Walking San Luis Obispo

Walking Zombies

2007-12-24T00:17:00.000-08:00

There are no zombies in this blog, and there's a good reason for it. I've never seen a zombie before. =)

In fact, I still haven't, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case you were wondering....

Getting back on track, I have not hiked any additional streets since my last entry. Last time I checked my map, there were about 25 streets left to be hiked, most of them far outside of the city limits. I decided to take a closer look at the streets left that are within the city limits, and was surprised to realize that just two are left. Two. One, two. Chorro Street and South Higuera. That's it.

My original goal was to hike every legal, publicly accessible streets within the city limits of San Luis Obispo, and I'm just two streets away from that goal. Should I write the mayor and ask for some sort of award? Should I start a Thru-Hikers of San Luis Obispo club? Should I call out the media to film me walking down the last street in San Luis Obispo?

Not sure what I can get together with about a week left in town, but I intend to hike those two streets before I leave. =)

In other news, for those who kept up with my movie roll in I Know Who Killed Me, at long last, I finally got to watch the movie. The reviews for the movie were terrible, but if you ask me, the critics were much too kind. This movie is perhaps the worst, god-awful movie I have ever suffered through in my entire life. Two hours of my life, vanished away forever. Amanda even said that the movies she was in were pretty bad, but nothing compares to the train wreck that Lindsay Lohan put together. The only thing I can be thankful for is at least my name did not make it into the credits.

The scenes filmed in San Luis showed up pretty much exclusively in the first 15 minutes or so of the movie. If you are going to watch this movie despite my best warnings not to, for heaven's sake, stop once the SLO scenes are done.

Even with a DVD and pausing capabilities, I did not find myself in the background. That's not to say I wasn't there--the scenes were surprisingly dark. I say surprisingly because they sure spent a heck of a lot of money and effort lighting up the stadium like daylight to make it so dark in the movie that barely anything was visible. For all the footage they shot, mere seconds made it into the film.

Only two shots were locations that I clearly recognized. The first was of Madonna Mountain and Bishop's peak through the slats of the second story of the administration building at the high school. I recognize the scene well because that's the same scene I had everyday in Mr. Frick's class. (He was my American History teacher.) I have no idea if he's still at the school or not anymore. He could be retired by now. *shrug* Only students from the high school would have recognized that particular view, though. They tried to make it an artsy kind of shot with the slats sliding by, but I found it rather distracting myself.

The other recognizable shot was of the Fremont Theater, which was actually referred to by name in the movie which surprised me. The city name was changed, but they used the actual name of the theater. It's a beautiful movie theater built in the 60s or so, lit up with neon lights and is wonderfully beautiful. They filmed those scenes at night, which is the best time to see the theater lit up in lights, and it did look beautiful in the movie. Probably one of the few good decisions they made while creating the movie was to include the Fremont in a background scene.

The scene filmed at City Hall I recognized only because I was there when they were filming it. Nothing from the background jumped out at me, and I probably would not have recognized it as being city hall if I hadn't known previously about the filming there. Downtown San Luis Obispo was equally unrecognizable, and I didn't even see Bubblegum Alley in the background. A sad, sad thing to have cut. *shaking head* Well, I did recognize that tree that Lindsay hides behind, the one when she looked me direct in the eye. You can see that gleam in her eye, starring across the street at me, but I'm off screen and out of view. The tree is recognizable, but again, if I didn't watch it being filmed, I wouldn't have known which tree downtown it was off the top of my head. You could probably find it if you wandered around long enough with a picture of it to compare to, though.

In any case, I consider it rather a relief that my face was nowhere recognizable in what may perhaps be the worst movie of all time. How I got mixed up in that fiasco, I may never know. Do yourself a favor, however, and avoid this movie at all costs. It's terrible, and you don't even get to see my face in it!

Around Madonna Mountain

2007-12-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

I actually walked a bit two days ago, but have neglected to post about it since I've been so busy with Atlas Quest. (Have you enjoyed the new stats I've made available?)

But for completeness, I should point out that I hiked around Madonna Mountain (a.k.a. Cerro San Luis) on Friday. It was a beautiful day for a hike, and the scenery along the way was pretty nice as well, catching the first hint of green grass growing in the light of the setting sun.

It would be a phenomenal walk if it wasn't for the fact that cars go whizzing by at insane speeds while walking along the shoulder of the road. The scenery is there, but the peace and quiet is not.

The official hiking began when Foothill Boulevard changed into West Foothill Boulevard (I bet most locals didn't even realize the street name officially changes into West Foothill--I didn't before I started my thru-hike of San Luis!). I followed West Foothill to the intersection with Los Osos Valley Road, then followed Los Osos Valley Road to Madonna Road and back into town to complete the loop. At Madonna Road, the official hiking stopped since I'd already done that section before.

I also stopped on West Foothill just long enough to hike Blue Granite Lane. I was tempted to skip it--this section of road was well outside of the city limits and went off the side of the map I had. The road was lengthy, but only the first 48 steps were publicly accessible. The rest was gated off as part of a private driveway. I ended up hiking it, but it almost feels like it's not worthy of being counted. It's not in the city, it's off my map, and there's almost nothing to it.

I did skip a few other small streets at the far end of West Foothill, though, after feeling guilty about including Blue Granite Lane. They too were outside of the city and beyond the edges of my map. Heck, most of West Foothill I wouldn't have included except that it's the main artery between the Cal Poly area and the Laguna Lake area. The quickest route between the two areas of town involves going outside of it! If it wasn't such a huge artery between parts of the city, though, I wouldn't have felt inclined to hike it at all.

So, there you have it. Three more streets and several more miles done.

Total Streets: 576
Total Miles: 159.19

Need a Limo?

2007-12-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

Today I started my street walking on Fernandez Road and Fernandez Lane. Most people probably don't even realize these streets exist. You actually have to drive up a highway onramp before veering off at the last second to get the streets. I had to dodge some traffic to get here myself. I didn't have a car, and there are no sidewalks to these streets.

Then I walked over to Fontana Avenue, and along the way noticed a limo parked on the side of the road. I can't be sure because it was dark (a nighttime jaunt!), but I think it was purple. There was a for sale sign on it, for just under $8,000. If you're interested, let me know. Where else can you get a purple limo for just eight thousand bucks?!

But I digress.... I hiked up and down and around a couple of neighborhoods. The first included Fontana Avenue, Loma Bonita Drive, Los Feliz Court, and Los Alamos Court. Half those streets were actually blocked off by yellow tape because they had been just been repaved. It was weird, kind of like nobody lived in any of the homes around there. Not a single car was to be seen. Not in any driveways, none on the street. It was a world without cars.

The next neighborhood I hit was the one that most people who take their driver's test end up doing three-point turns and showing off one's driving skills, including myself. In case you're curious, I didn't pass my driver's test the first time out, but I'm happy to report that I hit no kids or dogs during my test either. =) What else did they want from me? *shrug*

Anyhow, the streets of this second neighborhood included Margarita Avenue, Alicita Court, Via Ensenada, Via la Paz, Via San Blas, Camellia Court, Estelita Court, Calle Jazmin, Calle Lupita, Calle Malva, and Lirio Court.

Then, rather than be the responsible adult that I usually am and walk back to my mom's house using legal routes, I ducked through a closed fenced onto what was very obviously private property and hiked over the ridge that was in my way instead of around it along Tank Farm (a scary walk!) or around the other side along South Street (waaay out of my way). I'd never cut directly through this private property before and wasn't really sure how all the roads and trails intersected back there, but I found my way through without a hitch and called it a night. No arrests made. =)

Total Streets: 573
Total Miles: 155.66

On another note, for those of you wondering just how much longer my 'thru-hike' of San Luis will continue, I predict... not much longer. I counted up the streets on my map that I have not crossed off yet, and only 31 are left. A few of those are actually WAY out of town and I'm wondering if it's even worth nabbing them, but I'm so close to crossing off every street on the map, including those outside of the city limits, I might have to just to satisfy my need for completeness. I'm even thinking about going back to hike Country Lane which, if any of the neighbors see me, might involve a visit by the police. Hard to claim I couldn't see those huge no trespassing signs, but still.... it's ON MY MAP, officer! ;o)

And a few of those streets left to be hiked are major thoroughfares through the city, which means they're very long streets. Just hiking one or two of them will likely be all I get in a full day of walking. So there's still quite a bit to do, but I'm definitely closer to the end than the beginning!

Shop 'Till You Drop!

2007-12-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

I hate shopping. I really do. It's an annoying little chore, and today was no different. I started off by walking to a nearby gas station and used their ATM to get $20. No fees, no problem. Just testing my new card, though. I didn't actually need any cash at the moment. =)

Then I walked over to... oh, wait a minute. I better not tell you that.... that'll be a surprise. ;o) I did stop somewhere else where I purchased exactly 102 items of a certain thing, but since that's a surprise for many folks on Atlas Quest, it's hush hush. So hush.

Then I walked over to Costco, where I splurged for a churro, a slice of the combo pizza, and a berry smoothie. Yum, yum. I also went inside the store and looked around a bit. I looked at digital cameras. I looked at books. I looked at DVDs. I looked and looked and bought precisely nothing.

So then I walked across the parking lot to Circuit City and looked at their digital cameras. I really wanted a camera that took higher resolution photos than my current camera, specifically so I can turn the pictures I take into calendar photos that will fill the whole page.

Oh, the cameras were slick. First I gazed lovingly over the smallest, tiniest little ones I could find. They probably weighed a tenth of what my old camera weighed--and that's a big deal when you have to carry it on your back for thousands of miles. Then I realized.... They were kind of too small. Where did the batteries go? *slapping forehead* They used rechargeable batteries, with a recharger that plugs into a wall socket. That's a problem for me, because there won't be a lot of wall sockets where I'm going....

I needed a camera that took regular old batteries. Old fashioned, perhaps, but they work and are easily replaceable in any trail town. Those AA batteries are best--they're everywhere. So I started looking for cameras that took two AA batteries, like my old digital camera had, except there was absolutely nothing to mark how each of the cameras were powered. Did they think nobody would be interested in this critical little fact?

You'd think looking at the display cameras, it would be obvious. Except they've attached the display cameras to a base that covers the power source.

So I asked one of the employees, how can I tell which of the many cameras available took AA batteries?

I think the question surprised her, and said it's pretty obvious if you looked at the display camera. (Until she tried it herself and she had the same problem I did!) Then she asked, "Are batteries really that important?"

"Uhhh.... Yes."

"Can I ask why?"

So I told her about my upcoming hike from Key West to Springer Mountain, a journey of nearly 1,800 miles and I didn't expect many wall sockets along the way to power up.

Now that she knew I actually had a reasonable explanation for my unusual request, she became much more helpful suggesting a couple of cameras, and I finally decided to get the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S700 digital camera. 7.2 mega pixels of pure bliss. It's not much smaller than my existing camera, but it has the resolution I need, and still has the 3x optical zoom. And it runs on two AA batteries. I also bought a 2 gig memory card for it. That should fit my picture-taking needs.

Outside of the store, I pulled out the camera, inserted batteries (included with the camera!), and figured out how to click a couple of pictures. I couldn't get the memory card in, but the camera has 24 megs of space which was good for a dozen pictures or so. There was nothing wrong with the memory card, but it was packaged in one of those impossible-to-open plastic cases and I didn't have a knife, scissors, or any other sharp objects to free it from that plastic prison fortress. It would have to wait until I got back to my mom's house, but at least I could still take pictures with the 24 megs of memory already on the camera.

Now I planned to loop around back to Madonna Road the long way to get some more street walking in. I walked this section of Los Osos Valley Road--there's a LOT more walking left to do on this road, it's not done by a long shot--to Auto Park Way where you'll find more cars for sale than anywhere else in the city. I'd only been back on this street once before, delivering flowers for Valentines Day a few years back. I had a couple of days free and thought it might be fun to deliver flowers for a couple of days, and it was FUN--I don't think I've seen so many people who've been so happy to see me. =)

Then I headed down to Calle Joaquin. One end of the street has a AAA office, so I went in and picked up a map for Georgia and Alabama. (You know WHY!) And then followed the road to the other end at the top of a small hill at the south end of town where KSBY has their building. They're the fine folks who give the news at 6 and 11 each evening on NBC. They also do some morning news as well, but I don't think I've ever seen it then. Since I was up there, though, I decided to drop in and ask if they gave tours of the place.

The lobby was FILLED with toys. Looked like a toy store in there. Turns out, they're at the end of a toy drive for children in the area. The woman manning the front desk (or would she have been "womanning" the front desk?) told me that yes, they do give tours, then gave me the phone number and e-mail address of the person to contact for tours. They probably won't give me a private tour, but more likely would try to lump me in with another group of people. Hey, no problem!

I took some pictures from the hill and their array of satellite dishes then headed back down to Los Osos Valley Road. Need to make sure the camera works okay, right? =)

I stopped at Quiznos for a free sandwich again. I donated blood again last Monday, so I had another coupon burning a hole in my pocket. After my pigging out at Costco, I can't say I was actually hungry, but I likely would be getting hungry before my street walking was done, so filling up now (for free!) seemed like a good use of my time. I also used the time to rest my feet (which had not had more than a five minute rest since I left my mom's house) and read the instruction manual for my camera.

Then it was off to hike more streets including: Long Street (finished this street--already hiked it partly before), Hind Street, Meissner Lane, Granada Dr, part of South Higuera, Empleo Street, Bonetti Street, Sueldo Street, Empresa Street, Prado Road, Access Road, and Elks Lane.

Then I called it a day and headed back.

Total Streets: 556
Total Miles: 153.46

PS. In case you're wondering, that first picture was taken from Meissner Lane. Shocking to think that a scenic farm is so close to the middle of San Luis! =) Enjoy it while it lasts. I have no doubt that it'll eventually be developed. Perhaps not for decades, but it'll happen.....

Good Doggy, NOT!

2007-12-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

Did some more street walking today, including Los Ranchos Road, Country Club Road, Alta Mira Lane, White Oak Lane, Countryside Lane, Lewis Lane, Madbury Court, Charles Drive, Kathy Court, Joan Place, Peters Place, Gary Place, Gallant Place, Marshall Way, Anneford Circle, Glennheim Court, Club View Lane, Glenview Lane, and finished up the section of Broad Street I hadn't done before.

The title of the post refers to an incident that happened at the end of one of those streets.... Don't remember which one it was. They all tend to blur together after awhile, and I didn't make a note of which street it was. Oh, Joan Place. That's it. I think that's it, at least. I'm 90% sure that's the street.

The street is short, heads uphill, and turns shortly to a dead end. I was disappointed when I turned the corner and saw a few kids playing at a house almost exactly at the end of the road. Not that I don't like kids or anything, but to complete the street, I needed to walk to the VERY end, which would be relatively close to the kids. And knowing there were kids about, lurking, suspicious adults would likely be about as well, and sure enough, she was sitting out front playing with another kid. The street ends in a circle making it easy for cars to turn around without a three-point turn, so I walked towards the left side of the street, away from the kids, the mom, and a large, ugly dog, but I was absolutely going to walk to the end of that street.

The dog got up and started barking at me--not an uncommon occurrence, actually. Happens every time you walk around town, and usually they're on leashes or behind fences so you can laugh at them as they pretend to be ferocious. =) This dog actually was on a leash, but a LONG leash that stretched most of the way across the dead end parking lot, and it starting coming after me, barking it's head off. The leash didn't look at all that secure to me either, but at least it was something. The woman got up, walking towards the dog. Not exactly encouraging it, but not exactly trying to stop it either.

I reached the end of the street, and the woman reached the dog grabbing it but watching me. I pulled out my little notebook, checked my pedometer, and wrote down the number of steps I took on the street. (209, assuming it was Joan Place, which I think it was.) I can only imagine what the woman thought watching me do this. I was actually wearing pretty nice clothes too, with a button up shirt and a collar. Not exactly homeless-looking or threatening or anything, but it had to make her wonder what I was writing down in my little notebook. Perhaps notes about her dog, to report it later? Or maybe something more sinister, such as the number of kids in the yard and the fact that the house is protected by a dog. She didn't say anything to me, though, so I smiled and waved but said nothing in return. =)

Then I turned around and headed back down the street. As I left, though, I heard her telling the dog, "Good watch dog!" Which really annoyed me. Good? That dog wanted to attack me for doing nothing more sinister than walking down a street! A good watch dog would respect property lines and learn not to go after everything walking by. A good watch dog will wake you up at night if someone is trying to break in. A good watch dog will be friendly until you say or do something that obviously is a threat to property or people. I wanted to turn around and tell her, "Stupid watch dog. Stupid!"

I hope that dog barks at a bird all night long. See how good she thinks he is then. =)

Total Streets: 543
Total Miles: 147.54

Another Good Day of Street Walking....

2007-12-09T18:57:00.000-08:00

Nothing too exciting to report today. No plane crashes, rocket launches, fires, or deaths or injuries. All-in-all, a beautiful day for walk. =)

Today's walking included a number of new streets that my map of SLO does not show. Several make up an otherwise undeveloped area east of the airport. In fact, those roads have cones across them blocking traffic from entering, but I, being on the mighty foot, disregarded the codes (none were on the sidewalks, after all!) and explored the new roads anyhow.

At the end of Prospect Road, I did something that's probably illegal, or at least should be, but there were no signs prohibiting it and they didn't take any measures at all to prevent it, so I did something I never did before. I climbed up to the top of a water tank. =) It's not completed yet, but the main structure looks finished. I looked through the holes in the side to get a gander inside--I've never been able to see the inside of a huge water tank like that. There's a ladder that went up (or down, I suppose, depending on one's perspective) the side of the tank. It didn't seem especially sanitary considering it's supposed to hold gobs and gobs of water. Mud had been tracked in at some point. But maybe that's normal. *shrug* I've never seen the inside of one of these things before.

Then I climbed up the ladder on the outside of the tank, up to the top, where I sat down and admired the view. There's a swinging guard on the bottom half of the ladder that covers the ladder when closed and blocks access to the upper half. It wasn't closed, though, nor locked down, just inviting anyone rambling by (such as myself) to climb to the top. I have little doubt once the area is developed and the tanks are in use they'll make such a careless mistake.

So that was the one slightly exciting thing I did.

The complete listing of streets I hiked include: Aerovista Place, Airport Drive, Aero Drive, Crestmont Drive, Caballeros Avenue, Machado Lane, Hacienda Lane, Ranchito Lane, Cabrillo Lane, Candelabra Place, Windmill Way, Edna Road, Kendall Road, Prospect Street, Morabito Place, Allene Way, and Farmhouse Road. (There's an actual, honest-to-goodness farmhouse at the end of that road!)

I didn't actually hike to the very end of Edna Road--it goes a long way out of town, so I stopped when I reached the point where it left the edge of the map. It's far outside of the city limits as it was, and there wasn't really much of anything beyond where I stopped.

Total Streets: 524
Total Miles: 141.91

And We Have Liftoff!

2007-12-08T20:09:00.000-08:00

What a day! What a productive day!

I decided to use the coupon I had for a free sandwich at Quiznos for lunch this afternoon. They gave it to me after I finished donating blood last Monday. I decided to redeem it at the Quiznos on South Higuera, which is a bit off my usual beaten path, but that's okay because there was a whole heck of a lot of streets in that area I had not yet hiked for my San Luis Obispo thru-hike.

The route I followed more-or-less was the one I originally planned to do last Monday until I learned about the runway expansion changing the streets in the area and I no longer knew what to expect. Now that I knew about the new road to connect between Tank Farm Road and Buckley, I would use that.

I finished up the northern half of Santa Fe Road--the southern half I finished last Monday. It used to be one long street. The extended runway chopped the road in half, however. One name, but now two streets. I also hit Clarion Court since it was in the area.

Then I crossed over to Buckley using Hoover Avenue before finishing the streets in the area including Rustic Way (a surprise street, since it was not on my map) and Esperanza Lane which had a sign in front saying there were "meat goats" for sale. If that is what I think it sounds like.... Do people eat goat meat? That's one I hadn't heard before.

Jespersen Road was something of a mystery to me. It was on my map, but just a tiny section of it before it ran under a box with the legend for the map, so I had absolutely no idea what was behind that box. Was the road short, or did it run on for miles? Was that the only road, or was the big box hiding a bunch of intersecting roads? I had no idea since I'd never traveled back there before.

It was a longish road, perhaps half a mile, but that was it. No intersecting roads to be hiked. One of the people coming out of their house watched me suspiciously. I waved and continued my hike, wondering if they were going to call the cops about my "suspicious" behavior. I don't think they get many people walking by this area.

Speaking of which.... I've been making a special point of trying to seem friendly by waving to people as I pass them in the hopes they don't stick the cops on me. There have been a series of daylight rapes in town by an unidentified man, so women in particular are likely to be more worried about my "suspicious" behavior than they normally might have been. I'd rather not alarm anyone if I can help it. =)

Fortunately, however, nobody is likely to suspect me of being a murderer since they arrested two people for a murder that happened three days ago now. At least I don't have to worry about people thinking I'm a murderer! A rapist is still on the loose, but I no known murderers are lurking in town anymore. None that aren't in jail, at least. A regular crime spree going on this week. *shaking head* Don't think rapes and murders are normal in San Luis. This is the third murder this year, and I'll have you know Seattle gets WAAAAY more than that every year. *nodding* Not sure how many rapes have happened this year (and most likely, a lot of them never get reported), but it's probably no worse than anywhere else you might visit. The daylight attacks by strangers along busy roads are rather usual, however, and has spotlighted the issue recently.

But I digress....

I finished up Buckley Road, then followed Vachell Lane and Venture Drive out to Quizmos where I ordered lunch and pulled out my map of San Luis to plan my plan of attack. I also started crossing off all the roads I already hiked from the road index. I couldn't find my last map with the streets already marked off that I had done, so I have a fresh, new map and the streets needed crossing out. Took me over an hour to get them all. Not many streets are left!

Then I continued my hiking on the side streets around South Higuera, starting with Suburban Road, Short Street, Cross Street, and Long Street. I kept my eyes open for a building housing TrueLink. I used to work at TrueLink when it was in a building on South Higuera, but after I left they moved offices to somewhere else in one of these sides streets near South Higuera. I couldn't remember the street name off the top of my head and never saw where the new offices were. Heck, I didn't even know if they were still in San Luis at all. But I kept my eyes open for them out of curiosity. Never found it, though.

I did, however, find an ostrich roaming behind a fence along Suburban. I had no idea there were ostriches there. (Or at least one ostrich--but there could have been others hiding for all I know!) I also walked up and down Suburban twice looking for a street named Horizon. It was on my map, but that road does NOT exist. I never found it, at least, and I walked that street twice looking for it!

Long Street really isn't that long, but it is longer than Short Street. I did not finish hiking Long Street, however, since it crossed Tank Farm Road where there are no stop signs or pedestrian crossings, and since I valued my life, decided not to dash across the busy road to the other side. I will complete Long Street another day, but I did get the section south of Tank Farm Road completed.

Then I hiked through a couple of neighborhoods including streets such as Perla Lane, Los Palos Drive, Vista Lane, El Mirador Court, Contenta Court, Encanto Lane, Los Verdes Drive, Villa Court, Del Sol Court, Linda Lane, Del Oro Court, Las Praderas Drive, Mariposa Drive, Chuparrosa Drive, Carissa, and Zaca Lane. Zaca Lane, I might add, is the only street in San Luis Obispo that starts with a Z. The Z section of my index is DONE! =)

Today was a big day in another way as well. After finishing Zaca, I had finished 28 streets and 7.61 official miles (not counting the backtracking at dead-ends, walking to Santa Fe Road, and such), I was pooped and almost ready to call it quits. It was nearly 5:00pm by this time, however, and I knew it would take me over an hour to walk back to my mom's house.

I stopped at a convenience store and bought a couple of snacks and a drink. I was going on a stakeout, and I was hungry. I needed sustenance.

I headed towards the railroad tracks where I knew of a nice overlook with a good view of the southern horizon. By the time I arrived, it was a little after 6:00 and quite dark. Without a flashlight, finding the small trail to the top of the lookout and not breaking an ankle on a road was a slight challenge, but I made it with no mishaps. I sat down on a rock, put on my jackets (it was getting chilly too!), then munched on Red Vines and drank Coke while waiting.

What was I waiting for? A rocket launch! Vandenberg Air Force Base is located probably 40 miles south of San Luis, as the crow flies, and they like to launch rockets from there over the Pacific Ocean. It doesn't happen every day, of course, but it's a regular launch site for satellites going into orbit. Usually, they launch rockets at horrible viewing hours, such as two or three o'clock in the morning when I don't want to stay up that late or don't want to get up that early. For this particular satellite, however, they needed to launch it within one minute of 6:31pm. They first attempted to launch it last Wednesday, but the launch was scrubbed due to high altitude winds. Thursday and Friday were busts as well due to general lousy weather and low-altitude winds. This evening, however, it was partly cloudy and did was not at all windy in town. The high-altitude winds might be there, but they would have been higher than the few clouds in the sky that seemed stationary. I hoped tonight would be the launch. I couldn't be certain having not watched the 5:00 news, but the stars seemed aligned, as it were.

So I sat on my little hill, with a sweeping view of the southern horizon, munching snacks and waiting for 6:31 to strike. My watch might be off by a few minutes, so I couldn't be sure exactly when the launch would happen, but it would be within five minutes of the time my watch showed. I was sure of that.

I waited. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. 6:31 came and went, and nothing. A minute or two later, however, I noticed a small glow on the horizon that I didn't remember being there before. The glow brightened noticeably, brighter than anywhere else along the horizon by a significant margin. It was the launch! YES! A few seconds later, an enormous bright light shot above the horizon, lighting up the sky. SWEET!

It only took about five seconds, rising fast, before it went behind one of the few clouds in the sky. I couldn't see the rocket anymore, but I could see that bright glow coming out from behind the cloud, then emerging again from the top of the cloud. Not quite as bright the first time around, but still significantly brighter than anything else in the sky.

The rocket went behind a second cloud and emerged again, dimming dark enough that it could have been mistaken for a plane at this point, but then I saw what looked like a dot of light drop off from the main dot that continued to go up, higher and higher. Could that be one of the stages of the rocket, completed and falling back to earth?

The rocket continued going up, though, and eventually went behind another cloud that finally obscured it for good. That was fine, though--there really wasn't much left to see anymore. It was too far away now.

Darn, it's fun to watch a rocket launch. Not your every day occurrence. =)

Then I walked back to my mom's house and typed up this blog entry. Oh, yeah, it's been a good day!

Total Streets: 507
Total Miles: 136.63

Another Day, Another Road

2007-12-04T18:28:00.001-08:00

When you're on a roll, you're on a roll! Today wasn't nearly so extensive as my last day of hiking--only three roads, and even then one of them doesn't really count.

I started with Fixilni Road, which has been teasing me by sitting in plain view on Johnson. I thought it was a new road. It didn't exist last year. No houses are yet built up on it. But alas, it turns out they just extended an existing street I had already hiked. I went head and hiked the new portion just for completeness, but the road has already been counted in my totals.

Then I hiked California Avenue. I had put this road off for months and months because I knew the north end of it was closed due to construction on the new football stadium at Cal Poly. I didn't want to hike it until I knew I could hike its entire length.... which is now!

The new stadium is a beaut. Completely unnecessary, in my humble opinion, but it is fresh, crisp, clean, and new. My high school graduation took place on this field. Call me old fashioned, but I feel college should be about learning--not sports. I'm always just a little bit saddened when I see millions of dollars spent on a new stadium that could have been spent on teachers or classrooms or computers or something more useful than a stadium.

The seating capacity for the stadium has increased dramatically. The bleachers actually rise directly over California Avenue--the reason the road was closed during construction.

Then I hit Orchard Street. Frankly, I have my doubts if this so-called street should even be included, but I worked so hard to get it in I will. =)

My first problem was finding the street. It's not one I was familiar with, and in fact only knew about because it was on my map as a short street connecting between California Avenue and Highland Drive. I kept my eyes open while walking along California, but saw nothing. Fine, I thought, I'll find the entrance on Highland instead.

The only thing I found there was an unlabled dirt road leading to a bunch of orange trees. That must be the road, I thought, because there was nothing else around that came close to being called a road.

I followed the dirt road... directly into a dead end. I could see California Avenue on the other side of a chain link fence with a 'no trespassing' sign. Hello? That's a public street on the other side! If anything, I felt like I was trapped on the wrong side of the fence.

Not wanting to walk back to Highland, I followed the orange trees deeper into the orchard. Until I reached a brick wall. Mustang Village was on the other side, but there was no access from where I was.

I had two choices, I figured. I could walk back the 789 steps to Highland Drive, or I could jump the seven or eight foot brick wall.

I decided to jump the wall. I squeezed my foot into a small hole near the base of the wall, pushed myself up, and swung my legs over.

Once I was on the top, looking down, I started having second thoughts about jumping down. What if I twisted an ankle when I landed or something? But it was too late--the drop down was the same on both sides. I had to jump down onto one side or the other, so I picked the direction I was headed and dropped.

Happily, no twisted ankles or bruised egos. =)

Now I'm downtown, writing my walking adentures on my PocketMail device, after completing 2 streets and 1.98 miles of street walking.

And the hiking continues....

2007-12-03T21:17:00.001-08:00

It's been quite some time since I did my last hike in San Luis, but that's mostly because I haven't been in San Luis much for most of the year. Now, however, that's where I'll be spending pretty much all of December, and--as I like to say--the hike must go on.

If it gets me a bit more conditioned for my upcoming thru-hike from Key West to Springer Mountain (nearly 1,800 miles), good for me. =)

Today I started by donating platelets, so I walked over to the blood bank where they took out all of my blood. Afterwards, I ate some cookies and fruit juice, and only then did I start my hiking. The blood bank is near the south end of town, so that's where my street walking took me.

My goal was to hike up Buckley Road to South Higuera, then hit the streets near that intersection until I tired of walking. Maybe even ride a bus back to the house because frankly, it's a long walk back and I hate walking down Tank Farm Road.

That plan went out the window almost immediately, though, when I bumped into one of my old Pizza Hut co-workers a block or two south of the blood bank--Jenny. (Hello, Jenny!) She told me that Sante Fe Road no longer went all the way through from Buckley to Tank Farm Road--a route I intended to turn into a loop the next time I donate blood next Monday. Santa Fe Road goes right next to the airport, and they extended the runaway across the old road. She also described some new streets in the area that were not on my map. This was unknown territory, and I wasn't sure if I could make a loop anymore. I decided to change my plans to use a loop if one existed (or backtrack if it didn't), then do my original hike along the entire length of Buckley next Monday depending on how today went. I was winging it!

I did start up Buckley Road, then hit pretty much every road it intersected until my feet felt like they were falling off. Stupid me, I forgot to bring water with me. They told me when I left the blood bank to drink lots of liquids and no strenuous exercise for 24 hours--I think they'd be very disappointed if they realized I was going for a four hour hike with no water immediately upon leaving them. =)

This area of town, just south of the airport, is technically not within the San Luis Obispo city limits, but it's close enough to count in my book. After all, the address on their mail still says San Luis Obispo as the city! But it's actually county property and not part of any city at all. Much of the area is farm and ranch land and largely undeveloped. Roads off of Buckley are as likely to be gravel as they are to be paved--which added to my winging it because my map only showed the paved roads. I've been out in this area perhaps twice in my life, and this is probably the area of town I know the least--and maps wouldn't help me out for much of the way!

At the same time, I was looking forward to exploring the area seeing as how unfamiliar I was with it. And, my gut instinct is that someday, most of it will eventually be developed and eventually added to the city of San Luis Obispo. Roads will get paved, farms and ranches will move away, shopping malls will be built. It seems kind of obvious. The land is flat, empty, and easily accessible, and largely unprotected. It might stay this way for years or decades to come, but eventually.... the growth of the city will spill out, and this is an easy place for it to spill out on. The east side of the city is blocked by the imposing Reservoir Ridge (a name I gave it--it has no official name so far as I know). Much of the land towards the north is mountainous. And another mountain chain blocks the west side of the city. To the south, though, it's flat and the most logical place for growth to go. There's still room towards the north for some development (which probably will happen too!), but it's the south where I think the long-term, large-scale growth will likely happen.

Which is sad--it's a nice area. Open creeks, cows mooing, and friendly people. One guy was practicing a golf swing while keeping a watching eye on a young kid driving a tracker. He said he was teaching him how to drive the tracker, and the kid was loving it!--but admitted, "Once he figures out he's doing work, he won't enjoy it anymore." =)

You'll find lots of horses out in this area as well. People in the city store them there, or take riding lessons from businesses here, or whatever else they do with businesses. I found what appeared to be the bus barn for the buses running the county-wide routes.

All of which was interesting to me, because I had no idea most of that stuff was there. =)

Ultimately, I walked down Hidden Springs Road, Thread Lane, Buttonwood Way, Mellow Lane, Angie Lou Lane, Davenport Creek Road, Ranchos Oaks Road, Serpa Ranch Road, Evans Road, Three Sisters Road, Santa Fe Road, and Old Santa Fe Road.

Two roads I saw but did not hike were Mourning Star Way and Country Lane since they had large "No Trespassing" signs in front of them and looked largely like long, unpaved driveways. Don't want to be breaking any No Trespassing laws or anything! Anyhow, they weren't paved, and despite the fact I have been walking most unpaved roads, I decided early on that any road deemed illegal to hike (such as Highway 101) was okay to skip. Thus, they were skipped.

Santa Fe Road, as Jenny told me, did dead end at the extended runway, but a new road named Hoover (is that the best name they could think of for a new road?!) did cut across to Tank Farm Road just west of Santa Fe Road. Sante Fe Road is now cut in two, and I only finished the south end of it, so that won't be counted for in my totals. I'll count the road once I finish the north end. Hoover Road, I realized, I'd have to hike back along to finish my hike up Buckley Road, so I didn't bother to "officially" hike it on my way out.

And that was my hike this time around. Eleven streets done, two partly done, and 5.54 official miles logged. (I figure I actually hiked closer to 15 in total today--five to get me to the blook bank and back, then most roads were dead ends so I had to hike to the end, then hike back... over and over again, nearly doubling the official 5.54 mile tally.)

Hopefully I'll get this city done before I start my thru-hike in Florida next month! That's my goal, at least. Not sure.... I've been spending a lot of time trying to get AQ stable and running well in my absence. Lots of loose ends to tie up.

Total Streets: 477
Total Miles: 127.04

Stalking Lindsay

2007-02-14T00:28:00.000-08:00

Once again, I spent much of the afternoon and evening stalking Lindsay, this time in downtown San Luis. Shooting was supposed to start at 3:00 this afternoon and last until 3:00 in the morning. I showed up downtown around 4:00 in the afternoon and found the film crew busy at City Hall. A "New Salem" County sheriff's vehicle was parked out front along with a KSBY news van. I leaned back against the wall of the city/county library across the street to watch the happenings. While the filming did take place at San Luis Obispo city hall, I suspect it's supposed to play the New Salem courthouse in the movie. I'm just guessing, though. Maybe it really will be New Salem's city hall. In Murder by Numbers, the real San Luis courthouse they turned into the San Benito police department. (So far as I know, the real San Luis police department has never been used in a movie.)

I couldn't really hear anything about what was going on, but they filmed a group of paparazzi and reporters chasing after a guy in a sheriff outfit (and possibly someone or two he was escorting, but it was hard to tell from my position). All the reporters were shouting out questions, and the sheriff stopped near the stop of the steps seeming to tell them all off before walking into the building.

They did this scene several times. Before one of the shots, they were trying to clear gawkers on the other side of the street where I was, but one of the guys pointed at me and said it was okay for me to stand there since I looked like I was just waiting for a bus or something. I was pretty far off to the side, though, and doubt I would have made it in that shoot but, in theory, it's possible you might see a suspicious looking guy wearing a white hat who looks like he's waiting for a bus in the background. That would be me. =)

One of the reporters was a real reporter for the local news station, KSBY, named Amy Andrews. I've seen her on TV before, but was rather surprised how short she was in person. The news, I always thought she looked freakishly tall. =)

Lindsay Lohan, I heard one person saying, had the day off. Sheeze! *rolling eyes* The star of the show doesn't have to work?

After they got the shot they were looking for, they started closing up. I wandered down to Higuera Street since I heard there was filming going on over there as well and they actually closed that street off completely to cars. Pedestrians were still allowed through, however.

It didn't take long for me to realize that actual filming would not be happening anytime soon. They were taking down the "One Way" signs. Higuera Street, at least through downtown, is a one way street. Apparently the script calls for it being a two-way street, however, so they had to remove all of the "One Way" arrows then parked a bunch of cars facing the wrong way on one side of the street. I hope they remember to put those "One Way" signs back up after they finished filming.

I left. Did some work on Atlas Quest, ate some dinner, then later this evening walked back downtown to see what was going on. A large crowd of people hovered around Mother's Tavern, so I headed there.

I couldn't help but notice all of the cars parked on the street. They all had graffiti such as "Go Owls!" or "We're #1!" and "We Won!" Which was actually a pleasant surprise to me, because they never told us definitively or not if our team won while we were cheering them on last night. =) Oddly, the handwriting on every single car seemed to be the same.

The street was a mess. Trash was thrown everywhere, streamers were thrown up and through the trees. It looked like a riot or a really good party was in progress.

The side of the street where Mother's Tavern was located was off limits to us gawkers, but plenty of extras were there wearing blue and cheering their epic football win. I stood on the opposite side of the street by the Frog and Peach Pub (for those of you familiar with San Luis) to watch the action. I heard some people behind me telling another person where Lindsay was in the crowd, near Bubblegum Alley. Speaking of which, I was pleased to see the put up lights along the entire alley, so I hope that means it'll show up well in the movie. =) That place is great!

The did a rehearsal run where Lindsay walks down the sidewalk towards Mothers. Cars, lined up in both directions along the street started their engines and drove forward. A large crowd of extras behind Linsday were told to mime their excitement. Throw their arms in the air, wave wildly, and generally pretend to be excited about winning the big game--except all without making a sound. I guess they'll dub that in later.

Lindsay walks down the street with a couple of girls, one on each side of her, and appears to stop to look at the menu on the wall of Mother's Tavern--or at least where the menu would normally be. Who knows what they put up there for the movie. Maybe they just happened to stop and say something. I don't really know what they stopped for, but they did stop briefly. Then Lindsay yells, "Wait! Erin!" Or something like that. Maybe the name was Aaron? Maybe it was something else entirely. And she dashes down the sidewalk towards The Library (that's another bar--the first one in town with Internet access as I understand it--not a real library) like she's chasing after this Erin person.

But she stops, suddenly, and seems to try to hide behind a large tree. And--and this is the exciting part--she gazes across the street. Three young girls standing next to me get all excited, jumping up and down. "She looked at me!" the one said. "No, she looked at ME!" the other one said. I didn't have the heart to tell them Lindsay wasn't looking at either of them. No, she was gazing longingly at, yes, me. *shrug* What can I say? I have that affect on women. ;o)

But seriously.... After gazing in our general direction at least, she gets back out from her hiding place behind the tree and walks a bit further down the sidewalk before cut is called.

They do this a few times. They have to get all the cars back into position so they can all drive past during the whole scene. Between takes, several fans yell out to Lindsay, but she seems intent talking to the other crew members about something. She's also easy to lose in the crowd of people. It was during the filming that she was easy to follow since everyone kept away from her then instead of milling around her like they did between the takes.

I watched for about an hour, until nearly midnight, before growing bored of the same shoot being taken over and over again, so I finally left to come back and report back about my stalking of Lindsay. =) They're scheduled to continue shooting until 3:00 this morning, so they're still out there. They have the street closed off until 6:00am--presumably to give them a few hours to clean up all the trash and streamers they've thrown all around before businesses open again tomorrow.

Lots of fun. =) No new streets hiked this time. I think they'll be in town for at least a couple of more days for filming, but alas, I do not know when or where they'll be tomorrow. I'll have to see if I can find out. Hmmm......

-- Ryan

Lights! Camera! ACTION!

2007-02-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

I was watching the 6:00 evening news this evening--that is why they call it the evening news, after all--and learned a startling fact. Not only was Lindsay Lohan out of rehab, but she was filming a movie here in San Luis Obispo today. In fact, the anchorman told us, they did not have enough extras for the audience in a football scene and that we could go right NOW and join the fun. NOW. Wear royal blue and head over to San Luis High.

I wanted to be an extra just to watch a major movie being filmed. I've never watched a movie being filmed before, and getting to be IN the movie would be a nice bonus, but I had no idea Lindsay finally got out of rehab and was already in town filming. Yikes!

I jumped out of the chair, threw on my blue fleece jacket (it was getting cold outside anyhow, so I needed a jacket to stay warm), and walked on over to the high school. My old high school. Class of '93.

As I approached, I heard a large crowd of people cheering loudly, then stop quickly. A few minutes later, the cheering started again. Then stopped. The parking lot was full of large trailers and security guards walked around all over the place. I walked to the entrance of the stadium, Holt Field, remembering the laps I used to run around the track. Once I even brought a tent and camped on the field during the 24 Hour Relay, but that's a story for another day....

A security guard at the entrance asked if I was here for a part as an extra, and I told him yes. He asked if I was at least 18, and I said yes. Then he asked to see my ID. He carded me! I'm not sure I'd ever been carded before.

The bleachers were about 1/3 full of people, filling up the middle, and one of the workers pointed toward the crowd and told me to get up to the edge and join the crowd. I went to the very top and took up position.

A woman on the track with a microphone was giving the crowd instructions. She would start by telling us that Jennifer Tollan (I think that's the name) had passed away this last week, and to lower our heads in a moment of silence. Then she'd say the game was dedicated to her and we were to all cheer, wave our hands, and go crazy. And that's exactly what we did.

I doubted, being on the very edge of the crowd like I was, that I was actually in the frame, so I shouted extra loud hoping the speakers would pick me up. If I can't be seen in the movie, I thought, at least I could be heard!

We did this several times, as more extras straggled in and took position along the edge of the crowd like I did. I hoped as more people continued coming in, I'd be pushed more into the "center" of the group.

The next scene, the woman explained, it was near the end of the fourth quarter or inning or whatever it's called (I'm quoting her here--she clearly was not very familiar with football terminology!), two or so minutes before the end of the game. Our time, the Owls (in blue), were ahead by three points and everyone was to look excited, convinced there was no way our team could lose the game at this point. The football players would run around doing stuff and throw a football, and when another guy caught it, we were to all jump out of our seats and cheer our heads off. So we did that a couple of times.

Then the football players put on a performance of what the worst players in the history of mankind might do. We were to cheer loudly as they ran around the field doing something--the woman wouldn't tell us what to expect, but we'd enjoy it. The spent several minutes throwing the ball around, fumbling, passing it off, tackling each other in slow motion. The ball probably passed through a dozen hands, and by the end of the performance, we were all laughing more than we were cheering.

Then they did a lot of stuff with a blue rose in the middle of the bleachers I couldn't really see very well. Someone had a blue rose--I don't think it was real, though, since they picked it up out of the prop department--and the person holding the rose and the people around her were all paid extras. I don't know the significance of the blue rose, but I'm sure it's an important part of the movie. The rest of us extras sat around waiting for whatever they were doing to finish.

The film crew checked "gates", whatever that meant, quite often, and I was disappointed Amanda wasn't around to explain all the jargon they were using or what they were doing. They had laid out a small track to roll the camera along in from the bleachers that could pan across the spectators and the cheerleaders that were doing some rather impressive stunts and throwing each other in the air. It seemed like 30 or 40 people who worked as part of the crew were milling around, most of them not seeming to be doing anything, and I knew Amanda (who used to work in the film industry) could tell me what each of them were doing and what was going on. I asked the extra next to me who the woman giving us instructions over the speaker system was. "The director." I nodded. "What's her name?" I asked. "You know, I don't think she told us."

Next, we were told, they were going to move us to the other side of the track on the other bleachers and root for the red team (the bears). "They always do this in the movies," one guy told us. "Braveheart? Yep, they did this very trick." Then they asked us to change out of the blue clothes we wore and put on the red. Red? I didn't know I was supposed to have red. I didn't bring anything red. I did bring an extra jacket in case it got chilly, though, a tan color, so I put that on to cover my blue fleece. I might not be red, but at least I was no longer blue either.

We walked around the track--they told us not to walk across the football field itself--so we walked around the track to the other side, a sea of blue turning into a sea of red. They passed out red flags for some people to wave, and giant red fingers for others to shake. And a couple of posters painted with red paint saying "Go Bears! We're #1!" and such stuff, making sure they were spread out evenly throughout the crowd.

They were also passing out free food for everyone. Hot dogs, coffee, and lunches with I'm not sure what all was in it. I just finished eating minutes before I saw the news report that brought me out here and I wasn't hungry, but a girl in front of me asked if I'd like a hot dog since she accidentally grabbed two. Okay. *shrug* It was free. Why not? =)

Tasted terrible, I've got to say, and I didn't take any food after that.

Then they filmed us cheering for the red team a few times before returning us to the big bleachers and converting us back to blue again. I dashed ahead, grabbing a prime seat directly in the middle of the bleachers. I was going to be in this shot!

Lindsay Lohan, I might add, was nowhere to be seen. Some people had seen her earlier in the evening, and I did see a chair with her name on it, but she had already gone to her hotel by the time I arrived, so I never even laid eyes on her. What can I say? Her loss. =) I joked with some of the other extras that she was probably at Mothers (a local bar) getting drunk and puking in Bubble Gum Alley. "She's not in rehab anymore," I astutely pointed out.

Once everyone settled down, they passed out blue flags and giant fingers throughout the audience, and I yelled down to the woman passing them out, "Give me the finger! Give me the finger!" I didn't really care if I got a finger or not, but I thought it was funny to yell out to someone to give me the finger. =) Some of the other extras behind me laughed at my antics and said, "Yeah, we'll give you the finger!"

Then they had everyone get up, turn right, and move to the end of the bleachers. They wanted to take several shots of us, one in each section of the bleachers, so they could use special effects to cut them all together and make it look like the bleachers were actually packed full. "Did you hear that?!" I whispered to the extra next to me. "We're going to be special effects! I've never been a special effect before!"

I nabbed a FRONT ROW seat! Nobody to block the view of me. If this section makes it into the movie, you'll get a great view of me. =)

An older man sat on my left, and I started chatting with him. He graduated from the high school in 1977 when I was only two years old. "You're making me feel old," he told me. "I feel old myself," I told him, pointing to all the VERY young women milling around. "I think most of the people here are still in their teens!" I also told him I spent most of my time in Seattle now ("Seattle?! What the heck are you doing here?"), but I was visiting San Luis at the time and headed over as soon as I heard they needed extras.Once again, they announced the sad death of Jennifer Tollan, and we all bowed our heads in a moment of silence. Then raised our heads and our hearts and yelled and hollered, rooting on the Owls. We did that a couple of times, then they asked everyone to go down the aisle of the bleachers and walk around to the middle section and walk up. "There's a method to our madness," one told us, but failed to explain what the method was. I figured it out immediately. They wanted to mix us up a bit. They were planning to cut the moment of silence together from three different sections of bleachers and they didn't want it to look like the same section repeated. By forcing everyone to get off the bleachers then back on them, it would mix people up.

We did the moment of silence scene a couple of more times, then were directed to the middle section of the bleachers where we did it yet again, but to mix it up a bit. Sit next to different people, in a different row. I didn't follow directions, though, and ended up in the front row again! Woo-who!

Then they moved everyone to the last section of bleachers, and this time I moved back a row to mix things up. After each move, they asked for people to pass around the blue flags, giant fingers, and "Go Owls" signs so the same people weren't using them in every shot, and I got my hands on a blue flag. I might be in the second row this time, but I had a blue flag to wave to get attention on myself! The guy I talked to earlier who I told I was from Seattle sat in the row behind, several people to my right, and he pointed at me, "You're from Seattle, right?" We talked probably ten minutes ago and knew darned well he remembered me, but he was teasing the girl who sat next to him who did not know my history. "Well, yes I am!" I said, taking his lead. "That's a pretty good guess!"

The girl next him, her eyes popped open to an amazing degree. She turned to the guy, "How did you know that?!"

"It's obvious. He's wearing blue. Don't the Seahawks wear blue?"

I nodded. "Yes, I think they do." Of course, everyone in the bleachers was wearing blue--that was the color of the team we were rooting for at the time.

The girl was in awe at his deduction. I laughed and pointed to the older guy. "You're really funny."

The girl looked at me, suspiciously. "Are you really from Seattle?"

I laughed some more. "Yes, I really am." We never did tell the girl how the older man knew I was from Seattle, and she probably thinks there's some psychic connection between us or something.

Finally, they asked everyone to move and fill up the first three rows of the bleachers. Spread out, but don't sit past the third row. The cheerleaders, who must have been freezing their butts off by this point in their skimpy little outfits, were directed not to do any throws since they couldn't be filmed above the first three rows that us extras filled up. It would lose the illusion of packed bleachers if they threw the girls in the air. Then we did the moment of silence a couple of more times, followed by cheers.

And that was it. It's a wrap. They gave everyone a ticket stub when we entered, and now they held a raffle with it for the extras who had not yet left. They gave out a couple of iPods, DVD players, and several footballs signed by Lindsay Lohan herself (and she even drew little hearts on it, the raffle guy announced, little hearts drawn by Lohan!) Alas, I did not win any of the prizes. I joked with another extra that if I did win, I'd put it on eBay in a heartbeat. I said it in a jokingly manner, but it's true. I would have put it on eBay. What the heck do I want with a football signed by Lindsay? I would not be at all surprised if a couple of them did end up on eBay. Might be worth checking out if that's your type of thing. If someone is selling a football autographed by Lindsay Lohan from the Central Coast in the next few days, it's probably legit.

Filming wasn't over yet--just the big crowd scenes. They welcomed us to stay as the football scenes were shot. We might still end up in the movie, but there would be no more large scale crowds in the background. They were scheduled to continue filming until 3:00 in the morning, so they're still there, AT THIS VERY MINUTE, filming more of the football scenes. They also asked for additional volunteers for people with non-white cars who would return the next day for additional filming--mostly in downtown San Luis Obispo--from three o'clock tomorrow afternoon until three in the morning. They work some mighty long hours in the film business, but I've heard that Lindsay does her best work late at night anyhow. ;o)

I wasn't inclined to stick around until 3:00 in the morning, though. With as much moving around as I did, rooting for both the blue and red teams, I'd guess there's a very good chance I might show up somewhere in that movie. I'll probably wonder downtown tomorrow and check out the filming there as well, but I don't expect to play an extra again. I'm just nosy and want to watch the action. =)

I walked back to the house, but so this post wasn't TOTALLY off the topic of my thru-hike of San Luis, I did hike Augusta Ct, a small street I somehow overlooked when I was hiking this area of town. Yes, one more street down.

Total Streets: 466
Total Miles: 121.5

Walk the Walk

2007-01-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

Once again, I'm pounding the pavement, this time hitting some streets not far from Cal Poly: Ramona Drive, Del Norte Way, La Entrada Avenue, Catalina Drive, San Jose Court, Del Sur Way, Del Mar Court, Rafael Way, Hermosa Way, Luneta Drive, Verde Drive, South Tassajara Drive, Palomar Avenue, Bressi Place, Penman Way, Serrano Heights, Serrano Drive, and Mission Lane.

All things considered, it was a rather boring walk. It's a residential area, as most boring walks are. =) Not that there's anything wrong with that--I actually prefer the quiet neighborhood walks over the bustling main streets of town with loud traffic roaring up and down the streets. But it's not very interesting from a story-telling standpoint.

The only time I regularly visited this part of town in my younger years was the dead end at S Tassajara which used to be a trailhead for San Luis Mountain, a.k.a. Madonna Mountain. Technically, it was illegal, but the landowners were pretty nice about people hiking the mountain and the trailhead here became a defacto standard. Eventually, neighbors complained and the trailhead closed. Barbwire now blocks access and signs about "no mountain access" dot the area, although I can still see evidence of people cutting through the barbwire and going anyhow. If you really want to climb the mountain, use the trailhead from Fernandez which is the legal and barbwire-free access point.

Total streets: 465
Total miles: 121.4

Hiking Blind

2007-01-02T20:24:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I decided I'd walk over to Cal Poly and finish hiking the streets in that part of the world. Alas, I left my trusty map behind. I'd already been walking for a half hour (it's about an hour walk away) before I realized my error, and I had no intention of walking all the way back to pick up the map. I'd have to wing it. Cal Poly of full of little side streets, many named, many not named. The unnamed ones were not on my to-do list, but not all the named streets always have signs either. It's kind of confusing, really, and I had to wing it without my trusty map. I was hiking blind.

I started with Tahoe Road, a small street that I did not realize even had a name until I was walking past it on my way to Mountain Lane. Mountain Lane was closed for construction, but the signage wasn't clear if pedestrians weren't allowed through. Cars obviously were off limits, but I took the ambiguity of pedestrians walking through as my excuse if a policeman stopped me for entering the construction zone. It's a very short street, though, only 153 steps from start to finish, and I don't think the construction workers even noticed my little dash along the length of the street. =)

Then I walked up and around Cerro Vista Road, a fairly new road supporting a large complex of apartments for on-campus housing. It was built long after I left Cal Poly, and this was my first time to jaunt down this particular street and get a close up view of the apartments. I liked the fact each building was named after one of the Morros--a chain of mountains stretching from San Luis Obispo to Morro Bay. Very clever. If I had to complain about the names, though, I'd have preferred them using the names of the mountains that could be seen from the apartments--not the names of the mountains closer to Morro Bay and out of view. Still, I liked the local connection with the names. And the buildings are even colorful--which is more than can be said of most buildings on campus.

At this point, a police car drove past me and the policeman nodded at me. It seemed like a friendly nod and he continued on his way. It could have been a warning, though. "We're watching you. Don't get out of line." =)

Then I headed down to Truckee Road and hiked that one.

I was foiled in my attempt to hike Feed Mill Road and Eucalyptus Road since they were closed due to contruction. That, by the way, is NOT a typo. That's what the sign actually said. "Contruction." It was a professionally made sign, made out of iron or steel or whatever they make streets signs out of, announcing that the two roads were closed indefinitely since they were being using as a staging ground for a "contruction" project and not to enter. I wanted to take a picture of the sign, but alas, I left my camera at home. Maybe next time I'm at Cal Poly, I'll drop by and take a picture of the sign. It's hilarious. The sign must have been up there for months now. I wonder if anyone else has noticed the mistake? On a college campus, no less. *shaking head*

Phase 1, the sign said, is supposed to end in the fall of this year, if I recall correctly, so maybe I'll be able to hike those two roads then. Or maybe they'll stay closed for "phase 2"? Who knows? I don't, and the sign didn't say.

A part of Via Carta was closed due to--yes, construction. There's a lot of friggin' construction going on at Cal Poly, and I think they're taking advantage of the students being gone for the holidays to get a lot of stuff done that they didn't want to do when the campus was packed with students, and this looked like one of those projects. But I hiked the street last week, so it was not a problem for me. =)

Then I headed out to Mount Bishop Road which heads out towards the cows and crops the agricultural department maintains. Smelly, but not nearly as bad as at the end of Via Carta where all the hogs and horses are kept. Followed West Creek Road back towards Cal Poly--a nice walk on an unmarked gravel road that I wouldn't have thought of doing except I remembered it was marked with a name on my map back at the house. I was going to hike it that first time I was at Cal Poly unless the sprinkling scuttled my plans and I quit early. If it weren't for that, I'd have missed the street and not even realized it.

And finally, I finished up Highland Drive, a street I'd partly hiked on an earlier walk last year before heading back to the old homestead.

Back at the house, I pulled out the map and it appears I missed a few streets. Orchard Road? Even looking on the map, I swear I can't ever remember seeing or hearing about this road before. Same goes for Dexter Road. Looks like I got all the others, though. I probably won't bother with those two roads until Feed Mill Road and Eucalyptus Road are back in action, though, and knock all four of them out at once.

Total Streets: 447
Total Miles: 117.5

What in Tarnation is That?

2006-12-28T12:17:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, my mom told me that she'd never hiked up Bishop's Peak and would like to do that "someday." So I made her pin down a date, today, and told her I'd take her up.

Yesterday, after my tromp around the Cal Poly campus, she remembered about some strange architectural structures behind the campus she's always heard about but never been to before either. Thus, we changed plans and decided to hike up Poly Canyon instead.

My mom, unlikely myself, preferred to drive to Cal Poly instead of the hour long walk it normally takes. So she drove. We picked up a parking pass--another good reason to walk to Cal Poly, in my humble opinion--I hate paying for parking. The guy at the information booth gave us a staff ticket, which was kind of cool since it allowed us to park just about anywhere we wanted to on campus. He even asked my mom if she was staff and answered no, but he still gave us a staff ticket. We weren't going to complain, though.

We parked in a spot reserved for staff--not that it really made any difference. Since school is still out, the campus was nearly empty, and so were the parking lots. Then we headed up a gravel road called Poly Canyon Road. This, my friends, is why I'm posting today. It's the only road I hiked today, and while it is gravel meaning I did not *have* to hike it to officially complete my thru-hike of San Luis, it is shown on my map and could certainly qualify. May as well add it! =)

A mile or two down the road is a hill, and on this hill are a number of bizarre structures built by the architecture department over the years. There's a "learn by doing" motto at Cal Poly, and this is the architecture department's version of it. They experiment with strange building techniques. One new structure erected since the last time I visited was--it's hard to describe. These things defy description. It's not a building, but they are structures that twist and contort in bizarre formations. The new one I saw looked like a solid wall, but they left a small window in it where you could see straw inside. Obviously, they were experimenting with straw as a method of insulating the structure.

One structure looks like something from the Flinstones. I was told that they filled the area around with with dirt and sand, then pumped concrete between the cracks they left. Once the concrete hardened, the dirt and sand was removed leaving behind some very stone-aged looking rooms.

Another structure looks like the front of a ship, buried in the hillside. Another was an enormous sundial, but that structure has since collapsed into concrete blocks laying on the ground.

It's an interesting place to visit if you're ever on the Cal Poly campus with nothing better to do. =) My mom just loved the place, fascinated with each of the structures and trying to figure out the purpose of each one. She's decided she wants to come back again and have a picnic.

We walked back to the car, then drove to another part of the campus by the railroad tracks. She didn't ask for this particular walk, but I wanted to show her the Stenner Creek Bridge. It's a tall bridge the railroad goes over just before entering San Luis Obispo, and I've always loved to stand at the top and throw stuff off. Or, if nobody was around, pee from the top. Quite exhilarating. =)

There's a road that goes under the bridge, but I'm not sure how to get to it. I've always walked on the railroad tracks from the Cal Poly campus to reach the bridge. Yes, it's considered trespassing, and yes, the railroad frowns on people walking illegally on their tracks, but I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble for it. So we risked it. No trains came or went while we walked along the tracks, and it was pretty boring for the most part. The bridge itself, of course, is the thrill, and we few a few rocks from the top.

My mom had other things to attend to during the day, so that was the end of our hiking. She drove off to work, and I walked back to the house where I'm now posting this message.

Oh, I guess I'll mention, I walked past the Amtrak station on my way back to the house and a bee flew down my shirt and stung my chest. I was shocked! Where the heck did a bee come from in the middle of town? Why did it fly down my shirt? I moved fast, though, quickly unbuttoning my shirt since I could still feel the bee flying around inside my shirt and finally freed that little bugger. I pulled out the stinger and put my shirt back on. I haven't been stung since I was probably five years old, and it was rather surprising--with all the miles I've walked, all the bees and stinging insects I've walked passed over the years, it's the railroad station in the middle of San Luis Obispo where one finally nabbed me. That's just not right. *shaking head*

Total Streets: 440
Total Miles: 114.9

'Twas a Blustery Day....

2006-12-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

Once again, I am back in the sleepy town of San Luis Obispo and spent the afternoon knocking off a few more streets for my thru-hike of the city.

With all the students out of town for the holidays, I decided to focus on the streets of Cal Poly. Much nicer, quieter, and calmer without the thousands of students loitering about or rushing between classes.

The streets I did today include College Avenue, Cuesta Avenue, Poly View Drive, Via Carta, Sports Complex Road, Pinnacles Road, and University Drive.

First, I'd like to point out the complete lack of originality in those names. Kind of like most of the buildings that make up the Cal Poly campus, I might add. Cal Poly, I am convinced, as a whole, has the largest, ugliest cluster of buildings on a college campus in the world. Really. There are exceptions, of course. The old Powerhouse is quite nice and provided all of the electric needs for the campus from 1908 until 1940, but has been abandoned since 1990. I always knew the powerhouse was there, but I only learned those particular statistics this afternoon after reading the big billboard they had in front it describing the history of the building.

Cal Poly, allegedly, is one of the largest college campuses in the country. In terms of acreage, at least. It's way down the list in terms of the size of the student body, but it was formed just outside of the city limits and includes enormous swaths of unused land extending for several miles. Most of it is meant for the agriculture department--supposedly one of the best. I was never an aggie, though, and can just say what I've heard. Come to think of it, the three disciples I've heard that Cal Poly is well known for its excellence is agriculture, computer science, and architecture. That last one is even more surprising when you consider that perhaps the ugliest building of the whole campus the one hosting the architecture department. They SAY Cal Poly's architecture department one of the most sought after in the country, though. Go figure. *shrug*

I attended the computer science of things, of course, which is allegedly one of the best in the country. This actually surprises me, because I really didn't learn a whole lot to prepare for me for real world. I'd have to estimate that 99% of the useful information I learned was from one professor, Dr. Clint Staley, who I admired and loved so much I took five or six of his classes. I think he got bored teaching the same class year after year and would deliberately teach different classes for his own mental stimulation, and he worked us students to the bone. But wow, we learned a lot from him.

I remember the first time I met Clint (he liked people calling him by his first name, and I later worked with him at TrueLink--he got me the job, in fact--so I'll just call him Clint instead of Dr. Staley). It was my first day at Cal Poly, and I ended up in one of his introductory C++ classes. He explained to us that he knows we've been to several classes already, and the teachers told us that they're tough. They'll make us work hard, and the usual speech you hear on the first day of class. He looked around the class, then said, "I mean it."

He asked for a raise of hands for anyone who's taken one of his courses before, and I'd say about 1/3 to 1/2 of the class raised their hands. Then told those of us who did not have our hands raised to talk to one of the people who had their hands raised, because they'd testify to the difficultly of his classes.

Later, he told us about a more advanced C++ course he was teaching that quarter. I already knew C++, a little bit, at least, but I'd taken several introductory programming classes and they bored me to death, so I decided to switch to the advanced class. When I talked to Clint, he seemed skeptical. I'd never had one of his classes before, was there on my first day as a student at Cal Poly, trying to wiggle my way into a 400-level class (CSC 471, if I remember right). He relented, though.

The class was tough as promised, and I spent more effort working on that class than all of my other classes combined. It was also the most rewarding of all the classes I took. At the end of the quarter, I technically failed it--that's how hard it was. Clint had a policy that you needed to complete all assigned programs or you'd get an automatic F. He regularly failed about half his class every quarter--that was pretty normal for him--but he'd let us continue working on the program after the quarter ended and change our grade appropriately when the program was finished. So I got an F, but about a week after the end of the quarter, when I got the program running 100% correctly, he changed my grade to an A. =)

One particular quarter, he decided to teach two new courses he never taught before, and I immediately jumped on board for both of them. If Clint was teaching it, I knew I'd learn a lot. But taking two of his classes--that was insanity. I had one friend telling me that he had something like 20 units that quarter--oh, it was tough, terrible, so much work.... I told him, "Yeah, tell me about it. I have 8 units." He looked at me like I was an idiot, then I threw in the punchline. "All Staley units."

"Oh, man." He shook his head at me. "Boy, you do have it rough. And I thought I was having a tough quarter. You're so screwed."

The work was tough--the toughest quarter I ever had, in fact. I took a month off of work from Pizza Hut to get it done. That was the only time I needed to take time off of work during my college career to spend more effort on school work. By the end of the quarter, I officially flunked one of the classes due to an incomplete program, and passed the other class with an A. About a week after the quarter ended, I finished the incomplete program and my grade was changed to an A.

The other two brave soles who tried to take two Staley courses in a single quarter--neither of them pulled off passing grades in both classes. Even with a couple of extra weeks at the end of the quarter, they still didn't get both projects done in time. So far as I know, I'm the only person in the world to successfully pull off two Staley courses in a single quarter. It's a huge achievement. =) To this day, you can still see his influence in the code I write. I use many of the same coding conventions he introduced and ingrained in us. I'm not sure I'd even be capable of creating a website such as Atlas Quest without the knowledge that Clint shoved in my brain. =)

But outside of Clint, I was sorely disappointed with the concept of higher education. I considered the rest of my courses a joke. The database class I took--I won't name names, but I should have sued the professor for criminal negligence. Needless to say, I do a lot of work with databases (Atlas Quest depends heavily on them!), but everything I learned about databases was self-taught. I didn't learn squat in that class.

There's a lot of construction going on at Cal Poly when I passed through. A new stadium is being built, and woah, it's quite a sight. I'm actually disappointed at this. When I attended the school, the sports department was considered a joke. I like jokes. =) Actually, I was rather pleased that people knew about Cal Poly because it was so well known for its education and NOT because of its sports program. I liked knowing I attended a school that valued education more than sports. Sadly, that's been changing over the years. Since I left, they've built an entire sports complex with fields for baseball, soccer, yadda, yadda, yadda--all lined up along the aptly (but boring) named Sports Complex Road. And now they're upgrading the old stadium spending millions of dollars I'd rather see go towards classrooms and more professors like Staley.

So most of my time walking around was admiring all of the new construction going on. More on-campus housing for students (which is about time--housing around these parts is terrible and this was long overdue), and happily, at least some money is going towards building a new building for computer science students. A couple of buildings that were going up I couldn't figure out who they were for.

On a more light-hearted note, one well-known Cal Poly alumni is Weird Al who recorded his first big hit in a restroom in the Graphics Arts building. I think it's the Graphics Art building. I never had classes in this particular building, but it's the one that has KCPR (Cal Poly Radio) in it. He said the acoustics in that particular restroom was perfect for his song. I don't remember what the song is--I'm not really a Weird Al fan--but whatever that first song was that made him a hit, it was recorded in a Cal Poly restroom that's still there. Fun facts. I remember when I was a student and he performed in the new christened Performing Arts Center, he apparently made a stop by this famous restroom for old times sake. It was printed up in the Mustang Daily (the Cal Poly newspaper--the mascot is the mustang), so it must be true.

Anyhow, you've probably heard enough about Cal Poly. There's a million stories I could tell, but I'll save something for later. I didn't finish hiking all of the streets making up Cal Poly since it began to sprinkle and I'm not a big fan of walking in the rain. I took cover and called it a day.

Total streets: 439
Total miles: 113.4

Railroad Art

2006-10-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

While walking along the railroad tracks in San Luis Obispo, I found this little piece of artwork someone had created. Spikes are rather common next to the tracks, but it would take some seriously dedicated effort to find this many of them! When I passed by a few days later, the tower was gone. *shrug*

Fascinating, though. Absolutely fascinating. =) I took the pictures quite some time ago, but didn't bother getting them off my digital camera until this afternoon.

Party Royal

2006-10-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

This morning I walked Foothill Boulevard. It's a busy road, near Cal Poly, and you can always find something interesting going on around here. The very first Juice Club (now known as Jamba Juice) started here on this street--and it's still there if anyone cares to visit. But the thing I remember best was during the spring of 1993, if memory serves me right, when there were two nights of rioting along Foothill and California during Poly Royal--Cal Poly's open house.

Now as crazy as I am, I wasn't inclined to walk into a riot myself so I watched it on the news (it even made CNN!) and the next day drove around with my mom to admire all the broken windows (some boarded up already), burnt up cars and garbage dumpsters, and the chaos of the aftermath. I wish I could say there was a good reason for it, but there really wasn't. Just a bunch of drunken youths with nothing better to do than riot.

The next day, some entrepreneurs students started selling T-shirts saying, "I survived Party Royal" and stuff like that, but Cal Poly canceled Poly Royal after that, and simply had "Open House." They used to recruit kids from around the state and encourage them to come by for Poly Royal, but that was no longer the case. Even the family-oriented events held on campus during the day were largely shut down. Poly Royal, as we knew it was known for probably 50 years, was effectively dead.

Slowly, year by year, Cal Poly started allowing more events and things of interest to happen during Open House, and after five or ten years, even allowed the name Poly Royal to be used again. It's never gotten as rowdy with that party-like atmosphere that it used to be--which is a good thing--but the police will still be out in force in the Cal Poly area during Poly Royal to this day. =) Not so much because of riot fears as much as it is that a lot of people do still come into town for Poly Royal and it's a prudent thing to do.

Anyhow..... that's about as interesting as today's walk gets. After that, I headed into residential areas that have little to note or stories from my past to tell. I hiked off Los Cerros Drive, La Loma Court, Cerro Romauldo Avenue, Cerro Court, Rosita Street, Felton Way, Tolosa Way, Santa Lucia Drive, Craig Way, Jaycee Drive, Warren Way, Christina Way, La Canada Drive, N Tassajara Drive, and Elm Court.

Good times! =)

As for that dead body I found a couple of days ago (okay, the cops found it first, but still....) He's now been identified as 49 year old David Fabian Fitzwater. The local newspaper says, "Police do not suspect foul play and said the coroner ruled the cause of death as medical, pending a toxicology report." So there you have it. There might be more information about the man coming out in the future, but I suspect that's all we'll get for the time being.

Total streets: 432
Total miles: 110.2

The mystery continues....

2006-10-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

No official street walking today, but I have found out a *little* bit more about the body found nearby yesterday afternoon. It's a he, and he's "probably" a homeless person. It doesn't appear to be a homicide, but police are treating it as such until they can definitively rule it out. An autopsy is supposed to happen today at which point they'll know more (although I haven't heard anything about that as of yet). And the police will be questioning the homeless people they can find in the area in the hopes of learning more about the guy.

And that, alas, is all I know at the moment.

On another note, I did nab the Double Knotted Letterbox here in town this afternoon. =) And alas, I only found pieces of the Celtic Clover letterbox I planted in the Irish Hills. I probably won't get to replace that box until I return to town again for the holidays at the end of the year, but it's officially missing for those of you who are keeping track of such things. Irish Moon, however, I'm happy to report is still alive and well. =) It was a beautiful, beautiful day!

Murder and Mayhem?

2006-10-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

After posting about my walking adventures, little did I know how much more interesting it would get this evening! Off I went to walk to the Marigold Center. I wanted to pick up some odds and ends, and being after 8:00, I figured I'd find enough stores still open in that part of town to fill all my shopping needs. In particular, two 3-volt lithium batteries for my camera, but that has nothing to do with what happened along the way....

Near the intersection of Laurel Lane and Orcutt Road--two roads you might remember from some of my earlier walks--I noticed a couple of police cars, a large van with "Crime Scene Investigators" written on the side, and an empty lot where a creek runs through was taped off with yellow tape that had "Crime Scene" written all over it. What the heck was going on?

So naturally, I walked up to the yellow tape and took a look. Holy cow! Is that a body bag they're playing with behind those bushes?

Oddly, I seemed to be the only pedestrian watching. Surely if they were pulling out a dead body there would be tons of people watching. This is a pretty busy street corner, after all. I wasn't all that ready to draw any attention to myself with regards to the cops after the last time they suspected me of breaking into a car not far from here last year, so I mosied on to run my errands.

About an hour later, I returned the same way I came hoping to find out more about what was happening at that location. This time I was coming from a "blind angle" and couldn't really see the lot until I walked around some bushes and "Holy cow!" I was rather surprised to see that body bag--quite lumpy and seemingly full--on a stretcher about three feet away. After seeing them playing with the empty body bag, I kind of figured there was a body nearby, but it was rather startling to walk up to one about three feet away before realizing it was there.

I kept walking. They always say the murderer comes back to the scene of the crime, and I'd already wondered past this crime scene twice now. And it's one think thinking there's probably a dead body somewhere behind those bushes, but it's rather creepy to walk up to within three feet of a lumpy body bag. I really didn't want to be around anymore, so I kept on walking....

I don't know who it was, nor how he/she died, nor how long the body might have been there--which is even more eerie since I walk past this location rather often on my way to the Marigold Center--where Michaels and the Dollar Tree is located!--and if the body was there for more than a couple of days, I'd been walking past it all this time.

I'll have to watch the news tonight and see if they mention anything about a dead body found recently. Maybe it was murder? Maybe it was a drug overdose? Maybe it was an old geezer who had to pee and had a heart attack behind the bushes? I don't know, but I'm really, really curious to find out..... I'll check the paper tomorrow as well, and maybe wander over by the scene of the crime to see if there's anything left to be seen. Stay tuned! If only Nancy Drew were on the case!

I'm back in SLO, and I'm walking! =)

2006-10-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

I've actually been in San Luis for a few weeks now, but I've been rather busy with updating Atlas Quest, helping my mom around the house doing my best to live up to my name (the Carpenter part, not the Ryan part). And even picking up some trash at a nearby high school.

But today, I finally made it out to continue my thru-hike of San Luis Obispo! Woo-who! Man, I've missed it. =)

I decided to hit some residential neighborhoods not far from Cal Poly starting with Boysen Avenue. The reason I started here had more to do with the fact that a Carl's Jr. was next to it and I had to stop to eat lunch and use the facilities before starting my walk. Then I walked out the door onto Boysen Avenue.

Next came North Chorro Street, Ferrini Road, and Highland Drive. Highland Drive would be the longest street I'd complete for the day, and to be perfectly accurate, I didn't even finish it. I only walked it on the west side Highway 1. I'll have to go back and finish the part that continues on the east side of Highway 1 later.

Guess I had a bit too much to drink at Carl's Jr and I found myself at the end of Highland Drive near Bishop's Peak needing very badly a bathroom. None were to be found, but fortunately I was at the very edge of town and watered some trees and bushes on Bishop's Peak after some hikers going up the mountain had passed. I have a letterbox up there on that mountain, but I would not be hiking to the top on this day.

Next I walked Oakridge Drive, Los Robles, Fel Mar Drive, Al-Hil (which, so far as I can tell, is the only street with a hyphen in the entire city), Daly Avenue, Marlene Drive, Westmont Drive, Jeffrey Drive, Donna Way, Patricia Street, Patricia Court, Anacapa Circle, Twinridge Court, Twinridge Drive, Pasatiempo Drive, Montrose Drive, Skyline Drive, Mira Sol, and Clover Drive.

All-in-all, it was a pretty dull walk. I've never much spent time in this particular neighborhood so I don't have any childhood memories to tell you. The most exciting thing to happen was when I was at the intersection for Twinridge and Pasatiempo a tow truck driver stopped to ask if I knew where Twinridge was. I pointed to the street sign at the intersection and told him he was on it. =) I think he was a bit embarrassed about that.

A lot of the houses out here are of the gated variety. I wish I could say that a bunch of famous celebrities lived in them, but the truth is I have no idea who lives in them. One thing I can tell you about them--they've got a lot of money and/or a lot of debt. =)

The one and only time I'd ever been on some of these streets was about ten years ago when my then girlfriend Ella wanted to show me some houses with odd architectures to them. How she found them, I don't know, but some of the most unusual houses in town are located out here. One looks like a miniature castle. Another looks like something I'd imagine would be common in the Sahara Desert built in cylindrical columns that would reduce heat gain/loss. And a third house looks like it could poke out your eye if you aren't careful around it. Sharp points everywhere.

At this point, the sun was starting to set behind Bishops Peak, so I started walking back hitting a few more streets along the way including Rancho Drive, Princeton Place, Stanford Drive, Dartmouth Drive, Couper Drive, and Cuesta Drive. Another 28 streets and 6.2 miles done. Still quite a few to go. =)

Total Streets: 416
Total Miles: 107.1

Twenty Questions

2006-06-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this here since I know Mark and Sue Pepe are currently offline wandering around--hopefully not too lost--in Eastern Oregon and generally not able to provide their normally timely updates to their blog.

But I just saw a post on the main talk list about the Twenty Questions letterbox, and I just know Mark and Sue Pepe would be posting about it if they could. And since this is my only blog that actually shows up on My Page of Atlas Quest, I'm posting here. It's the only way to spread the word!

In a nutshell, The Ephemeral Letterboxer planted a letterbox somewhere in the United States, under two somewhat flat rocks. It's a mystery box--and that's all we know. For now.

For each of the next 20 days, The Ephemeral Letterboxer will be taking questions from the public at large, and answer one of them. Submit your own questions through the Contact the Placer feature on LbNA or through the post on the main talk list. The questions must be able to be answered with a YES or NO--all other questions will be ignored. Each day, if all goes well, we'll learn more about the location of this ephemeral letterbox.

After 20 days, that's it. No more hints or clues for the letterbox. The questions WE ask and their answers will be the final clue.

So what are you waiting for? Let's take the mystery out of this mystery box! =)

It was bound to happen at some point....

2006-05-27T18:28:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I was hit by a vehicle while wandering the streets of San Luis. Not part of my thru-hike of San Luis--alas, I was wandering around town doing errands. I need some new shoes since my old ones were falling apart quite rapidly and was checking out shoe shoes in the area for the perfect shoe that would survive several hundreds miles of walking.

Instead, as I walked through a parking lot off of Madonna Road, I was hit by a motorcycle. I was crossing the street. A car coming from my right was stopped to turn, which I thought made it an excellent time to cross to the other side since the car was stopped which stopped all of the other cars behind it.

But one impatient motorcyclist whizzed around the car in a direct path towards myself. I was rather startled at the sight of a motorcycle bearing down on me and tried to jump back. He was rather startled to see me in the street and tried to swerve. But he got me. I felt my hand smack into the machine as it barreled past me.

Oddly enough, it didn't really hurt. My hand hit the side mirror of the motorcycle, which tapers at the end, so it almost felt like the motorcycle "pushed" my hand away rather than hit it. I think the mirror also bent back helping to deflect the blow. Mostly, I was shocked at the incident, and kind of annoyed at the motorcyclist's impatience regarding the car in front of it. But my hand--it felt just fine and I kept walking to my destination.

The motorcyclist stopped and yelled out to me asking if I was okay, and I waved him off saying I was fine. "Are you sure?!"

"Yes, I'm sure!" Stop bugging me.

I guess he didn't like that answer, though, because then he turned down and drove the motorcycle towards me again. This time, he stopped before hitting me. =)

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," I said as I flexed my hand. "You just nicked my hand and it's fine. See?" I wiggled my fingers.

"Do you want my name or anything?"

"No, really, I'm fine. It doesn't even hurt."

"Is there anything I can do for you?" he persisted.

I thought about asking if he'd like to buy me a new pair of shoes, but since I didn't have a pair in mind yet, I waved him off again. "No, really, I'm fine. Mostly just startled me rather than hurt me." Would this guy stop bugging me, though? I had places to go, things to do!

Finally he let me go, and off I went to get shoes.

So that's my story for today. I'd never been hit by a moving vehicle before, so it was rather exciting for a few fleeting moments as I saw the motorcycle about to run me down, but all's well it ends well. *shrug*

Memory Lane

2006-05-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

I've been busy working a lot on Atlas Quest and have been neglecting my thru-hike. Boy, I was just so darned excited working on that weather feature. Went with my mom to visit grandma (my grandma, my mom's mom) for Mother's Day. Carving a blizzard of stamps.

But once again, this afternoon, I continued my thru-hike. There are no streets named Memory Lane in this town (I checked), but there should be, I think. Every city has one. The street you grew up on. That hill you used to ride down on in a cardboard box. Today, I hiked through Memory Lane.

Not the street I grew up on, but several I grew up with. The complete list of streets hiked today include: Isabella Way, Prefumo Canyon Road, Reina Court, Estrella Court, Fortuna Court, Castillo Court, Capistrano Court, Portola, Descanso Street, Vista Collados, Escuela Court, Sonrisa Court, Vega Way, Vista Arroyo, Vista Brisa, Diablo Drive, Via Laguna Vista, Killarney Court, Donegal Drive, Framuesa, and Clearview Lane.

The streets in particular I'd classify as Memory Lanes include Portola and Vista Arroyo. Portola--my aunt and her daughter--my cousin--used to live on Portola in my younger years, and I remember visiting there often. I remember that Portola used to dead end just past my aunt's house, and I remember once we caught ourselves a little snake that we released in the weeds where the road ended. It's paved now, extending through to Capistrano. I remember walking out on the newly paved road, before the houses along each side were built. I walked out past Capistrano, wondering where the newly laid asphalt led off to. And I remembered hoping that the snake found a safe place to go, because clearly, where to let it loose wasn't a safe place.

And there was a hill nearby, next to one of the houses, that we used to ride down in cardboard boxes. Then they built a house in that lot, which put an end to my cardboard surfer career. In fact, most of this area I remember having very, very few houses--unlike now where there are no empty lots left.

My aunt moved out of the house years ago--I'd imagine it's been at least 15 years now--and I'd never been back to that street since until today. I wondered about my aunt's old house. Did it change much? Would I recognize it when I saw it? I remembered very vividly what it looked like, but it had been a very long time since I last saw it.

And the result? The trees in the yard looked bigger and bushier than I remembered. The house seemed considerably smaller than I remembered, though I was probably half my current size at the time so, relatively speaking, the house should have seemed twice as large. But that house had that same pale, ugly yellow color I remembered. Has that house not been painted in the last decade or did they actually reuse that same color?! Memories.....

I slowed down and gawked at the house a bit--I couldn't help it. The garage dominated the view and it was hard to see the house behind it. I remembered where my aunt's room would have been, and imagined what my cousin's room looked like. And I remembered the room where I'd sleep when I spent the night. And I remembered that one day, a long, long time ago, when my mom forgot me.

We were supposed to visit my grandmother, at the time living in the nearby town of Los Osos. We stopped at my aunt's house to all head over to Los Osos together, and somehow, in all the confusion, I got left behind. I don't remember the details--maybe I snuck into the house for something to drink, maybe not. I just don't remember, but I remember walking out the door and the car was gone. I was alone. And I cried like a baby. =)

My mom made it all the way to Los Osos before she realized I was missing, and of course she immediately drove back to get me giving me a big hug and apologized profusely about leaving me behind. It was a traumatizing experience, let me tell you.

The other street I spent quite a bit of time on was Vista Arroyo--my first girlfriend, Ella, lived on Vista Arroyo. Unlike my aunt's house which I remembered very well, Ella's place I couldn't form a good picture in my head of. Women--that's what they do to you. =) Was the driveway on the left or right side of the property? Was the house--white, perhaps? I wondered if I'd recognize it when I saw it--I hoped so, because I couldn't remember which house it was in relation to other houses. It was very perplexing.

But I did recognize it when I saw it. It was white, and the driveway was on the right side of the property. It seemed a bit more rundown than I remembered it, though. Not that I really remembered it--but I *don't* remember thinking it ever needed a new coat of paint before. The lawn looked like it could have been mowed as well. I do remember thinking the yard looked meticulous when she lived there, so I suspect her dad no longer lives there for that reason. He might for all I know, though. *shrug*

Ella's family was a bit odd. Her parents were from Russia and spoke Russian as their native language so they spoke with a thick accent and I always had trouble understanding them. Especially if they were speaking Russian to each other. Ella knew Russian and that's the language they used with each other, though apparently she spoke Russian with a very thick English accent which I thought was funny. She once told me a story of one of her parent's friends (who only knew Russian) calling about a phone number, so she tried to read the phone number in Russian but the other person was having trouble understanding her Russian. "No, I said FIVE! FIVE! Not four! FIVE then four!" Her parents have no trouble understanding her Russian, though, but it always seemed like an odd setup to me taken right out of a sitcom. Unless they were speaking Hebrew--they were Jewish, after all, and I know Ella's brother was born in Israel, though I never did find out how long they actually lived in that country. Usually, though, they spoke Russian in the house. Dinner conversations were awkward, at best. =)

I once tried to call and her Dad answered the phone. "Is Ella there? No, ELLA! E-L-L-A." Just kidding about that part. =) They had no trouble understanding me--I just had trouble understanding them.

Her parents broke up shortly after I started seeing Ella. I think that's coincidence--at least I hope it is--but it's a shame because I really liked her mom. Her dad I didn't much like because his accent was SOOO thick I had trouble understanding anything he said and he seemed a little stuffy to me. One of those kinds of people who seemed too neat, but I got along great with her mom. =) Which is even more odd, since Ella didn't seem to like her mom very much but adored her dad.

I tried to see where her room used to be, but that window is pretty overgrown with brush and couldn't really see it very well. But it was in that room I had my first kiss from a girl. *nodding* It was pretty wonderful too. At least until her dad started knocking on the door almost immediately after our lips touched. "Does your dad have a hidden video camera in here or something?" I asked alarmed. I don't remember what he wanted to ask--perhaps something about dinner which, in that house, was always at 6:30pm on the nose. Which always seemed strange to me, since at my house, dinner was whenever my mom felt good and ready to make dinner. =)

Of course, that was years ago. We dated in high school, and last I heard she moved off to the San Diego area about the same time I moved off to Oregon and have never seen or heard from her since. I hope she's doing well, and I'm very curious what she's doing now. It occurred to me, since the last time I've seen her, all the things that have happened to me. I moved to Oregon. I lived in Central America for several months. I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. I created Atlas Quest. I've traveled to Africa and Eastern Europe, I've seen two total solar eclipses, and even dropped by the Ukraine where people walked around speaking Russian. (Which, at the time, I wished I paid more attention to Ella's Russian such as HELLO!) Oh, and I met Amanda, of course. =) During that time, the US embassy tried to evacuate me from Guatemala, I lit my crotch on fire, lived through earthquakes in North Carolina, Costa Rica, Oregon, and California.

If Ella had half the stories I've collected since the last time I saw her, she'd have a lot of very interesting stories. And I left her old house wondering what they might be.....

I finished hiking through her neighborhood, and intended to finish up with a couple of other streets nearby. Then I bumped into the street named Via Laguna Vista. It's not on my map--it's just off the edge of the map and is a fairly new street where most of the lots are still empty of houses but construction workers are doing their darndest to change that. I loved the name of the street, though. Via Laguna Vista. Rolls right off the tongue so well, especially if said with a Spanish accent. Via Laguna Vista. Say it like "Vee-ah La-goona Vees-ta." In English, it means "Lake View Way" or something to that effect, mostly because it overlooks Laguna Lake. That street was a bit longer than I anticipated, though.

I kept following it, and following it, and following it. Just a little bit further, I'd think. Just around the next bend it'll intersect Prefumo Canyon Road or something and I'm done. But it didn't connect to any other roads, but kept going farther and farther out of town. And I kept following it, sure it was about to end at any time.

About a mile later, it intersected with another road I'd never heard of before, and by now I was WAY outside of the city limits. I saw a group of quail running across the road and a deer darted away from me into a large bush. And in one driveway, the biggest rabbit I ever saw hopped away. Let me tell you something. When you see quail, deer, and rabbits ducking for cover at your approach, you aren't in a city anymore. I'd never been out in this part before, however, and I was curious--where did this new road lead? It looked like the one direction went towards Los Osos Valley Road, so I continued down the road in that direction to see what else was out there. I didn't count this road towards my thru-hike, though. It was in no way, shape, or form part of the city of San Luis Obispo and as such, did not deserve to be counted. =)

The road meandered a bit, and finally dumped me out on Los Osos Valley Road as expected, which I followed back into the city (taking a good photo of the city limit sign as I hiked past it) before finishing the last two roads I had on my to-do list (Frambuesa and Clearview Lane). My feet were exhausted already, and Via Laguna Vista ended up taking me an unplanned 2.6-mile detour. Oops. =)

Then I limped another 5.9 miles, according to my pedometer, back to my mom's house. Part of my goal with this thru-hike is not to drive myself around town to visit all these neighborhoods. Driving somewhere to walk seems like an oxymoron to me, so all these walks I've been doing--I've never driven myself. I usually walk to the location, hike the streets, then walk back. Which makes it harder and harder the farther away from my mom's house I have to walk. Even if I want to hike just one small street, it often involves a five mile hike just to get there and another five miles to get back. I don't count those extra miles in my counts--so my actual walking miles is probably quadruple the miles I post in these logs.

In this case, my mom dropped me off along her way to work so I didn't have to walk to this particular neighborhood, but I was on my own for getting back and chose to walk back. I do allow myself the luxury of the bus if I'm really tired, but I really wanted to walk back today and that's what I did, limping the whole way. I can't help myself. My name is Ryan, and I'm a walker. =)

Total Streets: 388
Total Miles: 100.9

How 'bout that. I passed the 100 mile mark and didn't even realize it. Probably that Via Laguna Vista street did it to me. Via Laguna Vista!

Blood and Gore: Part II

2006-05-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

Once again, I gave a part of myself for the greater good: my blood. I'm happy to report that this time around, my pulse came in at 89 beats per minutes and they were happy to take me. It's only been five days since my last donation and the needle mark from that donation still hasn't healed completely--you can still see it if you know where to look. I've donated often (over 80 times now!), but never have I donated twice in such a short timespan. =)

On a related note, one pint of blood weighs one pound. Assuming they were taking an actual pint of blood instead of platelets, that would be over 80 pounds of blood I'd have donated. Man, all the things one can do with 80 pounds of blood..... One of these days, I'll even reach my own body weight in pure blood. How cool would that be? =)

I explained last time that when you donate platelets, they draw blood from an arm, filter out the parts they want, then return the rest back into your bloodstream. The left over stuff they keep--it hardly looks like blood at all, and this time, I got a picture of the finished product so you can see the ugly mustard yellow-colored liquid filtered out of my own bloodstream. No videos of my getting stuck with a needle this time.

A bag of my blood. You can see some of the red blood in the tubes on the machine that filters out the blood components they want, but almost all of the red blood cells get returned to the blood stream

I might also point out, when the blood is returned to your body, it's mixed with a saline solution that's pretty darned cold. When the returns first starts, you feel it in the form of a cold chill running into your arm and eventually it spreads throughout your body. I'm sure there's some technical reason they can't heat the return to body temperature so it's not so friggin' cold, but if there is one, I don't know it. So you can usually find me wrapped up in blankets they provide specifically for that reason when I donate. This time, they also gave me a heating pad they put behind my back which felt REALLY nice. I'll have to start asking for that for now on. =)

Anyhow.... this blog is about my thru-hike, so enough about blood. I did nab a few more streets after I finished, including Mutsuhito Avenue, Garibaldi Avenue, McMillian Avenue, Morrison Street, and Duncan Road.

Yesterday, I posted about one of my greatest college victories. Today, I shall entertain you with perhaps my most tragic childhood defeat. Back in the old days, for a short period of time, there used to be a mini golf course at the end of Duncan Road. And my sister had a birthday party there. I was doing pretty well until I got to the dreaded hole #8. It was a simple Y-shaped course where you started at the bottom of the Y and there was a hole at the tips of the other two ends. A 'His' hole, and a 'Hers' hole.

And I strutted up to the putting hole and whacked the ball, to my mortal embarrassment, a hole-in-one right into the hers side of the course. Nowadays I'd laugh it off and say I meant to do that as a joke, but I was a young lad surrounded by other equally young kids who I knew could torment me for years before I had a chance to move away and change my name. It was an upsetting blow.

I retrieved the ball--there wasn't anything else I could do--and did the hole over again. And once again, I knocked a hole-in-one right into the hers hole. *shaking head* It was humiliating and humbling at the same time.

For a third time, I tried the hole over again, and there was no way--absolutely no way over my dead body I was going to hit it into the hers hole again, so I putted softly enough to ensure there wasn't enough momentum to make it to either of the holes and finally sank it into the his hole after a second stroke. Well, a total of six stroke if you include the first two 'in the wrong hole' strokes plus penalties for doing it over.

I never went back to that putt putt again, and they shortly thereafter went out of business. I'm not saying the two events are connected, but if I was the owner, I'd have reconfigured that hole #8.

Total Streets: 367
Total Miles: 95.89 miles

The College Daze....

2006-05-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

Once again, I hit the streets of San Luis Obispo, this time focusing on a neighborhood near Cal Poly. I can now mark off Grand Avenue, Mountain Lane, Klamath Road, Deer Road, Slack Street (isn't that a wonderful name for a street that borders the Cal Poly campus?), Hathway Avenue, Stafford Street, Taft Street, Kentucky Avenue, Orange Street, Bond Street (sorry, no houses with the address of 007--but wouldn't it be cool if it were?), Longview Street, Albert Drive, Chaplin Lane, Carpenter Street (and who doesn't love all 137 steps it took for me to hike that street?), Crandall Way, Campus Way, Monte Vista Place, and Mustang Drive.

Grand Avenue passes directly in front of the Performing Arts Center, a structure that--in a New Times poll--was voted by residents as the county's ugliest building AND the most beautiful building at the same time. Needless to say, everyone had strong opinions about the structure, and they either loved it or hated it. Not a whole lot of middle ground. I'm okay with it. I think it looks like a crashed alien space craft--which is kind of cool in a strange way--though I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really convinced its exterior 'blends in' with the neighborhood. It definitely looks out of place to me, and when I hike up mountains like the Irish Hills completely on the opposite side of town, it's the one structure I can still clearly identify. It'll stand the test of time and distance for many, many years to come.

Everyone seems to agree, though, that the inside is a masterpiece. I know they used to take people on tours of the place when it first opened, and if they still do that, it's worth the effort. Or find out what's playing and purchase a ticket to get in. The inside is magnificent.

On a related note, I read that the folks who designed the building created the structure to 'blend in' with the hills surrounding the area. I think they missed their mark, but I'll let you decide for yourself. =)

The Performing Arts Center just blends in so well with the mountains around it, don't you think? =)

One nice thing about hiking these neighborhoods on a beautiful sunny day such as today, there's certainly a lot of cleavage in the air. I can't count the number of women I saw sunbathing in their lawns, on their roofs, or even on the grass around campus. They try so hard to look beautiful and get themselves a great tan. The irony, I think, is they'll be the first to wrinkle and get skin cancer. I hope it's worth it for them.

Most of my time wasn't spent thinking about alien space ships and bikini-clad woman, however. Most of my thoughts lingered over an all-nighter I once pulled with three other people. It's the only all-nighter in my entire college career, and is particularly memorable since it's the best 'victory snatched from the jaws of defeat' story I've ever participated in.

First, a little background is in order. This was a computer science class about ethics. It was considered an easy class with no real work required. Just show up and pretend you're interested kind of thing. However, there was one project we had to do. A group project covering some of the ethical concerns in the industry. Deep stuff like how human should computers become, but no real answers to speak of either. Everyone, myself included, considered the class a waste of time. But we had this project we had to do, and it would make up about half hour grade. Needless to say, everyone wanted to do well on this project.

All other groups ended up doing some stupid survey that they asked other class members and turned in a paper on the results. Our group wanted to do something different, and our first idea was to create a Jeopardy-type game with the class with all the questions and answers about ethical type stuff. Our teacher didn't seem fond of that idea when we first explained it, so we nixed it under the thought that if he was grading us, we needed to do something that he'd actually like.

We had months to work on this project, but it wasn't until the week before it was due before we really started getting serious about doing it. Mostly we had problems of finding a time when everyone was available at the same time, and I favored working even if we were missing someone. Waiting until everyone was available just wasn't working out well.

So a few days before the assignment was due, we had a new idea of creating a daytime soap based around a bunch of computer scientists doing ethical and unethical things. "And the father is.... HAL!" *gasp ensues* Oh, we were funny and clever. It was ingenious.

I had to work that night at Pizza Hut, so they met that evening without me to start taping. One of us had a video camera, so we decided that using it was the best way to get special effects in and such then just play the tape for the class on the due date. After getting off of work, I headed over to see how things were going and to participate as well. And things weren't going well.

Brian explained, "Justin was wearing a dress, and none of us were laughing."

"That's not a good sign," I agreed.

Apparently, our idea was more clever than our execution.

Okay, now what? As the Chip Turns was turning into a flop.

We hashed out some more ideas and finally decided that we'd interview people we found on the street, recording them with the video camera, and use those results as our project. We told our teacher the next day about our idea, and it was clear he was getting frustrated with us. This was a project that we were supposed to have been working on for months, and we were getting approval for a new idea two days before the due date. His hopes for us were pretty darned low.

"On the bright side," I told my other group members, "a low bar is an easy hurdle to get over." =)

The next day, three of our four team members (including myself, since I had the day off) went downtown to start interviewing people on the street. I was the camera operator--something I had absolutely no experience in but was always willing to do anyhow.

It wasn't good. Nobody wanted to talk to us. "Only have a half hour for lunch!" "Gotta get to work!" Excuses, excuses. A few other students were willing to help out since we seemed desperate at the time, but frankly, we weren't having much luck. Considering that of the people who did agree to an interview, almost all of them were fellow students, and being the brillant computer scientists we were, we decided to move to a new location near the back of Mustang Village Apartments where a lot of students walk between the apartments and the campus.

We definitely had a lot better luck at this location and found quite a number of people willing to be interviewed. We finally called it a wrap and all went home. We'd meet the next evening to put it all together.

The next evening, for the first time, every member of our group was able to attend. And looking at the interviews we had filmed the day before, we had nothing. Absolutely, friggin' nothing. The project was due in about 16 hours, and we had a bunch of interviews that we all agreed was the absolutely stupidest, boring idea on the face of the planet. And to say we were a bit concerned was a serious understatement seeing as about half our grade depended on this project.

We considered going back to the Jeopardy idea--anything was better than walking into class the next day with absolutely nothing.

Then I had an idea. It was perhaps the most inspired idea of my entire college career. A newscast. We could do a newscast. A couple of us could sit at the large desk in the front of the classroom pretending to be anchors, and they're always shuffling papers around in front of them. We wouldn't have to memorize any lines--we could write them out on paper and read it right off the page if we needed to! We could incorporate the interviews we took the day before. "We sent our downtown correspondent to ask the public their opinion of Netscape vs. Internet Explorer...." Salvage the interviews from the day before and have a script we could read right off of. We could get current events about ethical concerns in the computer and software industry and just read it right out loud.

And the others immediately agreed. It was brilliant!

We hashed around some other ideas for the newscast and decided to make our 'feature story' about Surfer Dude (a character we created earlier in the class for another project) just arrested on suspicion of software piracy. We shot a grainy 'security camera' video of Surfer Dude entering a room and stealing a bunch of CDs. We also decided that Alex--the guy playing Surfer Dude--was going to be one of our anchors (I was the other)--and darn it, wouldn't it be HILARIOUS if we could have him interview himself from a 'satellite feed'?

So we filmed Surfer Dude in a blank room, answering questions asked by an off-camera interviewer. Brian would ask questions like, "How do you explain this video of you apparently slipping at CD into your pocket?" and Surfer Dude would reply about the video being a fake! Anyone could have manipulated it to frame him! Later, we went back and deleted the sound when Brian asked the questions, leaving the video with only the answers Surfer Dude provided. Then we gave the set of questions to Alex and ran the tape with now just the answers. So he'd ask the question live, then you'd hear the prerecorded answer of him answering.

Very slick. =) We surfed the web for other current events relating to ethical issues surrounding our industry from space to a Microsoft warehouse in Ireland that was recently robbed of official boxes that thieves might use to sell pirated software as if it were the real deal. As a joke, we threw in the weather and traffic report--looking up the actual weather forecast for the next day to insure the utmost of accuracy. And the traffic report was actually 'network traffic.' "The AIX cluster is bogged down as usual today, and the Garden and Snake clusters are under construction as the old computers are being replaced with newer ones, so we suggest you use Galaxy or Phoenix for your network traffic this afternoon...."

Oh, we laughed and we laughed. We were so darned funny! =)

We decided to put Brian in charge of the weather and traffic reports. He's the person who was doing the interview questions the day before, but the weather and traffic reports were to be presented live to the class, and we thought it would be really funny to have him run out of the classroom when we went to our 'downtown correspondent' then rush back into class immediately afterwards when he became our weather and traffic expert.

The fourth person of our group--his sole role was to play the tape when it needed to be played, pause it when we needed to do live stuff, and start it again as necessary. The hardest part was choreographing the tape JUST right to make sure it synced up with the stuff we were doing live.

And we spent the WHOLE FRIGGIN' NIGHT working on this. We ordered pizza to be delivered (Pizza Hut, in fact, since I could get a discount there *nodding*) and did not leave that apartment until 7:00am. Three hours until it was due. We were utterly exhausted. Some of us fell asleep at times throughout the night, and if they weren't needed for a particular piece we were working on, we'd just let them sleep. But none of us got more than an hour or two of sleep that night, and there was always someone working on the project at all times.

I went home and got what sleep I could--about one hour before I had to leave for class. I felt like crap, but I was really, really happy with what we managed to pull off that night. I was very optimistic our project was going to be a huge success--all the more remarkable after considering how low we were less than 24 hours before.

Class rolled around, and it was time for our presentation. It went without a hitch. We had the class rolling on the floor laughing with our stunts: The interview Alex gave to himself (disguised as Surfer Dude), the weather and traffic report, Brian running in and out of the classroom pretending to go downtown, etc. We padded our news on the page so halfway through the presentation, we could cut out some of the information if we were running over time or add more if we were moving faster than expected.

At the end, Brian gave a 'news flash' to Alex--a part that was NOT in my script and must have been added in when I took a short nap the night before.

"This just in! The district attorney released Surfer Dude saying the video evidence against him looked like something a bunch of college students put together the night before an assignment was due....."

I couldn't help it. I busted up laughing with the rest of the class. I laughed so hard I had tears coming out of my eyes.

Needless to say, our presentation was a huge success. The greatest of victories snatched from the deepest defeats. Our teacher said he was absolutely blown away with how well we did--we could have included a bit more 'content', but far exceeded it best expectations. It was also the first time in his 30-year teaching career that he'd ever seen a group do a part-live, part-videotaped presentation and it was extremely effective. And yes, we all got an A on that project. =)

Later, I found it, only two people in the entire class got an A--myself and one other member of our group. All of the other groups that did those really lame questionnaires--their project certainly passed, but none of their projects got an A. And since the project was such a HUGE part of our grade, anything less than A pretty much doomed the rest of them to, at best, a B.

And that's what I thought about while walking around campus and the nearby neighborhoods: one of my greatest success stories. But I swore I'd never pull another all-nighter again. I like my sleep too much.

Total Streets: 362
Total Miles: 94.86