Road Trip!

I'm behind, again, on blog posts. Busy at work, busy weekend, and behind on the zzzzzz's. I'll knock some out here real quick though -- speed blogging style. For those who don't know, speed blogging means: no editing at all, no thought, just straight from mind through fingers to keyboard, no pausing, no stopping, and usually means little coherent thought formation process. Also means very little to no backspacing -- my normal writing style consists of of lots of backspacing. I'm a good in-action editor, editing while writing. I do a lot of that. But not when speed blogging!

One other thing about speed blogging is it usually means really long, really wordy, really boring blog posts. So be it. Read at your own risk.

ROAD TRIP! Selin and I road tripped down to LA this last weekend. Andy C's bday, the big 2-8, so headed down south to ring it in with him. And yeah I won't lie, also to surf some warm water south swell. Gotta keep it honest here. So we got Friday off, and headed out around 10 or so on Friday morning. Loaded up the Yaris road warriormobile with the 6'2 Kirkshapes fish, my 3/2 wetsuit, which I was really hoping to not use (and didn't, but maybe should've), a few changes of clothes...and a box of cereal. Quaker Oat Squares. That's one of my favorite cereals.

Wow, Showgirls is on VH1 right now. It is unbelievable how unbelievably BAD this movie is. I'm watching it just not believing how terrible this acting is so far. But I can't stop watching it for just that very same reason. Damn you VH1!

Road trip. One good thing about not doing drugs very often is that, when I do do them, they really work! I'm talking about caffeine people. Selin insisted on an Egg McMuffin to start her road trip, so who was I to argue. I complemented my McMuffin with a big cup of coffee...and wow that thing had me WIRED for a solid 5 hours after. No dozing off from this driver. Crazy that stuff, it really is a drug. I challenge you every day coffee drinkers, give it up for a while and see what happens. It's a drug that your body and your mind becomes dependent on...just like any other drug. Moderation is key. And yes, sister Maddy, I'm talking about you here. I know you are NINETEEN years old, but that stuff just isn't good for you.

We cruised all the way down to Ventura and stayed in a Pricelined hotel in Oxnard for the night. I went to check out the surf at Ventura fairgrounds but didn't get in, wasn't that much to get excited about and kept the missus company instead. We bought Batman tickets in advance, went to downtown Ventura, walked around and had dinner, and then watched Batman. Good movie, dark, and a little pretentious and overbearing at times, have a little fun, but that wasn't what this Batman was about, and it was done well, really well, for what it was wanting to do.

Wow, Showgirls has gone from bad to worse...she is now trying to dance. And is terrible. What is this actress's name again? the main character, Saved By the Bell fame? This movie was career suicide. Enough Showgirls sidenotes.

Saturday morning woke up early and drove back to Ventura fairgrounds again. Was a lot of hype around south swell for this weekend, but in reality I think it turned out to be a bit of a bust. At least it wasn't hitting Ventura fairgrounds much, at least not Saturday morning. But there were still waves, of the slow mushy variety...but it looked fun and I'd come all that way to surf so that's what I was going to do. Despite the fact that of the maybe 100 people in the water, only TWO of them were not wearing wetsuits, I decided 2 is better than zero so put on my 2/1 rashguard top thing and paddled out. It was cold.

But surfing w/ no wetsuit is amazing. Incredible what dropping those maybe 6 or 7 pounds will do to your paddling and quickness out there...well worth the (slight) shivering. Anyways as mentioned above the surf wasn't that exciting, in fact all in all a pretty forgettable session, other than the no wetsuit part. I caught some lefts, I caught some rights, I linked a couple sections, especially on my last wave where the left I was taking met up with this sideshore wave and I joined the sideshore wave and rode it all the way in...it was fun. It's always fun to surf a new spot, add it to the list.

Around 10:30 I went back to the hotel, showered, woke up Selin (who whenever we go on vacations always winds up getting lots of sleep, and is really well rested and energized. Myself, on the other hand, always wake up at the crack of dawn to go surf, and then I get back and it's time to go out and do something with the day when really, honestly, I'd kind of just like to take a nap. But that is the price you pay, whoever said this surfing thing was gonna be easy?) and we hit the road for the remaining hour or so drive to LA. In LA, we pricelined another hotel, and wound up staying about halfway in between Santa Monica and West Hollywood, location worked out pretty good and the hotel was really nice. Hyatt Century City I think. Recently remodeled rooms, really hip. Trendy. And a great deal, Priceline, nicely done. To get there, we drove down PCH. 1st time driving that stretch of the famed HW 1, pretty stretch of road, can't compare to our NorCal counterpart but nonetheless some good scenery to take in. We checked a few spots along the way, in the end wound up at Malibu, hoping to run into some celebrities. But there were none, no Matthew Mcconaghey in the water, just a lot of dudes noseriding their 9'0's on the inside and a lot of dudes on 6'0s out in front of the lagoon. I joined the 6'0s in the lagoon, and actually had a really fun session....again no wetsuit, but the extra hour of driving made a world of difference, water was really comfortable, couldn't ask for much more. Swell had filled in a bit more and was hitting Malibu better, so surf was actually pretty fun, nice, fast, walled up rights, pretty punchy waves, a whole lot of fun on the 6'2. I felt I surfed it pretty good, got a lot of waves, had sort of an in between spot where I could catch a lot of waves and not be in the thick of the really tight, really competitive crowd at the main peak. It was a lot of fun, and yep, another spot on the list...Malibu...California Classic.

Andy's bday was a good time Saturday night, dinner, some drinks, and a bit of the Hollywood club scene...Goa. Fancy place, but is it really that much different than any club anywhere else? I guess I've never just been that impressed by the club scene. Too cool for school. LA clubs seem just like any other club anywhere else, just with a lot more people standing around in front. But it was nice to be connected, DD and friends hooked it up and we had a table and got to go right in, VIP, happy birthday Andy.

Sunday we slept in, hung around Melrose Avenue for a bit, Selin checked out some shops, and we made the trek up I5 to home. Yeah I had another coffee on the way, and it worked just as well as it did on the way down...better watch myself, on my way to coffee junkie status!

Bedtime, alarm set for 5:45 Linda Mar dawn patrol.