Aside from the teeth chattering chill of riding down the hill at the top, this was an excellent ride. I am very glad I brought a thermal layer to make it bearable but riding through pea soup fog is bound to cool a person off a bit.

It was just overcast most of the way up but the last half mile or so was nice and thick like that. Thankfully there was more than enough climbing involved to warm me up plenty but my sorely needed lunch break got me back down to not warm. Anyways, this ride was not just a slog and actually rather fun. I had more than enough water and food to make it end to end thanks to the cooler weather. Total ride was 84 miles but I accidentally turned the app off for a couple miles of riding.

The bike performed great and the only issue I had were the tubes wrapped on the bar came untied a couple times. I could zip tie em but I hate having to cut zip ties if I actually need a tube. None of the bags got in the way and the new tire on the front felt great. Very happy with the shifting too after the recent tune, it rides better than ever.

Perfect biking weather since I never got overly hot even on the worst climbs. No wind either and the gradient was rather doable most of the way. There was nearly no shoulder to ride on the climbing bit but traffic was rather light. Only the occasional normal car driving past or motorcycles. No fart cannon touge squads today so I never felt highly at risk. Downhill was really nice and after the cloud layer part, was a good temp the rest of the way. Very happy I always wear my gloves otherwise my hands would have fallen off.

Now it is time to rest and enjoy the sun down here at home. Didn't see the sun until the last 10 miles or so which felt opposite of usual. But I ain't complaining. My lunch on the ride was actually satisfying enough that just some snacks are in order before an earlier dinner. Too many other rides I've eaten whole extra meals due to subpar ride lunch.

So I went for a bike ride this morning. I started out yesterday with a plan to drive to Ventura and do a nice 37 mile ride with a decent hill climb in the middle.

Certainly not an easy ride to begin with but only a little bit further than the longest ride I've been on. Well I woke up this morning and had the bright idea to just bike from home instead of driving to the trail head, adding 30 miles round trip to the adventure. Granted there was no wind today and that section is 100% flat. But man it makes me laugh to think about 30 extra miles being something I casually signed up for last minute. Either way, I made through it and found it to be a wonderful 70 mile adventure for the day.





Lunch time was around 1030 at Lake Casitas park and was about 40 miles into the trip. I had a peanut butter sandwich, apple, protein bar, and some homemade peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Good fuel along with my liquid iv laced water. After refilling the water bottles, I got back on the road for the final 30 miles, thankfully with no more hills to climb. Unfortunately I promptly had my front tube explode like a damn gunshot.

It had obliterated itself well enough at a high enough speed that I didn't need my tire tools to get the tire off. Thankfully I had a spare and so it was a quick swap to get me back on the road. I only had one spare though so I stopped at a local bike shop about 12 miles down the road and picked up a couple more. I then made it home and began the process of eating everything in my fridge. I need a nap!

Beautiful clear day up in the hills and not too hot either at around a high of 78. Love this time of the year when the wind isnt howling. And now back down at the beach there's a marine layer so I actually need a jacket to chill outside at home. This was certainly a record for me in terms of distance, max speed, and average speed for any considerable distance as well. Idk how accurate my gps is but those numbers of 35 max and 15 avg sound about right.

After many months the miata finally works. Registration is still in flux because I don't have a damn sticker. And ooh boy did I ignore some important flight safety checks..

Word of advice, if you have a car in some state of repair for 5 months, make sure you check things like the lug nuts! What was supposed to be an easy day to just go get the car to set the monitors, smog, and register turned into an adventure. Thankfully I called a friend and we resolved the problem. I'm still missing a lug nut but at least the rest are tight. Car is not driving until I fix that! Thankfully it's parked for the weekend though so I'll get the sticker and some lugs and then it'll be good next week.

But anyways, I missed this car! Official last time it was road legal and in driving shape was November 11th. So many miata posts and driving adventures incoming! So be prepared.

On the short list now that the car is running beautifully, is also the top. Black top will be installed! While I like the red tops that are available, it'll probably clash with silver and limits my future color choices if I paint or wrap it.

Thankfully its that time of year where it doesn't rain for 5 months though.

Nobody asked but I figured I would detail my day today as it was a very typical Sunday that best describes my life. I will make sure to include pictures since words are boring.

0700: Wake up having fallen asleep on the phone with my girlfriend. She is overseas in Amsterdam and is very much a morning person, so my night time is the best time to talk. I had a busy outdoor day on Saturday though so I was absolutely wiped out by 2300 when I passed out. Got up with a new energy though, determined to do "something" outdoors but not a plan in the world. Made a three egg omelette with leftover sausage and some sauteed onions/green pepper/garlic and a little bit of cheese, black pepper, red pepper flake, and salt.

Topped with tapatio and served with a steaming cup of tea, green today. Delicioso!

0900: Take my sweet time with breakfast and reading a bit but finally get out the door with a rough plan of hiking at La Jolla canyon at the North end of Malibu.
0920: Arrive at the trail-head and promptly take some photos of the car because that is always my first priority.

Also just not a bad place to take pictures of things anyways! Even with the overcast day, the shoreline is always breathtaking here.
0920-1000: Get through the first couple miles of hiking where I finally had to decide where I was going next.




So where am I going next? Looking at that peak in the distance, I for a moment considered. I had enough water to make it there and probably enough to make it back considering the weather. Could use more snacks than what I was carrying but from there, idk about 28 miles round trip? Sanity check says no, please dont do that! Crisis narrowly avoided I instead set a course for Laguna Peak about 6 or 7 miles away from there instead which would mean another 12-14 miles round trip.
1000-1200: Hike a few miles, trail abruptly ends, keep going anyways, and end up at a different peak than intended but enjoy lunch there anyways:



1230: Enjoy my lunch of peanut butter and honey on whole wheat along with some crackers. Since I had hiked to a peak via a topographic map instead of a trail, the rest of the hike was follow the ridgeline until I made it to a real trail. Made it through the gauntlet of half masked people down to the bottom and back to the car around 1420. Today was done on a new pair of boots so the downhill steep sections felt like I was glued to the ground!


And why did I get a new set of boots? Just look at the old ones:

I learned the hard way that I waited too long since on Saturday playing disc golf heading down a hill to chase a disc, I ate it pretty hard on my ass. Thankfully didnt break anything but I immediately swore off wearing boots down this far ever again!

1500: Made it home and some banana bread and a protein shake

Rest of the day now is just recovery, more snacks, and eventually dinner which will be a pile of leftovers of some sort. Here is the trail map of where I ended up:

The original plan was to turn around at the peak and go all the way back but that would have been a big waste of my time so I made my own trail to connect to a different trail down to the PCH. Walking along the PCH is noisy but still scenic in its own way. Overall a great day and I am pooped yet again! Thankfully the new boots mean no foot pain and so come tomorrow I will be ready to bike to work and enjoy that ride.

And with that, a day in the life is complete! Bonus shot from yesterday:

After three nights roughing it, I am finally settled into my hotel for the fourth and final night of this trip. Since I was lacking cell service I didn't provide an update for yesterday so I will start there.

I came back to the same trail that broke my mountain bike last time so it was payback time! I was going to defeat this trail on two wheels and not have to walk one bit! That ended up being partly false...

While the bike did not break this time, the part of the trail that I bypassed last time ended up being a total sand pit. There were lots of fun rideable sections to make up for it but I still ended up walking the bike uphill for a good 1/2 mile in total. Beats the 4 miles last time but man did that sand suck! Anyways, some photos from the rest of the ride.

After the tiring ride and some lunch enjoying the early afternoon sun, I made my way to camp and enjoyed a pretty cool spot for the night. I even got a chance to make a camp fire, ride the road bike shortly, and enjoy the sunset. I made sure to get plenty of rest to prepare for the ski day coming up for Sunday.

Waking up Sunday morning I was greeted with some actual cold which was a good sign I was getting closer to the ski mountain. I made the 45 minute drive to the mountain after packing up and was ready for first chair. It was an excellent spring skiing day with minimal wind, tons of sun, and just the right snow consistency to be a blast.

I even managed to record with Strava this time and always find the statistics neat. I do wish I could just filter out the lift rides but I can still get an idea looking at the graphs at least.

If the app is correct that was 28 runs for the day with around 33,000 feet of vertical. I'm not sure if that for some reason included all of the uphill so I will have to check that. I for a moment contemplated taking the road bike out after checking into the hotel since it is so nice out. But yeah my legs told me to fuck off so relaxing and eating it is. I have a whole second day of skiing ahead tomorrow and the long drive home so no need for extra leg death lol.

I also found it neat how they were starting the snow mining/farming operation up at main lodge. Mammoth stays open until Memorial day even on a light snow year like this one. But they only achieve this through piling up snow that would otherwise go to waste and move it around the mountain to keep stuff open. Today was the last day for the bottom areas and with good reason:

Looking a bit Vermonty in that area and it only got worse as the day went on. I had a couple of last runs dodging rocks in the middle of the trail on groomers that I blasted through at full speed earlier in the day. Granted it's late April and this was below 8000 feet so I'm not surprised.

The top at 11,000 feet should last a bit longer though with temps like that.

Overall an excellent birthday trip and I'm very glad I came!

My pixel astrophotography mode photos came out way better than expected. Only editing I did was google photos auto edit. View in a dark room for best experience here. Very happy with these and looking forward to trying more in the future.



I've got so many photos from today's adventures as well but those will have to wait.

This is the first time I've been to a restaurant and eaten on site since before the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Figured I would do it right and eat some all you can eat Korean BBQ. A coworker complained about how her friends didn't want to go so me and another coworker decided it was the right time to go. 35 plates later, the three of us were full beyond comprehension. And that's not including the multiple plates of garlic and some salad.

I could die happy after eating there! Don't think I'm eating dinner today and I specifically only had a banana and some tea for breakfast in preparation. Good thing I biked into work today because I sure need a workout after that. Can't even fathom the amount of calories consumed. At least it was probably also 300g of protein. And I think we got our money's worth because with tip it came out to about $2.75 per plate.

I think my favorite was the Galbi (beef ribs) although the bulgogi would be a close second. We got 7 plates of each of those so there may be some bias.

I have made it to the hyphen. It has taken me a few days to get this account creation thing to work but I am now here. Hoping to see more Oppos over here as time goes on. I shared my drive/hike from yesterday on Kinja but here are some more recent pics I have.



Thanks to the Veterans day holiday being midweek, I have utilized some vacation time to get a nice chunk of time off. Miata is getting a full head job done and I am leaving shortly for another hike and bike adventure. Lovely Socal fall weather right now with temps in the 60s and sun for days. Hoping next to do a coilover review for the Subaru since I have finally had some time to really drive the car since the install.

I enjoy how I have my roof rack on the Subaru set up for two activities at a time. It's either ski and bike or surf and bike. I doubt ski and surf would both fit but I haven't tried since that's kind of an odd use case. Either way though, no I am not going on a cool adventure like that, just moving into my new place and had to get a picture of this. But I did just get back from a different adventure to the snowy North!

It snowed over 100 inches at the peak and I've got a season pass (ikon pass) so I spent three days enjoying the festivities. Friday night I camped in Lone Pine, enjoying the heck out of my new self-inflating sleeping pad. Slept warmer than ever even though it was around 30F. Saturday was an absolute shit show but worth it for freshies plus Sunday and Monday were infinitely better.

Full on Disneyland almost the entire day on Saturday. Lifts were slow to open in the morning so lines were a plenty even at the 0830 opening bell. After multiple 30+ minute waits, I grew tired of it and had a lunch break confined to the car. I normally eat back at the car anyways but in Corona times I sit inside windows up no matter the weather. It sure was warm though with sunny skies, no wind, and a high around 35. I continued the day all the way until closing bell on a last chair at 1615, with that being just about the only run all day I didn't wait on a line. I made every damn run count at least, taking only fresh tracks when I could and finding the most challenging and rewarding paths with no groomer laps to cool off. End of the day though, the traffic was horrendous and even after hanging out for an hour to cook dinner and put away camp gear, it was still a slow moving 30+ minutes just to get to town. All worth it though for the POW.

Sunday and Monday were pure joy. I wait on the ocassional line Sunday morning but after lunch it was nonstop lapping no matter where I went. Monday was like that all day plus it even snow flurried for a bit. Here are some videos from the weekend:

Despite the crazy wind there at the top, the run was absolutely amazing. Perfect wind blown powder with a good 6 or 7 turns worth to ski without any trepidation. The whole rest of the run was great too but required at least a little bit of navigation to avoid chopped up parts. I was sad to head home Monday night but the good news is I have a hotel booking again for this coming weekend Friday and Saturday night. So I'll camp out Thursday again, ski hard Friday, hate Saturday but do it anyways, and then enjoy the heck out of Sunday while people go for their superbowl superspreader parties.

@captdale-is-secretly-british Found a car to buy in Alaska? Sounds like an awesome road trip from there all the way to Oregon!

@aestheticsinmotion I play risk on the regular, it's available on Steam and as android/apple apps. The neat part is it has crossplay amongst them. One of my all time favorite games. Although Diplomacy takes the cake for actually using the board in person. That game requires like 8 people and one person doesn't even get to actually play though lol.

@shop-teacher don't you HAVE to buy the phone through Google Fi for it to work on the service? That was the reason why I never considered the service too seriously. The device list was very specific and limited. Not just pop in a sim card into whatever GSM unlocked device you feel like.

@vincentmalamute that sounds very useful. I broke the USBC port on my last phone so that might be worth looking into the prolong the life of the new phone. Old phone was long in tooth but I could have easily gotten another couple years out of it if fast charging still worked.

@vincentmalamute I enjoy that I don't have to think or even google how to solve my problems. Just served to me on a gold platter right here. Thanks haha, definitely an excellent idea.

I always carry a bag while on the mountain bike since even carrying 3L of water often runs out on those rides. So it's inconsequential to just throw more things like tubes in there.

@vincentmalamute good idea! That should definitely be more efficient. I can fit them in the rear bag any time I don't bring extra water but I should be able to leave em full time on the bike if it's taped well enough.

@shop-teacher Ferry on Netflix. Based on the tv show Undercover which is about a Belgian detective that works undercover with drug kingpins to bring them down. Great couple of seasons and now there is a movie telling the backstory of the main bad guy from the first season. Gonna make some stove cooked popcorn in avocado oil and some fresh iced tea shortly and then turn it on.

@barnie I feel kinda like my legs aren't attached to me. No pain anywhere though just full body soreness. Just like a good ski day. I don't think I'd be able to mentally function if I broke a leg or something. I'd definitely be depressed from boredom and have to find new ways to enjoy life.

@aestheticsinmotion all I see in the FedEx logo there is the arrow. It is inescapable!

@grindintosecond looks nice and affordable to me! I just paid $4.09 yesterday for 91 and that was at Costco in one of the cheaper areas in Socal.