Bryan's Adventures

Is this thing on?

2011-09-27T13:21:00.001-07:00

Hmm wonder if this works, might use it a bit, I've been backpacking the past few days. Wee!

Summer 2009

2009-09-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

Here we are at the hot end of summer, and it's time to write about the past few months.

School: I completed my first quarter at UC Santa Cruz this summer. The important class was computer science 101, which consisted of algorithm analysis, graph theory, a more in depth approach to searching and sorting algorithms, and mathematical proofs of problem solutions. The professor was Patrick Tantalo, an eloquent and funny guy. I scored an A+ in CS101. This allows me to take CS160 in the fall, which is a graphics programming class that I am very excited about.

My other class, which I took because it looked interesting, was "Personal Narratives in Film and Theatre," which involved watching and writing about two monologues a week for 5 weeks, as well as a personal narrative which was presented at the end. I got a B (for Bryan) in this class. The facilitator was Bob Giges.

The fall quarter starts Sep 21. I will be moving on campus in the Porter dorms. In addition to CS160, I'll be taking Computer Engineering 12, which is a chip/micro-controller programming class, and CS80J, which is a topical class on "Technology targeted at social issues." I've also got a T'ai Chi class for fun, and I will hopefully get some further piano or guitar instruction.

Biking adventures: During the summer I was riding my bike everywhere. Twice a week I rode my bike to campus, about a half hour of all uphill. I found routes that were about 50% offroad. After class I would often bike around the many miles of trails around campus. Jerry came down from SanFran twice and we had good rides around campus, the first time we came down through Wilder ranch, the second we made a turn that took us down a very steep downhill section and we rode back along highway 9.

After I took my final, there was a fire burning north of santa cruz, and I biked into the woods. The smoke wasn't affecting the air badly yet, but there was a lovely orange hue to everything as the sunlight passed through the clouds. The next two days I packed up and started driving back to socal. I took the 1 so I could camp in big sur. I stopped at the first campground, Andrew Molera State Park, which had trails for horses, and so I took my bike on these trails. The trails were nothing special, but biking right onto the beautiful beaches of big sur was nice. I was camped north of Santa Barbara at El Refugio Beach the next night, where I also biked a few beach trails.

About a week later I was in San Diego, camped out by Black Mountain in north county. I woke up early to bike the mountain before it was too hot. I had found a trail which I was looking for a couple years ago, Miner's Ridge, which was supposed to be an intermediate trail. At 8am it was already hot, and this trail was very steep. There were stairs that looked like I could clear them, but I was getting exhausted quickly. It was an intense trail, steep up and down with many drops/stairs, only about a mile, although there is a network of trails on black mountain that can extend that. I also rode merriam bear, a bit of tecolate canyon, florida canyon, and a trail west of the 163 in balboa park while in San Diego.

Games: Last weekend, Aug 28-30, was Ludum Dare 15. The theme was "Caverns" and in 48 hours I made and published my 7th game. I didn't give it a name, but it's a side scrolling platform game, a hybrid of super mario bros and alice in wonderland. The game is here: http://www.originowl.com/Home/greencow-ld15. This was my second game made with Game Maker. The other one, Dr. Splodeyhead, I released during the week before LD15, and is on the page with my other games: http://www.originowl.com/.

There were 155 entries to LD15, which all must be played by us 155 competitors during these 2 weeks following LD. At about 20 minutes per game, this is taking much of my time now.

Well, after a few weeks of visiting friends and family here in socal, next week I'll be heading North on the 395 for a few days of camping around mammoth, mono lake, and yosemite, before good times at Symbiosis Gathering and then rushing to campus to get settled in before class. The summer session is open enrollment, so this is my first quarter of really being enrolled and the campus fully populated. Living in university dorms is something I've dreamed of for years. Very excited! Ciao!

July 18 - Pogonip, UCSC, Wilder Ranch

2009-07-19T10:04:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I took a break from this personal narrative I've been working on and biked from home, across santa cruz to pogonip park, navigated uphill through horses into UCSC, hopped the jumps a bit, rode across north preserve and down through kresge and porter, around porter meadow and family housing, across some field laden with cowpies, over a fence and into what I later figured out was Wilder Ranch. I felt almost lost and almost turned back but then I landed on the Long Meadow trail, which I rode through a few weeks ago. I rode up to Wild Boar trail, a new one for me, and then into Old Cabin trail, which was a really magical area. Eucalyptus Loop took me up to a high bluff overlooking the ocean and all of monterey bay. Rode a little farhter north on the Wilder Ridge loop, started dropping into Zane trail and eventually made it back to the farm at Wilder Ranch. Biked back through some train tracks and cabbage fields to the pacific bike path home.

This was a 4 hour ride, covering 26 miles and 3,000 ft of elevation gain. My muscles were drained on arriving home so I made a big soy protein smoothie, did a bit of yoga and felt great. Followed that with the same thing I had for lunch: a tofurky beer brat with fried onions and bell pepper, magical saurkraut, and spicy mustard, with a fat tire and a salad.

Yesterday's Ride

2009-07-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

This summer, while living in santa cruz, I started this post:

Yesterday I biked from home, across santa cruz to pogonip park, navigated uphill through horses into UCSC, hopped the jumps a bit, rode across north preserve and down through kresge and porter, around porter meadow and family housing, across some field laden with cowpies, over a fence

Today I rode the part starting at the fence again. It goes into wilder ranch via some lovely forests and a very difficult uphill rock garden that was too slick to ride this time. A bit of fireroad to old cabin trail, fast and ferny then a climb out. Down through wilder, and into santa cruz, to natural bridges and the monarch walk, but it was too cold for monarchs. the day started cloudy with some sprinkles, but the ride was lovely.

Studies

2009-07-15T17:34:00.001-07:00

Stopping on a trail at ucsc to study..

So it begins

2009-06-24T22:16:00.001-07:00

I started classes on Tuesday. I've got computer science (cs) 101, which looks to be a mathematical approach to algorithm analysis, and personal narratives in film and theater, which is about how people present and come to terms with their identity. Interesting stuff.

My bike is now fix0rd! Yay I rode up to a yoga class from the base of ucsc, which is quite a climb. It was iyengar yoga, which is supposed to be a more rigorous approach to alignment in poses, but it was mellow, some slightly painful stretches, but my back feels great now.

Santa Cruzin

2009-06-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Heyo! I'm living in and around Santa Cruz now! I've been camping around forests and friends, and will soon settle into classes. My bike will finally be fix0rd for riding on tuesday. More to write later!

Spring Semester

2009-06-02T14:06:00.000-07:00

Hello, I finished my last semester of community college 2 weeks ago. I just got my grades back..

English 101 READING AND COMPOSITION : A
English 205 CRITICL THINKNG/INTRMD COMPSTN : A
PHYE 149 SOCCER : A
MUSI 115A CLASS PIANO I : A
MATH 245 DISCRETE MATHEMATICS : A
MATH 254 INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA : B

Woot! This gives me a 3.6 gpa for my lower division work, let's see if I can keep it up for the next two years ;]

I am going to be visiting friends and family over the next couple weeks, and then I'll be heading up to santa cruz for classes starting June 22. More to write later! Ciao!

Ludum Dare 14

2009-05-06T20:11:00.000-07:00

Ludum Dare 14 was 2.5 weeks ago, on the weekend of 4/18. Ludum Dare is the triannual 48 hour game development competition I've done several times before. The theme was 'Advancing Wall of Doom' and I made a space shooting game which had enemy ships with equations written on them which you would shoot with the correct answers by pressing the numbers on your keyboard. It turned out a fun and challenging game which I was happy with.

The game is available at the website where I publish my games: www.originowl.com

After the 48 hours of programming, everyone who makes a game has 2 weeks (2.5 weeks this time) to play and judge everyone else's games. The games are rated in many categories on a 1-5 scale (5 best). The results just came out and I did okay. My game was up against 123 other games.

Overall: 20th (3.61)
Fun: 15th (3.71)
Innovation: 16th (3.76)
Humor: 25th (3.47)
Sound: 26th (3.44)

Not great placement, but the scores came out good. It was a fun experience, and inspirational as always. The games by the winners are all nice little games that I would recommend playing.

If you want to find me in the results, I'm 'greencow'.

[Ludum Dare 14 full results]

Tecolate adventures

2009-04-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

Hiya friends, I haven't updated in a while, but things have been pretty routine lately. I've been biking about 10 miles through tecolate canyon, 3-4 days a week. Sometimes I take roads if I'm in a rush. I found a way through the golf course that was previously impeding my path, removing a hill and some roads from my commute. It's a nice and challenging ride, there are many streams to cross surrounded with patches of baby heads (tons of smooth round rocks of varying sizes from golf balls to footballs that often slip and create traction hell) and steep slopes, some features I have only been able to bike through after weeks of attempts.

I've put a new back tire on, my previous was a 1.95" kenda nevagal which had a hole in the side and worn down treads. My 2.3" nevagal up front is still sittin pretty, joined by a maxxis high roller 2.1" in a reversed tread pattern for extra traction. Seems fine so far! I've also put on the SRAM pc-991 chain that I bought for grenadine like 2 years ago, but I didn't change the rear casette, which has created some gear skipping, but only in the highest rear gears. So now I ride with the rear in the center gear and mostly go up and down using the front 3 gears, dropping the back when the front is low for granny gear and raising the back when the front is high for top speed. This seems a better way to run the gears overall, so I'm glad I ran into the gear skipping issue.

All this biking up hills (along with 2 hours of soccer every friday) has been creating new visible muscle groups in my legs. I had heard about pro cyclists having enormous legs, and now I'm starting to see it. Mostly, I'm enjoying the ease and speed with which I climb hills now. I spend much more time in high gear lately so I'm going faster overall. I've been tracking my routes and stats with my google phone gps.

Four weeks of class left in this semester eeee! I am going nuts. I have already registered for cmps 101 at UCSC, class begins June 22.

English 205 has been interesting, our curriculum for this 8 week class includes dawn of the dead (2004), fear and loathing in las vegas (the book and the movie), and fight club. The theme is: the american dream. I'll post some essays out of that sometime. I had fun with the dawn of the dead essay.

Linear algebra and discrete math have both been very theoretical and difficult to use. There are no formula sheets or calculators, just lots of proofs and operations that don't connect with anything real. It helps to think of them as puzzles. Otherwise the lack of application makes it hard to keep motivated, but I know linear algebra has many great applications to come, and discrete math is forming a strong theoretical basis for applications of logic. They have had about the same test schedule throughout the semester, which is nice after the tests to be able to relax, but it kinda doubles the stress before the tests. Last week was a test week, and I believe that I did very well, which is a big relief because I was a bit worried about passing Linear Algebra for a couple weeks.

Today I ate 9 homemade vegan tacos! And that was my adventure of the day

Oh, last weekend was Ludum Dare 14, the theme was 'advancing wall of doom' and I completed another game. The game is called 'advancing wall of math' (math on the brain much?). I've been posting my games to my new site: http://www.originowl.com

Biked to school

2009-02-23T23:52:00.000-08:00

Monday, 2009 Feb 23, Biked from Gila to Mesa College via Tecolate Canyon.
Trailhead at balboa & clairemont dr, biked south into canyon, a bit rutted in parts, could use bridges (esp close to mesa college). Encountered a rattlesnake on the trail, it rattled loudly as i cast sticks upon it, nearly missing. The snake slithered off continuing to rattle as I rattled on by. Harrowing.

At the Mt Arcadia road crossing, I entered the golf course, inquiring within I was unable to access a trail. Golf has failed me, building a golf course in my canyon without so much as building a small bridge to the trail that runs on the side of the golf course.

So, I bike up the road, up a long slow hill, instead of riding in my canyon, I get to the top, make a few rights and then I'm back in the canyon, only at the high part, so I have this steep descent in, it's very steep and swooshy, not the kind of danger I prefer on my commute to school. SOon I'm in the bottom of the canyon and there's about 4 spots that I had to disembike to ford.

Overall it wasn't great and took an hour, but it will be faster as I cut out dead ends, and there's lots of side trails and options to explore when I have extra time.

I biked home by roads. The hills around here are a good workout.

Multigrain goodness

2009-02-18T18:06:00.000-08:00

Hiya =]

Well, I know last week I said I was living in my van, which was true, but then I found a nice room for rent near my school, and decided to move into a more traditional living situation. I have moved in with an older Indian gentleman who goes by Kris (ala Krishna) and it's been nice. The room came furnished and there's like 15 fruit trees around the house. There's also two other people renting rooms attached to the house. Having a kitchen, fridge, and a private bathroom are certainly niceties I have missed. Not worrying about getting a ticket for camping in my van is nice too. I found out about tickets for street camping when I was awoken one morning by police officers =P.

This will be my pad for the next 3 months, then I will return to van life when I move up to UC Santa Cruz.

School has been getting busier, Linear Algebra is quite difficult and English has taken much time.

TaTaForNow
-Bryan=]

goings ons going on

2009-02-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

> So the spring has sprung and it's still winter. Living
> in my van again has
> been a new experience during this wet time of year. Rain is
> lovely, although
> the musky smell in the van requires a dose of air to keep
> under control. So
> far so good.
>
> I am going to san diego mesa college this semester m-th. It
> is a really nice
> campus, much bigger and more populated. I'm glad to be
> attending a new
> campus, new architecture and style to appreciate.
> There's a beautiful
> building there I will post pics of soon. The only trouble
> so far has been
> parking and the many stairs between the parking and class.
> Parking should
> get easier as I arrive earlier and people drop their
> classes.
>
> It has been many weeks since a bike ride. My legs are sad
> pandas. I was
> almost ready to go when it started to rain again. Well I
> should use this
> downtime to get my bike tuned up. Mesa college is right in
> tecolate canyon,
> so I will be traversing that when the trails dry up.
>
> Last weekend I went to los angeles for the first global
> game jam. It's a 48
> hour game development competition, but in locations all
> over the world, and
> with teams. I arrived late, traffic, so I missed my chance
> to pitch a game,
> I got on a team making a flash game, flash isn't
> something I have developed
> with in many years, so I was only on game design duty,
> which is fun, but
> design doesn't take much of 48 hours, so I got bored
> and left early. The
> team still finished the game, and apparently ranked 2nd at
> our location.
> Good times.
>
> I will try to write weekly or so, this is coming from my
> phone, which I can
> type fairly quickly on now.
>
> Love,
> -Bryan=)

Adventures in Canyonland

2009-02-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

It has been a while. There have been changes, but I am still right on my journey to UCSC in june. Today I am sipping delicious sage breezes from rose canyon.

2009-02-08T12:40:00.001-08:00

Test

Update

2008-12-03T19:43:00.001-08:00

Hiya everyone =] Things have been going well, been busy busy with school, I've got less than two weeks left in this fall semester and so it's even busier now.

Well, my big news is that I've been accepted into the Computer Science: Computer Game Design program at UC Santa Cruz in Fall 2009! This is a selective major and it's taken a long time to get here, I'm up to 8 years of community college. (most of those years spent working) I've already looked at the curriculum and courses at UCSC, and I'll be in classes like: Game AI (artificial intelligence), interactive storytelling, game theory, many graphics/animation programming courses, and 3d/digital media art courses. My last three quarters will have game studios where the team based game development projects will happen. I should be finishing at the end of spring (June) of 2011 and will have my first graduation evar! (I accidentally dropped out of high school) After that I'll be considering graduate programs in computer science.

So yeah, fun stuff, as for what I'm up to currently:

Calculus 2 has proven to be my most difficult class evar. On ther other hand,

Physics: Mechanics has been the most fun class evar! We've had labs with ball shooters and fan cars and the stuff is all really interesting and useful for game programming. It helps to have a great physics teacher, she's really into it and gets us to exploring concepts in depth.

Economics online consists of three tests and two essays over 16 weeks, there's no discussion, no incremental progress, and no incentive for me to read the book, I just pop open the book for the tests and hardly learn anything from it. It's pretty boring stuff anyway. The final economics research paper is going to take up some good time soon.

Computer Science: Data Structures is a class I took in high school, and it's just 10 programs to write, no tests, so it's nice and easy. The final project coming up is to convert the midterm project into binary tree storage. The midterm is a contact book. Simple stuff.

Next semester I've got English 101 and 205 in 8 week sessions, and Discrete Math (for when you don't want people to know you're doing math i guess), and compsci: assembly programming, which will be new to me. I also need to take Linear Algebra in either Spring or Summer, it seems like it might be too much to add on to my spring schedule, but it'd be nice to have all my community college work done this spring. I've considered going to UCSC for a class in the summer, would help my schedule along, although it's costly. hmm.

This weekend (Dec 5-7) I've got a Ludum Dare 48 hour game development competition. Always a blast.

The garden is growing, many broccoli and cauliflower and swiss chard and peas and some nice looking winter squash have been vining up a tomato cage very quickly. There's other stuff too, will post about the winter crop soon.

Will write more later, ciao!

2008-11-03T14:26:00.001-08:00

First post from g1! Beats doing calc on the bus :P

Burning man 2008 videos

2008-10-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

Hiya =] Just uploaded two videos I took at the burn this year.
The Temple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53LRCU5OwFQ
A look around at night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0MBZxRvlAQ

Burning Man 2008 photos

2008-10-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

Hiya =] Guess what? The camera has been found! Yay! I've uploaded photos from our trip to Burning Man, including stops at Mono Lake and Lake Tahoe. Ciao!

http://picasaweb.google.com/greencow/BurningMan2008?authkey=Ge44YOxrQPY#

Burner back

2008-09-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

Hiya =]

So, Maia and I made it to Burning Man and back again. We left friday evening, camped two nights on the way up, arrived in the line of cars at midnight as the event started, spent 6 hours waiting/sleeping before getting in, 6 days on the playa, left before dawn after the burn, and camped out one night on the way back.

We went straight up the 395. First night camped in Mojave. Next day, stopped by Lake Mono and dabbed our feet in this alkaline lake, it's a strange place, at lake's edge there is this carpet of flies, which range from buzzing near water, to corpses a couple feet inland. Seagulls would just walk along with their mouths open, taking in swarms of flies. Pillars of rock formation rise up to where the lake level was before the water that feeds the lake had been diverted for human use. Very strange place.

That night we detoured through monitor pass towards Lake Tahoe, we camped out at Grover hot springs. The next morning we went to the spring filled pools, but the hot pool was empty. They had found a dead bird in the water and had to sanitize the pool. We swam in the cold pool surrounded by mountains and pine trees, very nice. We drove to Lake Tahoe and walked in the lake for a while. Continuing to Reno for supplies, and finally arriving in sight of Black Rock City (our great city, built and burned in one week each year) at midnight when the gates opened.

We camped at burning man with some of Maia's fellow chemists from ucsd at Mad Flava. We were located right behind the pancake playhouse (sister camp) in the 9 o'clock plaza, a nice central location. The playa floor was very sandy this year, little rain through the year means no hard packed ground, which means very difficult to bike on. The city was laid out much larger this year too, so getting around was a trek. With almost no moon all week it was almost like some sort of Star Trek.

This was Maia's first burn, and my fourth. On the first day we arrived, Monday, there was a gnarly dust storm. Intense wind blowing dust so fast it seems to penetrate your skin. Everyone goggled and dust masked up like the apocalypse was upon us, which it was. I got a bad headache that day. Tuesday through Friday were all beautiful days, no dust, not too hot at day or cold at night. We explored the art projects, climbed the 4 story tower that held the Man and the 8 story steel tower of babylon farther out. The temple was a steampunk paradise of recycled scrap. We did yoga 4 afternoons, including a faux man chu'd kung fu yoga class before the burn. Each night someone from camp made dinner for everyone, Tuesday was our night, and we had Taco Tuesday, with glasses of our Ombrew organic pale ale for our campmates. It was superb. The burn was not the best part as it has been in years past for me. We were planning to leave pre-dawn so I wasn't going all out as usual. There was the marching band that I usually followed in circles around the man for the hours after the burn, but it seemed somehow more crowded and we weren't marching. The procession of music and fire spiraling ever closer to a shrinking flame has been the most purifying aspect to mark the end of another year. It was still fun though, I enjoyed myself all week (except the headache), so I've gotta say, best burningman ever!

Departing at 4am, the sun just beginning to cast hope over the horizon, we exodized without the usual line, a boon I would not exchange for a better burn in future years. We travelled to Lake June for some showers, and camped free at a nearby rest stop. Drove all the next day through the eastern sierra valley, sighting Mt Whitney, and finally arriving back in San Diego.

I wish I could share pictures now, as we took many pictures and videos, but it seems that we lost the camera. =[ It may yet turn up somewhere in the van, or on the lost & found forums. We'll just have to use our imagination!

So the day after arriving back from the burn I was right back to busy. Tuesday began the second week of classes, I missed the first, after some changes, I'm now taking: Physics 195: Mechanics, Math 151: Calculus 2, and Economics 120. These are all key classes for my plan to get into the UC Santa Cruz Computer Science/Game Design program next year. Physics is going to be fun, yesterday we were using fan powered cars with motion sensors and laptops to make lots of pretty graphs. The teacher and students are all excited to be here. Calc 2 isn't quite as exciting so far, but finding new ways to work with numbers is always interesting.

Speaking of which, I've got lots of homework to catch up on this weekend, so I'll just be getting back to it. Seeya soon =]

Greetings

2008-08-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Hello =] Long time no post.

It's been a busy summer, I was taking two classes online: Environmental Biology, and Calculus 1. Last week I took the finals and I earned an A in both classes! Woot! Calculus is pretty neat, I've been using it to calculate rates of change, like if you're filling up a balloon with 100 cubic cm of air per second, how fast is the radius of the ballon changing at 5 seconds, and for calculating area and volume between curves, taking a curve on a 2d plane and revolving it around an axis to create a 3d object and finding it's volume was particularly fun. Drawing the objects and visualizing them made it a more creative task than most math can be.

Just a few hours after taking the finals, the Ludum Dare 48 hour game programming competition started. This was LD 12, and the theme was 'The Tower'. I wasn't too hot on the theme and was a bit mentally exhausted from the tests, so I didn't spend much time on it in the first half, and almost quit, but in the end I finished a game! This one is actually pretty challenging, it's a tetris clone with numbers and math operators in the blocks, so the object is to form equations. I posted the game here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2008/08/10/teenage-mathant-ninja-tower/

Well, I've got a couple weeks to relax now, I'll do some biking. Maia and I are going to Burning Man in a couple weeks, this is her first time and we're very excited, we're going to be camping with some other UCSD burners at Mad Flava.

After burning man, I'll be coming right back to classes, I've got calculus 2, physics:mechanics, economics, piano and yoga.

Oh, and I didn't mention this before, but a few weeks ago, Maia and I brewed up 5 gallons of beer! It's been fermenting, and two nights ago we had our first homebrew. It's good! This is the first of our Ombrew Organic, and is specifically a Pale Ale. It was a fun experience, and we'll be making a Red Ale in September.

The other growth in our lives, our garden of eating, is also doing well. We applied compost and mulch covering to the plants a couple weeks ago, and we've been getting many tomatoes, zuccini, jalapenos and kidney beans. We also got our first japanese eggplant (or ichiban) and some onions, which appeared quite randomly, are almost ready.

Alright, I've got 57 Ludum Dare games to judge (as all entrants do), back to the grind! Ciao!

Semester is ova!

2008-06-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Hola, I have been quite busy for the past 5 weeks. 5 weeks ago is when I scored a 32% on my 2nd precalculus test and suddenly realized the value of doing homework. I was making up past homework while doing the current. I was getting my biking in by going to and from college through Penasquitos canyon.

So I got my grades for the semester:

MATH 141	PRECALCULUS	5.00	C	Miramar
PSYC 101	GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY	3.00	A	Miramar
CISC 190	JAVA PROGRAMMING	4.00	A	Miramar

whew! I was getting worried about passing precalc.

In 2 weeks I'll be back in college for 8 weeks of Calculus, Physical Geography, and an environmental biology class.

So I've got some time again, time to update the resume and work on some java programs of my own.

Ciao

2008-04-29T13:00:00.001-07:00

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!

Sea Otter Photos

2008-04-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded pictures I took at Sea Otter and pictures I screengrabbed from the website for the pro photographers they had out there.

[Link] Album

sea udderly outclassic, part 1, the race

2008-04-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

Alright enough procrastinating, it's time to write this. This is part 1, the race. I will post later with accounts of the sea otter expo, bikes I demoed, pictures, and movies.

On April 19, 2008, I woke up early to a cold morning in Monterey, California, and raced my mountain bike. The adventure did not go as well as I'd hoped. In the end, I finished the 20 mile cross country race in 2 hours 53 minutes. I was far behind the next person ahead of me, who finished in 2:16. First place in my group finished in 1:26. I was ahead of only one person, by two minutes. 45th out of 46 in 25-29 men's xc sport.

[Link] Race Results

The day started off slightly wrong, my alarm didn't go off at 6:30 which I had set it for. I woke up at 6:50am, cursed my temporary phone (my last one took a dunk), and started boiling water. I had my coffee, but didn't make oatmeal as planned, it was a little late to be eating something so heavy, so instead I ate half a banana and a clif bar, not much lighter, I think I would've been better off not eating, digestion takes it's toll. My energy should have been supplied by energy powder in my water, like the cytomax I drank the day before. I was hoping to find another pack of cytomax to add to my camelbak on my way to the track, but I didn't, so I was drinking straight water, not a good idea on such a long trek, my energy supply was a critical error in this race.

I reached the starting line for my age group about 10 minutes before the race and did a bit of stretching. I felt good, I was wearing my synthetic long gel padded pants, a new long sleeve racing jersey, and a cotton jacket. I wasn't too cold resting among people and it would be even colder out on those windy hills.

Started at 7:55am around the racetrack. It was about a mile mostly uphill to get to the trail. By the time I reached the trail I was in last. I was really outclassed by these guys. I'm past beginner and well into intermediate for my trail riding skills, but racing is another level of strength and endurance, so I am a beginner class racer, not sport class. Beginner and sport race on the same loop, but beginner was at 3pm the previous afternoon, which would have a much easier time to ride, being warmed up and having all day to prepare. I checked the beginner times and would have placed slightly higher, but I think my time would have been much better riding at that time of day.

I rode on, it became obvious when I was passed by the next age group about 20 minutes into it that I wasn't going to catch up, but I wasn't going to give up. This was my baseline run. Besides, I paid about 80$ to take part in this race =P Ride on, I started taking breaks after a half hour. Getting passed by progressively older groups of riders. I got some visual pulsing from overexertion and went slow for the rest of the course. Towards the end I laid out in a field by the track for a bit, got some chuckles from riders. Women's groups passing me now, a nice change in scenery ;]

The track is 20 miles long with a cumulative ~6,800 feet of elevation gain. 20 miles flat I can do in 1.5 hours, but this track is mostly climbing. Fireroads up, winding tricky rollercoaster singletrack, and some fast white knuckle fireroad descents. The ground wasn't muddy at all, quite sandy in some sections, alot of dry loose dirt like San Diego. It's a really fun track, I enjoyed the race when I wasn't getting nauseated from all the climbing. I made it through so despite what went wrong, I've gained from the experience. And next year I'll try again.

That's not all, there are other races coming up, and I'll be continuing my regular riding to keep in shape if something else comes around. There's a 24-hour race in temecula in a few weeks, but I'll join a casual team if anything for that. Anyways, racing isn't why I ride, it's just a different way of experiencing my love of biking around trees.

long time no post

2008-04-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Hiya =]

I've got a big adventure coming up in a week, I'm going to be racing my mountain bike at the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, Ca. I'll be racing Saturday morning at 7:55 in the mens 25-29 sport class cross country. The course is 19 miles and last year my class had about 60 people taking 1.5-2 hours. This will be my first official mountain bike race and Sea Otter is a huge event, so I'm excited.

I've been biking hard for 2-5 hours per day in training, I found a path that is 90% off road to get from home to Miramar college, going through Los Penasquitos canyon. An infinitely nicer ride than Miramar road with an air base on one side and auto shops/furniture stores on the other. Miramar road takes about 10 minutes by car, 30 minutes by bus, 40 minutes by bike, and going through canyons takes 90 minutes.

On Friday (4/4) I woke up at 7am and went straight for an ultimate adventure, breakfast at Sombreros! Mm, potatoes. With a burrito in tow, I went to Mission Trails Regional Park at the Clairemont Mesa Blvd trailhead. MTRP is home to the highest peak in the city of San Diego (Cowles Peak) and many miles of excellent trails. This was my first time biking at this side, I have previously biked around the visitors center area.

Biking around the West side of the park has a mixture of long slow fireroad climbs, fast rugged descents, and steep traction hell on hilly singletrack. The ground here, like most of San Diego, is hard pack with large loose sand and rock cover, which gives a running on marbles effect when trying to climb steep hills. I rode for about 5 great hours here, with cloud cover keeping me cool. I returned to the van to the burrito which is just the thing to have after a long ride.

[Link] Pictures from my ride at mission trails.
[Link] Mission Trails map.

Visited dad and gramps and family on Saturday, that night we watched Sunshine (ok scifi thriller), No Country For Old Men (excellent action thriller, surprisingly pertinent metaphors), I am Legend (good), and The Machinist (great, mind trip) .

Monday, I took the Penasquitos trail to and from school.

The San Diego Sea-to-sea Trail is a 140 mile trail stretching from the Pacific Ocean at Torrey Pines (La Jolla) to the Salton Sea. The trail includes Los Penasquitos Canyon and Sycamore Canyon, which I have ridden both and almost all of the trails between them. On Tuesday I decided to do the first part of the trail. I biked through UCSD and down to Torrey Pines Beach, it's quite nice to be biking among trees and then seeing waves crash in front of you. From there the trail runs along Carmel Valley road, detours for a burrito with Amanda, then continues under the 5 and along some boring horse road that follows the 56. I found a fun side trail that went over into Penasquitos Canyon, and had fun in there getting to school. Rode back home on Miramar road, after about 5 hours of biking I was pooped.

I'm planning to have a day that I'll start at the start of the sea-to-sea trail and ride it as far as I can in half a day, and then back. Probably not until after the race.

[Link] Map of San Diego sea-to-sea trail.

Today I got a new seatpost in the mail, a Thomson Elite Setback 31.6x410mm. Compare to my last seatpost (stock) it's longer, which is the crucial point because I had my last seatpost far above the max line, risking damage to the frame. The bit of setback expands the cockpit of the bike which is helpful for me because this bike is a size or two small for me. It's also one of the lightest and strongest seatposts on the market, and for $70 a great value. This is my forever seatpost.

Tonight I'll be taking Penasquitos to a school by black mountain to take a test. I'll be scoping out black mountain to possibly be riding miner's ridge tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, Ciao!

mojave pics

2008-03-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

My adoration of rocks can be seen at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/greencow/MojaveSpringEquinox2008
Ciao!

spring break woo

2008-03-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

mar 12-13: planted garden.

mar 13: left san diego, camped south of big sur at kirk creek.

mar 14: drove to santa cruz, had coffee at one of maia's old hangouts, camped at big basin.

mar 15: drove to maia's dad's house, played rock band and super smash bros brawl at rollie's pad just a couple miles away.

mar 16: hiked quicksilver with maia and her family (paulo, trilby, ryan), had my first home-made vegan birthday cake in years.

mar 17: my birthday! drove to san francisco in the morning, awesome breakfast at herbivore, walked around lower haight, then upper haight, then castro while maia was in a yoga class with her old yogi. met jerry back in the haight, had a few beers and pizza at escape from new york. camped out in the city.

mar 18: drove to cole valley and had bagel and coffee in another of maia's old hoods. took maia to the airport. drove to jerry's in daly city.

mar 19: late start to annadel state park in santa rosa, but we a good 2-3 hour loop, the most technically difficult climbs and fast descents i've ever been on. wonderful fun which my bike handled superbly. good but expensive burrito after. drove toward mendocino and camped out on the way.

mar 20: drove to mendocino and explored the blowhole, a hole in the ground that you have to repel into by a rope with a little beach and a tunnel to the ocean. scenic drive down the coast and back to sf.

mar 21: feeling a bit sick. mostly relaxed.

mar 22: drove 7 hours to mojave, coming from sf to mojave for my first time was different, the 58 east of bakersfield is a nice drive, big rolling green hills with big rock outcroppings sprouting from the hills. arrived a bit after sunset about the same time as rollie and herany. shasha and mark had been there all day. carl and amanda and dustin and tim and a few other people had come up from san diego, amanda had a nice shade structure setup with christmas lights, black light and glowy art bopping around. danced and felt the vibe. slept 2 hours.

mar 23: hanging out in mojave, biked around the desert for the first time. riding on the 'roads' wasn't too hard, but i was exploring dunes, where the landscape would be soft and you can see where the washes are where the sand is so soft the bike just sinks, so you've gotta go through those perpendicular. the softer the sand the more effort it takes, slower you go, and turning means sinking. drove home, ate yummy dinner and slept 14 hours.

2008-02-29T11:47:00.001-08:00

here's the garden plot as it was as maia and i begin tending to it. overgrown with weeds, nice pathways and fence, good soil. it's going to be fun!

Too

2007-11-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

Twos

2007-11-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

Two fat tire trucks within two blocks on tuesday.

Adventures in San Diego

2007-10-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Greetings internet travelers,

I've lost my main adventure drive: my mountain bike, and with funds running low, I've decided to move to safer havens among family and friends in San Diego. The adventures change to job searching and posts will wane further once school kicks in again. This blog will have some changes coming on soon to reflect the diversity of interests available with a more stable living situation. I will be biking again, but exercises in music and language and science and philosophy are going to get more focus here soon. I expect even a name change will be in order. Stay tuned.

Tranquila

2007-10-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

Hi. on a ride in some los altos park on my burner bike: tranquila. She's a rusty old single speed cruiser, but she rolls alright. Lucky loo.

pilfered

2007-10-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

On Saturday afternoon 10/13, while I was costume shopping with friends visiting from San Diego, my van was broken into through the same wing window that was broken before, and my bike and laptop in it's backpack were stolen. I had overestimated the safety of the area where I had parked, what I thought were houses were actually closed businesses across the street. Leaving the van parked on a street of closed businesses, even with my bike hidden inside the van, was a mistake. The neighborhood looked clean and quiet, but a quiet street is not the place to leave valuables unattended, residential suburbs and even the college campus were safer because of the foot traffic. There will always be that risk though, this could have happened at the college, I've been flirting with disaster having this fairly valuable equipment with relatively low security on it whenever I'm away from the van. I won't get another expensive mountain bike until I'm either renting a room or going on a bike trip again. Hopefully that will be very soon, biking is just the stress reducer I need for such stressful events as bike theft =/ my laptop I am not as concerned with, it was running badly, although I just ordered a video card to fix that =P but the data was mostly backed up. I suppose I'll find a replacement on craigslist soon. I'm going to work on my resume and look for that now. Bleh.

Sunset at funston

2007-10-05T18:34:00.001-07:00

Fun at funston

2007-10-05T18:26:00.000-07:00

Todays adventure has been playing Zelda:the phantom hourglass for the nintendo ds at fort funston. This game is awesomesauce. i biked pogonip/ucsc for hours yesterday, then owned a precalc quiz. I have a programming job interview on tues. Going good!

Another day in the life of..

2007-10-01T20:30:00.001-07:00

Hello there. Spent last night in big basin. Oh the place i biked a few days ago is called pogonip. this morning i biked big basin and successfully jumped that fateful bump that landed me in the hospital 9 weeks ago. Woot! street camping los altos now

Santa cruz mountains

2007-09-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

Spent the last few hours biking around this trail area near uc santa cruz. Most amazing challenging singletrack evar! the pic is a log jump wee there were alot of those but this was the biggest. Tata.

Wilder ranch

2007-09-29T15:53:00.001-07:00

Just finished riding a bit of wilder ranch near santa cruz. cowboy loop was a tough singletrack climb studded with horse droppings. Started e.something loop which was a fireroad climb. a hole through a barbed wire fence was a fun freeride.

computer woes

2007-09-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

Hello, my laptop has degraded furter, now going only as high as 640x480 in 4 bit color. The screen is covered in alternating cyan, magenta, yellow and all the rest lines. I'll get back to you.

China camp day roundup

2007-09-16T18:56:00.001-07:00

Second china camp run complete. I am feeling great. fat tire and lentils mm. will be heading back to san fran tomorrow to see the new pornographers play. Very excited. Gnight=)

I

2007-09-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

I snorted electrolyte powder off my glove earlier. The only benefit was a burning sensation. Halfway through backwards china camp run.

Welcome to blog!

2007-09-16T14:59:00.001-07:00

I found the secret spot. Back to china camp. Toodles.

Sudden

2007-09-16T12:32:00.001-07:00

Sudden Oak Death, SARS of the plant world.

2007-09-16T11:41:00.001-07:00

China camp

2007-09-16T11:39:00.001-07:00

I am under the shade of a squat oak with a pink ribbon when a british family comes walking by. There is a mother and three kids 4g on a big wheel 6b with training wheels 8b on a slightly large bike the mother is walking and helping them along thereIs controversely a dog with them she chooses a steep climb for them to walk up their bikes and i hear her answer that they wouldnt zoom down unfortunately she was considerate not to take them on the singletrack this is china camp ceterall

Blog me

2007-09-16T01:08:00.001-07:00

Tonight i write by candlelight

The Adventures Continue

2007-09-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

Greetings! This is Bryan, a.k.a. greencow. This will be the start of my online log of my travels. I am already well into my adventures, so I'll briefly summarize how I got to where I am now, and perhaps revisit recent adventures later.

Since April of 2007 I've been living in a 1984 Volkswagen Westfalia Vanagon. I started in San Diego, and in July I moved to the San Francisco bay area. On my first weekend up here I crashed on my bike in Big Basin state park (SP) and spent the month of August recovering at a room I rented in the woods near Felton.

Almost 7 weeks later now and I'm hiking again, almost ready to get back to biking.