My SoCal-ed Life

Biking down the coast

After a long week in the Midwest, I needed me some real California. It was time to head back to the beach

My friends and I decided to rent bikes in Santa Monica and ride down the coast

It was a great ride, reminding me a lot of biking on the boardwalk in Ocean City.

We made a few stops a long the way, like at the Venice beach skate park

And muscle beach to show off all my kickbox training

It was such a nice relaxing day. Sometimes I forget to slow down and take chill days

Midwest business trip

My job sends to some exotic places. Mexico, Ohio, Maryland....and Minnesota.

Yup, this week I Was sent out to the great mid-west for the first time

Luckily I was with my engineer, Tina, and we spent our drive through the corn trying to explore. We found many fascinating things

Like the largest collection of windmills

They had ones from South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and many others! 37 in total

The worlds biggest peace pipe (in pipestone, MN where they are made)

We drove on some dirt roads

Saw some "big towns"

Made a wrong turn and ended up in Iowa

Where we found...hay

And corn

So much corn

And then after a successful day of making one of my new products...we got to go BACK through the corn fields to South Dakota

Where we spent the night in Sioux Falls. We even got to see the Sioux Falls

The mid west lived up to expectations, mainly because it was full of corn and kit much else.

New friends and Malibu

So sadly most of my friends have moved on to new jobs across the country, but luckily the new group of friends has appeared in Bakersfield!

We decided to celebrate their arrival by doing the classic Califnoria trip of going to Malibu

It was a perfect beach day, with big waves

Classic Califnoria sunsets

And all the other beachy things

After a day of beaching with the girls, on Sunday I did a day of tubing down the mighty Kern with the boys

When it's 115 and the water is 65, it's kind of a perfect day

It was surprising how much water there was, and the rapids were crazy!! Better than on the east cost for sure.

But with all this craziness going on, all I really needed was to float

I'm excited for my new friends. They have a lot to live up to if they want to keep up with me and weekending!

Richmond

So I went from beautiful, perfect Hawaii....to Maryland and Virginia. I had to go back to the east coast for a trial. Luckily, two of my friends had just moved to Virginia, so I got to go see them!

We went out in Richmond Virginia, which was pretty fun. Lots of country music.

The next day we explored the city. First stop...the White House of the confederacy

We took in a lot of history of the civil war. The coolest was they had all the flags surrendered at the Battle of Gettysburg.

It was a nice day out, so we traveled over to Belle island, which was an awesome park in the middle of the city

There was a lot of abandoned stuff to explore

And then we went to the confederacy graveyard to see all the Southern general's graves.

Richmond was a surprisingly cool city. It was a good, random trip and another place off my to do list!

Volcanos in Hawaii!

Luckily I had one day on the mainland in Hawaii, so I decided to take an all day tour of the island, along with a trip to volcanos national park!

First stop was a Kona Coffee farm

I drank coffee made from a 100 year old tree, which is pretty cool. But I was more fascinated by the pineapples

Next we did some driving on the coast, and I found more turtles sleeping in the sun

But I was all about the volcano park. First up was checking out the steam vents

Then the lava tubes

They were more fun to swim through though.

And last but not least, the active volcano!

It was so cool to see the lava bubbling and spitting up. As it got darker, it got even more awesome!

Overall, a great day trip and saw some things I've never seen.

The next day I flew home, and I was very upset to have to return to the real world

Okay, I am behind on posting again. REALLY behind. But I don't even remember that last time I slept, let alone taken the time to sit down and put all my thoughts together.

I don't even know where to begin with my hawaii trip. It was easily the most amazing week of vacation I have ever taken. It was exciting going somewhere I've never been, without no one but myself.

And most exciting was that this was my home for the week...the Kona Aggressor II (no one told me what happened to the first one.

The boat was a 85 foot catamaran that had 14 passengers and 6 crew. It's first cruise was February 1992! We cruised up and down the coast of the Big Island (Kona) searching for the best diving.

In total I did 25 dives, so there is a lot of things I could talk about (thats around 25 hours in the water!!) The coolest things I saw were.....

1. The Manta Rays. It's impossible to describe how awesome these gentle giants were. Basically we sat on the ocean floor at night and shined out lights up, attracting the plankton. The plankton then attracted the enormous mantas! They had around a 15-20 foot "wingspan". I saw one that was easily the size of my car.

While they look scary, they are totally harmless. One gave me a little slap to the face as it went by, but otherwise they just floated on by.

2. Turtles! The whole reason I went to hawaii was to swim with turtles. And I was not disappointed. I saw at least one turtle every day. I even got to swim with one for about 10 minutes. We also saw a giant sea turtle, which our dive master estimated was over 100 years old!

3. Fireworks on the boat: I was on the boat on 4th of july, and we celebrated by shooting fireworks off the boat. It was very amazing to have our own private show!

4. The open water and all the fishes! I spent a lot of time just floating along taking it all in. We saw millions of fish, of every color. I have hundreds of pictures, and I can't fit them all in one blog.

5. A hammerhead shark!!! I didn't get a picture of him because I saw him on a dive I didn't have my camera. My dive buddy and I were just hanging out below the boat when he swam by. Luckily he didn't bother us!!!

The other great part of the trip was the people. It was a very diverse group, but we all loved diving. Everyone else was very experienced, so I learned a lot from them.

My favorite person was my dive buddy, Ansley. She was taking a gap year between high school and college and spending her time traveling the world. It was nice having someone similar in age to me, and we both were looking for the same creatures on dives.

I couldn't have asked for a better vacation (I think I said that already) The only problem was that it was too short. Can't wait for my next diving vacation!!