Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Ciao

Ciao bella/bello's. Io sono Bryan. I've been learning bits of italian just by being near Maia, my roman girlfriend, and yesterday I started an online Italian course at www.livemocha.com It is free and has a good community and learning system. I need to be bilingual to transfer to a UC in a couple years so buona fortuna! That's good luck/fortune, which is actually bad to say in Italy. They say "In bocca al lupo":"In the mouth of the wolf", a sort of reversal where the recipient already has such good luck that bad wishes aren't even enough to stop them, the reply is "crepi il lupo":"may the wolf die", morbidly delightful!

Over the weekend I did quite a lot. Saturday morning I was up at 7:30 biking to Pro-Built Wheels by Penasquitos Canyon to get a ride with about 40 other volunteers for San Diego Mountain Bike Association trail work in PQ canyon. We hiked to a section of trail I hadn't been to before, above "the duck pond" on a rutted straight fireroad called 'the shitz'. We got the training, the plan, and started picking, shoveling, raking, hoeing, the fireroad into a swooping doubletrack with solid embankments to rail on and water drainage to prevent further rutting. We fit it all within the fireroad and it's deeply rutted sides, and there are plans to add a new more permanent trail near there as well, once the environmental and geological studies are done. It was a solid 4 hours of work and the trail is awesome now. I rode to it on Monday and rode up it, it's quite steep still, but I hardly had any skidding, which is bad for trails. Coming back down it was fast and fun and I had no skidding. The trail leading to there from the main canyon is great fun too.

[Link] PQ Corkscrew pictures

When I started into PQ canyon on Monday on my way to school, on the west end, about a half mile in the hillsides were blackened and there was a firetruck and people working on the edge of the scorched earth. I talked to a firemadame there and she said there had been a fire sunday afternoon and they were just making sure it was all out. 17 acres burned, which is about 3 hillsworth. It had been quite hot this weekend. Pix and vids to come.

[Link] PQ Burninated pictures

Maia and I also finished weeding the main garden area this weekend, to prepare to plant our seedlings. We've got 4 wittle squashes ready to plant and a dozen others that will be ready soon. Pixtures will come.

[Link] A good guide to starting a vegetable garden

After the trail work on Saturday, Maia and I went to Lake Hodges to demo some Santa Cruz bikes, but they were closing up early, so instead we walked down to the lake and rented a row boat for 8 bucks! What a steal! We rowed around the lake for a couple hours, unfortunately we didn't know we were going out here so no beer =[ but it was a nice workout and a new adventure for me! We'll try it again with an inflatable raft for comfort. I'd rather go on a cloudy day, even with sunscreen on I got burned out there.

Over the weekend we also saw two good movies: Juno and Wristcutters.

Ciao!

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