hand-stitched them together using a needle I fashioned out of a plastic fork. I finished all the pieces and assembled the bag on the train, then, using a nail I found in the garage, I poked holes into the fabric around the zipper I found in my mom's sewing machine and attached it to the bag. Then I put some straps on the back, and put my homemade belt through the loops, and I was done!

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the fanny pack before I gave it to Laurenne. She gave me a hat a year ago, so I figured I better pay her back. It's a nice hat, maybe I should put a picture of it on here.

I still can't really believe that I knitted a fanny pack. I'm not really sure how to think about it. Is it really, unbearably cool? Was it fun? Does it mean I'm a grandma? Will I do it again? Is this my career? Will this spark the biggest movement in fashion since leg warmers came back into style? These are questions I just can't answer right now.

The End of Utah

Blogging is hard work! I haven't had a chance yet to debrief the rest of my trip to Utah, and I can hardly remember it by now, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Laurenne took me to the Center of Excellence one day, the training facility for the US Ski Team. She said it cost 30 million dollars. She gave me a tour of everything, from the weight room to the basketball court to the skate park to the kitchen to the pool room....I might have gone a little out of order there. In the skate park, they had a basin full of blue foam cubes which you could jump into or crash into when you're doing a gnarly move, which I thought was pretty cool. It was fun to see a lot of people I had met working out in there.

Laurenne had to take a ten-minute ice bath, so I sat with her and got to meet Ted Ligety, an Olympic gold medalist. He owns a company called Shred, which makes helmets and goggles and sunglasses and such. He seemed like a pretty cool guy.

Let's see, I remember doing some rock climbing too. Perilous rock climbing. I led a couple of 5.9s, and the first was kinda pumpy because I got lost off the first arete because I didn't have any beta, but I sent it after all. (Sweet rock climbing talk, huh?) The place we climbed was above a freeway, so the speeding cars added to the danger.

The trip home was pretty fun. We stopped at some salt flats, and saw where Morton salt is made. There were huge cones of salt, probably fifty feet tall, just sitting in the desert outside of the factory. We saw a really strange tree sculpture too, which was guarded with a barbed-wire fence. Very strange.

Laurenne was really annoying on the way home. I had to punch her a few times and tell her to shut up over and over again. No, that's not true. I only had to punch her once, because I punch really hard.

Cliff Jumping

I really should have considered what I was getting myself into when I decided to come visit Laurenne. The father of one of the other girls in the house is visiting, and he said he can’t appreciate a sport unless it’s possible to kill yourself participating in it. This seems to be the consensus on fun things around here.

We jumped off cliffs into a lake yesterday. Big cliffs. I think the biggest was about sixty feet off of the water. Birds were flying about thirty feet lower than our jumping platform. It was pretty terrifying, but also really fun. It was ridiculous how fast you fell before you hit the water, which is like concrete from that high up. I accidentally forgot to do the "pencil move" as I entered the water once and slapped my forearms on the surface. I have marks on my forearms today, but it was worth it. I jumped three or four times from about sixty feet, and jumped off of some smaller platforms. It was a pretty cool spot because we could jump into the water, turn around and do some rock climbing on the face of the rock we just jumped off. My rear end is a little sore today, but other than that I came to no harm.

Yesterday evening we went to a barbecue at Lindsey Vaughn’s house, a World Cup skier. I don’t know anything about ski racing, but she had several trophies in her downstairs room, so I think she’s a badass. The party was fun, a lot of cool people. Afterwards there was an informal dance party at Laurenne’s house which turned into a golf-course-streaking, drinking-game, indoor-climbing party. As far as impromptu dance parties which turn into other parties go, it was pretty solid.

I’m having a very splendid time. Laurenne’s friends are really friendly and fun, and I’m really glad I came to visit.

SAC to SLC

This should have been posted a couple days ago. My bad.

I’m finally in Utah, after thirty hours of travel.

My second train trip was…unique. A woman traveling with three kids sat in the row in front of me, and I soon got to know the kids very well. By the end of the trip (at four in the morning) they were climbing all over me trying to hit each other, while I did my best to break it up and remain uninjured in the process. I was glad to meet them; they kept the trip very exciting. The train, I decided, is fun because you get to forge some relationships while you travel. The man sitting next to me was a Vietnam veteran on a mission to visit all fifty states. The trip was very beautiful too, riding through the Sierra Nevadas. We had a tour guide for this part of the journey who explained several landmarks as we traveled past them at peak train speed, which was about forty miles per hour. The train was certainly an adventure though, I'm glad I took it.

Laurenne picked me up from the train station at six in the morning. I slept for six hours at her house. With her friend Tommy, we did some rock climbing today in the Upper Cottonwood region. It was a very beautiful spot in the Wasatch mountain range (I think) and the rock was different than anything I've climbed on before.

KFS to SAC

This week, I once again find myself doing something fun and feel compelled to share it with everyone on the Interweb. I’m on my way to Utah to hang out with my friend Laurenne, riding the train from Klamath Falls to Sacramento to Salt Lake City over the course of thirty hours. At the moment, I’m sitting in the Amtrak station in Sacramento. It’s too cold to go outside and explore right now. As much as I’d like to avoid contemplating the traumatizing train ride I just endured from Klamath Falls without the professional help of a therapist and a chiropractor, I will recount my experiences so we can all wallow in mutually foul moods.

Luckily, the train was late departing Klamath Falls or I would have missed it. I was having too much fun down at the Creamery to pay much attention to the time, and when I got home to prepare to leave it was already 9:30 pm. The train was scheduled to leave at 10:00 pm. I showered as fast as I could and packed up some things I had been saving for the last minute so the trip would be more exciting, and Dad took me down to the train station at 10:05 pm. The train showed up at 10:30 and, after being assigned a seat on the top deck of the two-level train, I climbed on.

I sat next to a kid from Mazama named Eric. He was pretty shy, but we talked for a little while before both trying to fall asleep. Trying to fall asleep in that seat was like trying to make a basket in one of those carnival games where the hoop is smaller than the ball. I gave it a couple stabs, sitting this way and that way, stretching out my legs until I was sliding out of the seat, curling my legs underneath me like a chicken. Eventually I figured out some of the little tricks, like the foot rest I discovered hiding underneath the seat in front of me, and I started wearing both my jackets, one over my legs and one over my head, in order to block out the cold and the light, but let’s face it: the basketball was bigger than the hoop, and no amount of fidgeting in my seat was going to win that ridiculously huge stuffed panda hanging in the smoke cloud above the drugged-up carnie. Eventually, after making all the right adjustments and using the Styrofoam pillow the train so graciously loaned me, I found the perfect sleeping position; that is to say, the basketball was perched in the center of the rim, clearly too big to fall into the folds of the sleepy net below.

After reaching this fateful realization, I began to take more rash shots at the hoop, trying to bend it to my will or otherwise just trying to pass the time, because I really didn’t have anything better to do at three in the morning on a train in the middle of northern California. I tried to sleep with my head between my knees, and with my arms tied into knots. I think I may have spooned Eric for a few minutes. Sorry, man. In the end, nothing worked very well and I resigned to accept that the carnie had won this round. They seem to win every round. Which leads me to an important life lesson which I hope to pass on to my kids someday: If you want to be a winner, become a carnie.

Mother's Day Quilt

It is now time to tell the tale of the Mother's Day Quilt, one of my greatest creations, perhaps on par with my novel or my homemade harp. It is a sad, dreary tale which involves false hopes, deceptions, and the unconquerable virtue of a brand new quilt.

It was April 2008, and I had dedicated myself to finding the perfect Mother's Day present. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I recruited my friend Colin to help me scour the dirty streets of the city for some object of such unfettered beauty that it deserved nothing less than my mother's possession.

I remember it was sunny that day; as many a day was in that neck of the woods. We were soon sweating in my red pickup truck, and looked all the more feverishly for an appropriate gift. Driving through the textiles section of the hellish city I must call home for well nigh two more years, I stumbled across the winning idea in a euphoric stupor of heat-induced intuition. My mother and I would make a quilt together!

I parked my car quickly and lost no time in diving into the collections of the LA textilers. The fabrics I found there are too numerous and too graphic to dwell on; I can only say that the image of one particularly graphic fabric pattern involving a shoe horn, a Tanzanian chimpanzee and a 1973 Chevrolet Corvette will reside, unwanted, in my mind for some time to come, taking up residence in that sector only frequented by irrational terrors and the ghoulish spectres of the night. We shan't dwell on these terrors now. For in that forgotten district of cotton, polyester and Vietnamese salespeople, I found several fabrics to my liking: a print of dancing elephants, a collage of cowboys and bulls, a phantasmagoria of dinosaurs, some beautiful roses, one fabric emblazoned with USC, and a spread showing various cities and landmarks along the iconic Highway 1 up the California coast. Elated to find so many appropriate fabric patterns, I rushed home to my dormitory, eagerly awaiting my return home to present my gift to my mother.

Time passed slowly. Exams weighed upon my soul, and it was only the occasional fleeting glimpse I could spare for my exceptional Mother's Day gift, but eventually it was time to go back home. I remember the moment vividly: I walked through our solid oak front door and marched up the stairs into my mother's waiting arms. In her eyes I could see the genuine happiness engendered by my return, but also something more; a longing, a desire perhaps, for the perfect Mother's Day gift; and upon discerning this inner restlessness, I knew the gift could wait no longer. I backed out of my mother's embrace and, with a gallant flourish of my hand, whipped the blue plastic bag of fabric from my luggage and placed it into my mother's waiting arms. I stood back.

She opened the bag. "Fabric? What is this for?" she asked.
"We're going to make a quilt together!" I exclaimed jubilantly, expecting to hear her elated whooping in a short time to come. But the elated whooping did not come.
She paused. "Do you know how much work it is to make a quilt?" she said.
"Well...is it a lot of work?" I asked, my smile fading.
"Yes. It is a lot of work."
A pause.
"Uh....Welp, guess we better get started!"

I designed the quilt over the next few days and began cutting fabric for the blocks. The quilt was to be huge: 85 by 85 inches, in order to cover my lengthy frame. I worked on the quilt day and night for one summer, and finished half of it before leaving for school in the fall. My mother finished the other half over the next few months, and now I have a quilt which I made all by myself! It is, no doubt, the best Mother's Day present I have ever given myself. And my mom was a very good sport about it. You know, I really fancy that mom of mine.

The Goodwill Car Thief

This is a story of an unfortunate event which occurred to me earlier this summer.

It was the day before my little brother's birthday and I was desperate for a present which would tell him exactly how I felt about him. Naturally, my first destination was the local Goodwill (you know, the one out by Wal-Mart on Washburn Way). On my way there, I called him to probe for ideas. I was very discreet.

"Do you want a blender?"
"No."
"Are you sure? They're pretty handy."
"Ya, I'm sure. Don't get me a blender."
"...I think I'm going to buy you a blender."

And with Jeff's blessing, I was off to do my shopping. I arrived in the parking lot of the fine establishment, parked my car (naturally, as I was in a lot dedicated to that sort of thing), locked it, and went inside.

I shopped vigorously for fifteen minutes or so, trying on various undergarments and headcoverings before finally admitting there was nothing there to complement my wardrobe and moved off to search for Jeff's blender. Alas, the worthy store failed me on this count, as well, offering nothing which would have suited my brother's fancy. Thoroughly depressed, I walked away from the Home Appliances and exited.

My first inkling of trepidation came as I reached my hand into my pocket to fish out my keys and it met nothing but the silky interior of my left pocket (which is where I always keep my keys. Right front is for the cell phone. Left back is for my wallet. And pencils, when they enter into the equation, accompany the keys in the left front.) Not yet conceding victory, I reached for my wallet, intending to use the spare I always kept there. But alas! I had switched wallets recently, and the key I had concealed was not a key for my Mazda pickup, but a house key.

I was worried. I was about to call my father for a ride when I realized that two years of higher education and several years of not-so-high education must have endowed me with, if nothing else, the skills to break into a '93 pickup. I immediately started pacing around the car, looking for a way in. In the interest of the continued safety of my car, I will not share the startling security inadequacies yielded by its first intense perusal. At any rate, none of these loopholes, even the glimpse of light and a Gatorade bottle through a small hole behind the battery, yielded entrance to the truck. I stood back to think.

And then I realized that Klamath Falls had been quietly supplying me with hundreds of ways to break into my own car by giving its most-outdated, least-prized and most-smelly possessions to the Goodwill for years. I turned to the now-muchly-appreciated trash trove behind me and dove in.

Ten minutes and three ill-fitting undergarments later, I returned to my truck with a set of two steak skewers. Total cost: one dollar. I lost no time in bending the tines of one skewer and shoving my arm through the 3-inch crack in the window. Five minutes and three numb fingers later, I pulled the lock up on my door and yelled for joy. I can honestly say it was one of the best moments of my life, and I look forward to doing it again. It's so rare to feel a real swell of accomplishment, to know that you've finally managed to do something which really matters in the grand scheme of things.

I had to go to Wal-Mart to get the blender.

Dirt Trough

This blog is meant to be the place I talk about the cool things that are going on with me, kinda like the one I had while at Queen Mary, but I also want to focus on some of the stuff I make with all my free time that no one ever gets to appreciate, and that's just a travesty.

The other day I made a dirt trough for Ariston's birthday. It was like a dirt cup, but made with two packets of Jello Pudding (which is WAY too much pudding, by the way) and placed in a ceramic brownie pan. We ended up finishing roughly one quarter of the total trough that night, and over the last three days I have cleaned out the rest of it in diligent, regular intervals of stuffing my face full of pudding, Oreo and gummy worm.

See? This is something people need to know about.

27 Dollars

An amazing thing happened today; just the sort of thing I need to tell the world about. My mom came to me as I was perched in front of my computer (executing a very important business transaction, no doubt) and told me she had a surprise. I followed her into her sewing room and she presented me with a round blue tin with pictures of geese on it. The tin recalled memories of my childhood, a simpler time when men were men and goose tins were goose tins. Slowly, under the expectant gaze of my mother, I peeled off the lid and pulled out...27 dollars!

Apparently little Kevin had asked Mom to keep this money safe for him so he wouldn't spend it on anything frivolous, as small children are likely to do. I was such a genius. If I hadn't given my mom that money, it would have surely been blown on the latest fad, something I was crazy about one day and would forget about the next. Nope, I was smarter than that, leaving the money in the trusted hands of my older self. And I already know what I'm going to spend it on: slacklining gear! I was introduced to the sport of slacklining yesterday, and already I'm in love with it, which should tell you a little something about how awesome it is, if I was able to reach this magnitude of love (at a rough guess, I'm experiencing a love level of 93.42 angstroms) in such a short amount of time.

I'm so glad I didn't fritter this money away when I was young. Now I can spend it on something really worthwhile.

Bloggin'

Well I couldn't keep myself away.

This is my new blog, where I will share my life in all its glory with any interested party (mainly my mother and my grandma).

Stand by for life-changing posts.