Published on Thursday March 25, 2004 .
Appropriately enough, I hit 10,000 miles while on the San Mateo bridge. Here are some statistcs:
- I've paid $832 for 444.448 gallons of gas.
- I've gotten gas 28 times.
- I've averaged 22.687 mpg.
- I averaged 70.9 miles a day, which is pretty much right, given that I live exactly 35 miles from my office.
- At this rate, I should hit 20,000 in mid-August -- two months before I've even had the car for a year. But there won't be any snowboarding trips to drive my total up, so hopefully I won't make it to 20,000 before one year.
- Clearly I need a job where I don't have to drive to work, so I don't get a guilt trip every time I get in my car.
Published on Thursday March 18, 2004 .
One night last week, I came home to find I had what was clearly an envelope containing a check from the State of California waiting for me in the mail. For a minute I was really confused, wondering if it was a really late tax refund or something. But upon opening the envelope, I found it to be a $271 refund check for my car registration, at the governator's executive order.
Y'know... I would have been perfectly happy to let California keep that money. I'm sure they could have done plenty with it... They could have put it towards education, just to pick an example. But now that they've already bothered to give it back, I'll take it. It's not going to do anything to make me like Ahnold any, though. At this rate, it'll probably end up paying for my gas.
I really need a job where I don't have to drive to work.
Last weekend promised a lot: They were claiming anywhere from 72 to 98 new inches of snow from Monday to Thursday, so we were quite anxious for the weekend to arrive. Clearly Friday would have been the day, but we were good little worker bees and waited it out. Sadly, once we were there most of the good stuff was tracked out, but there was good snow to be found if you worked for it.
- Date(s): Saturday, February 28th and Sunday, February 29th, 2004.
- Who: Me, Rick, Tyler, Mike, and Alex 2.
- It was a seriously long weekend, and I can't remember a lot of it at this point. I'll just run down the highlights:
- By mid-morning Saturday, we ended up backside, where we started jumping off of the cornice above The Wave. The landing was very soft, and I'm feeling a little more confident about committing to that sort of drop. Some of them were pretty big, and dropping for that long still scares me.
- While Rick and Tyler hiked up 99 steps, Mike and Alex 2 and I went and dropped off the cliff under lift 4. They actually went off the highest point over the rock face, while I chickened out and went off the side where there was actually snow in case I totally bailed out. Which I did.
- After lunch, Mike and Alex 2 and I found a spot under Sentinel Bowl, where we took turns hiking and taking movies of each other. The most notable thing that happened here was I made three attempts at an actual jumping 180:
- The first attempt hit about 120 degrees before I landed, and then I fell over backwards.
- The second attempt was bad news: I only managed about 90, and when I hit the ground, I somehow managed to hit my head into my knee. No permanent damage done, but it sure hurt at the time.
- On the third attempt, I managed a full 180, and I mostly landed -- until I was leaning too far back, which caused my board's tail to slide out from me, which made for a pretty funny video.
- After we finished at Sentinel Bowl, we rode through the mini-park on the way back to the car, and I managed another stunning heel-edge trip and fall on my back/head. Once again, thank god for the helmet.
- On Sunday, we were actually on the slopes around 9:15, and we rode until they closed the lifts, making for a very full long day.
- Around mid-morning, we ended up on top of Cornice, and decided to hike up to the highest point reachable from there. The drop in some places along that ridge was so steep and sheer as to be borderline terrifying. Luckily, as it happened, the place we hiked too featured a less steep drop. I sucked on the drop in, though, so it felt like a bit of a waste. Here are some pictures I took from the top: Looking over the edge. Looking over the edge again. Looking towards The Wall. Tyler standing by the gear. That's the top of 6 on the top of that peak over there.
- I don't know how I got talked into it, but we traversed past the "Experts Only" sign on the top of the "Experts Only" lift, along the top of The Wall, over to a little chute/gap that looked a lot bigger from the lift than it turned out to be. It was very scary, but it was just wide enough that I was able to just ride my heel edge through the short gap. It was scary, but not too bad. I don't think I'll be going there again any time soon, though, if for no other reason than the traverse to get there was very rocky, even despite the supposed heavy snowfall.
- On the next ride up the wall, we noticed that there was a raincircle around the sun. I couldn't zoom out enough to get the whole thing, but a couple of shots came out nicely. I've never seen anything like it before.
- After that, we traversed to Sentinel Bowl, but when we got there, we decided to hike up to the peak above Sentinel/Palisades in search of some fresh powder, and freshies we found. Here was the view towards Palisades, and here was the view towards Sentinel, and here was the view behind the mountain. The hike was exhausting, but it was worth it.
- After lunch, Mike and Alex 2 and I once again found our spot under Sentinel, and hiked and took more movies. After bailing out several times, I actually executed and landed a 180, and I got it on video. I'll upload it sooner or later.
Anyway, it was a pretty awesome, but totally exhausting weekend. I'm still sore in places.
Published on Saturday March 6, 2004 .
Imagine if iCal and iPhoto were more tightly integrated: If you kept your iCal very up to date, you could search for "snowboarding pictures," and iPhoto would know that since the picture was taken on date N, and your iCal said you were snowboarding on date N, then that iPhoto could assume that that picture is probably snowboarding related.
Published on Wednesday March 3, 2004 .
Toll will rise to $3 on state-owned bridges in Bay Area
This makes me a little cranky, but at least the money goes back to public transportation, which I'll ideally be able to take to work again some day.
For better or for worse, the pre-recorded messages informed me that I didn't have to report for jury duty today, which makes the 6th time I haven't had to report for one reason or another.
Kerry captures Ohio, battles with Edwards in Georgia
There's nothing worthwhile in this article other than this quote: "Two other candidates, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Al Sharpton of New York, had no chance of winning the nomination." Heh.
I realized this weekend that my problem is that every problem I talk about becomes "the problem."
Um, sorry. I mean I realized that one of my problems is that...