i guess it was a good weekend to leave town... though the traffic getting out of l.a. was ludicrous, returning to work today as the only person with a new suntan(burn) made it all worthwhile...

spent the weekend in blythe, a small city sitting on the colorado river. wakeboarded, jetskied (the STAND-UP kind, not those sissy sea-do deals...) and just floated down-river for 3 days. it got up to around 105 degrees, which isn't bad when there's a bunch of water nearby, and eons better than the bland mid-60's and cloudy most of southern california had all weekend. i heard it actually sprinkled... (and i write that with a wide grin...)

anyways, wakeboarding was great. another activity that i've been toying with for a few years. getting pretty decent at it too.. a lot can be said about jumping the boat's wake smoothly.. i've jet-skied even less, but enjoy it if not only for how difficult it is... lotta balance/agility issues all over that deal. and we river-floated.. a few times.. start at one place, and just let the current do all the work. quite relaxing (when other boats or sea-do's weren't buzzing the area) and compltely full of skin-cancer potential..

hopefully gonna ride tonite and tomorrow nite.. we shall see. lotta stuff going on, seems like, in my neck of the woods...

all that really matters, though, is that there's yet another trip planned to gordon biersch, tomorrow, and i get to introduce a bunch of friends to my eating domain...

another crazy weekend...

back out to the trails both saturday and sunday. rode crenshaw again saturday, and reluctantly realized that it's just too overgrown to enjoy the ride. found yet another pretty difficult trail, roughly parallel to 'slow or die,' and had a good time nonetheless... sunday i rode chumash, one of last season's favorites and another in the rocky peak area. to get to it, it's a pretty grueling 4 mile ride on a fireroad, 90% of which is uphill...

once you make it to the top, relax a little bit, and enjoy the view. ride another half mile, keeping a look out for the wooden pole signifying the start of chumash. break left, hit the trail, and you're treated with one of the best varied downhill singletracks in l.a. the first third is mildly technical, half-buried builder hopping and dropoffs, the middle third is a rolling rollercoaster ride along the edge of a cliff and between the hills, and the last third is all high speed. managed to hit 28.8 mph on that last section of singletrack, before it dumps out onto another fireroad to a residential street.

it really doesn't get better than flying down singletrack at 29mph. enough said.

additionally, i managed to get to gordon biersch both saturday and sunday nites (first-time visit to the one in orange, and then out to my regular location, in burbank).

next weekend: heading out to the river (the colorado, that is..) for a 3 day wakeboarding trip. can't wait. noon friday, and all bets are off.

an evening at tokyo delves is one of the better ways to start a week dept...

yeah, i said i would go, but that i wouldn't dance. i wouldn't stand up on those lame chairs when the rest of creation (or the rest of the people in the restaurant, whichever comes first) stood up on THEIR lame chairs and made themselves out to be fools. that i wouldn't get all excited about the 'lucky lamp.' that i would just go, hang out, and have a good time.
well, that almost lasted 5 minutes... oh well.. i didn't look like too much of a fool, so i hear. but i did have a great time. another one of those "good sushi, good sake, and good friends" kinda deals.

and no, i didn't win the lucky lamp. but i did come to work with a deep, scratchy voice from yelling so much.... such is life...

rock on.

the good ol' days are back! andy and i rode crenshaw last nite, something we used to do weekly (BEFORE he got married.. (just kidding, meg...)). when we ride together, we tend to push each other a bit, and ended up riding a trail that we hadn't attempted in a long time. and yeah, this time i crashed.

which was cool. it was a good spill, by the way. i'm sure you would have enjoyed it. caught an edge, handlebars locked left, i was thrown right, and landed off the side of the trail in a big bush-type-deal. not a bad fall, though my elbow did graze a boulder pretty good on my way down. a good friend of mine, with much medical experience, said it might be good to get some stitches... stitches? who needs stitches when you can use bandaids? besides, you get a longer lasting scar without those pesky stitches...

new wounds, more scratches on the bike, and another memory with meadors and i hitting 20-23mph on singletrack...

so, the weather's been nice, i've actually have some travel-free weekends and besides climbing couldn't wait to get my bike back on the dirt. rode crenshaw last thursday, and managed to get out to an old favorite called hummingbird near rocky peak on saturday. the trails were in great shape (though i'm not..) and it was good to be bombing down some quality soCal singletrack again. at left, my truck and my bike, parked at the rocky peak trailhead (trail begins behind the sign, upper-left).

crenshaw was fun because it was almost too overgrown to ride... blasting through some 3 foot wide singletrack, with 6 foot mustard and 'licorice' plants slapping your arms and legs... made the trail tough to see at times, but it made things just that much more interesting. hummingbird was a great time just for sheer memories' sake. used to hit that trail along with chumash every week or so last summer. menacing climb, a rich downhill including an eye-twitching 6 foot dropoff, and a steady 2 mile street climb back to the trailhead.

no crashes yet, but only pushing 80-85%... we'll see what happens when i go 95%.. guess it's about time for a good wipeout story accompanied by a tasty scar. you'll be the first to know...

finally checked out the much-hailed stoney point climbing area this past saturday, with my old roommate andy and another climbing friend josh... even more walls/boulders/routes than malibu, but it's pretty much all top-rope (no lead-climbing, where you bolt in as you go up..). great day, some good routes, and received my first sunburn of the year (that's always a good sign- summer's coming!)

yeah, and i threw up some shots over there... me, with the first climbing route behind me. me on the wall (thanks andy, for that intense action shot of me chalking up... sheesh...). and me, completing the ascent.. first route was rather easy, but it had been almost 2 months since i've been on a rock.... so...

anyways, great day... hope to get to the rock gym maybe tonite and then back out in the real rock this saturday once again...