The Grainy Waffle

Muahahahaha. Probably shouldn't start a post with maniacal laughter, but that's all I can really think about. Last weekend, I went on a short trip to San Diego (left Friday, returned Monday). The laughter is because my sister had no idea that I was coming.

Backstory: Caitlin started running a while ago. She'd done some shorter races, and then a few half-marathons. Recently, she decided that she would run a full marathon. Due to the rigorous training needed, I was hearing through the grapevine (my mom) that this would most-likely be her first and last marathon. When she posted on Facebook about her friends running their marathons two weeks prior to hers and remembering how much fun it was to cheer on our family when a bunch of them ran the Marine Corps marathon, I wanted to be there to support my sister.

So, I fired off an e-mail to Rogue to see what (if any) the plans were for the marathon. He said that he was planning to go up and meet up with her at a few spots on the course and possibly a few friends would join. I looked up airfare and found that I had two options. Option A - I have a free roundtrip flight on SouthWest, but I have to drive to an airport that SW serves (i.e. Baltimore). Option B - I found a crazy cheap roundtrip fare out of State College on United. When I called my mom to tell her of my plans, she thought that it was an awesome idea and told me to fly out of State College and that she'd cover my ticket for me. THANKS MOM! An additional bonus, these would be some of the same flights that I'd take on my trip out to Big Sky in March.

So, I checked back in with Rogue and our plan was hatched. I was to fly in on Friday night and out Monday mid-day. Rogue made sure that Caitlin didn't have any work on Saturday as he was already committed to a tournament up in Santa Barbara. Then he made some fake plans for Friday night to make sure that Caitlin was available. The entire two weeks leading up I could not stop smiling every time I thought about the trip. On Friday, Rogue picked me up from the airport and we headed to the apartment. When Caitlin returned home, she was quite surprised (and I think/hope happy, very hard to tell in the mix of emotions). We then promptly went out to dinner where the first thing we did upon arriving at On The Border was to get a picture taken of the 3 of us! My mom always asks that when we're together we get pictures with each other, and we always keep not doing it.

After dinner, I don't remember much. I think we watched some TV and then I crashed. I know that I was very tired. Saturday, Caitlin and I headed up to Carlsbad to pickup her info and check out the Expo. The Expo was pretty cool. There was tons of gear, clothing, food, etc. Cait picked up a bum-pack running type thing so that she could keep her cell phone with her along with holding her number and some gels.

On the way back to the apartment, we hit up some yarn stores as Caitlin is making some baby Jayne hats and was out of the necessary colors. I had found out that there is a World Market right next to where they live. A couple of days earlier, I discovered that World Market sells Bundaberg Ginger Beer (the nectar of the gods!) and other Australian goodness. So we stopped there and I picked up a 4-pack of Ginger Beer and a sleeve of Mint Slices (as Caitlin hadn't had them while she was there). I am happy to say that she liked both. We went out to lunch at Red Robin. A word of advice, if you find yourself hanging out with somebody the day before his/her marathon, you need to be very mindful of what you eat. The rest of the day, we just relaxed.

Sunday, we were out the door by 5am to head up to Carlsbad. It was quite cold! Not what I expected for sunny Southern California! I loaned Caitlin my jacket (as she was only in running gear and a thin hoodie) to keep her warm. Rogue also gave up his jacket to wrap around her legs for warmth (pictures in the album). You can really see the family resemblance in these pictures. Check out that chin and nose action! We met up with Caitlin 5 times on the course and then just barely got to see her cross the finish line (Rogue and I had to run through a parking lot from the last time we saw her to the finish line to see her again). Then we met up with a bunch of other friends who came out to support Caitlin.

After much hydrating and moving around, we headed to Dan & Debbie's house where Caitlin showered and changed and then we all headed out for food. Everybody wound up getting the brunch buffet as it had everything that we were thinking about getting. It was mostly good, but certainly suffered from being out all morning. We parted ways after food and went back to the apartment to relax and watch some football.

Monday, I had wanted to see the beach while I was there so Caitlin took me to the La Jolla shores (where we always seem to go). Nice walk along the beach and then to the hotel where she and Rogue were married. Then she took me to Mt. Soledad, somewhere I'd never been. Got some pretty great views of the city and surrounding areas. Then the best part, she took me to the science center where she works. It is so freakin cool! All of the fun displays and stuff to play with, gah! She has the best job! Finally, we headed to lunch at a sandwich shop that we couldn't find... so we went to Panera instead. Then it was off to the airport to start my journey back home. Leaving the warmth and sun back to the snow and cold.

All in all, it was an excellent trip. A blast to surprise my sister. And always great to get to see and hang out with family.

Hiking

Today started one of my Non-New Year's-New Year's Resolutions. I'm sure that sounds like it makes no sense, but it does. Basically, I didn't make any New Year's resolutions because I either never have any good ideas or I never seem to follow through with them. This past week, I decided that I wanted to go hiking more.  Today, I decided that I would try to go hiking at least once every week.

In central PA, there are dozens of trails around, from short hour long hikes to all day (or multi-day) hikes. As part of my plan to keep from getting into (or possibly get out of) a sedentary lifestyle, hiking seems to fit the bill. Sure, I'm back to going to the gym during the week and I still help out with SCUBA on Thursdays (and the occasional Tuesday as necessary), but I've also noticed that the weekends are usually filled with sitting around the house mostly doing nothing.

I had decided on Friday that I wanted to hike the Indian Steps trail this weekend. I don't really need to do a full write-up on the hike, you can find much more information than I feel like typing here. I did post a couple of pictures to my album that you can find by clicking on the picture to the right. The drive in was interesting. From where we started the hike, you turn of PA-26 onto a dirt road. Because of the snow we've been having, it was a packed snow covered dirt road... through the woods... up and down hills. It was an awesome drive. I *almost* got the snow chains from the trunk just to put them on, but the SAAB wound up handling just fine without them.

After finding the start of the trail, we found a large enough area off the road where we could park (see picture). Mike and I loaded up and headed out up the trail. The steps were not created by Indians (as the name would suggest) but they are old and steep. The hike starts off going right up the mountain, so its a good kick in the pants. Once up, you follow the ridge westward for a while before looping back to where we'd parked. There were a couple of nice flat spots on the ridge with some picnic tables and a couple of fire pits. As the top of the ridge is along the Mid-State Trail, I assume they are places for overnight campers (as we also saw a trail sign that just said 'H20'). We were afforded some pretty nice views from the top; unfortunately, both Mike and my cameras' batteries had died so we didn't get many pictures. I did bring my GPS along with me (as I like to do for my travels) so you can see the track/stats here.

On the way back to the car, Mike and I got talking about various meats that we'd eaten or desired to eat: bison, kangaroo, alligator, rabbit, etc. After all this talk about meat on top of a good hike, we both were craving some steak. With no great steakhouses in State College (that I know of), and my talking about cooking some good steaks over the summer while at the beach, we decided to make steaks for dinner. After getting home, I headed out to Wegmans for my weekly grocery run and picked up a sirloin steak and some potatoes, also. Cut up the sirloin into a couple of steaks and hit them with the dry-rub I'd picked up over the summer. We fired up the grill and roasted the cut up potatoes and grilled the steaks to near perfection. He, Justin, and I feasted while watching some football and then parts of Transformers on TV. Truely a "manly" day.