Outdoor Travel Geek

  • cyclic revelation

    In the last couple of weeks I’ve had a chest x-ray, an EKG test, an echo-cardiogram, a holter monitor test and a cardiac stress test. Thankfully, all of them turned out with great results, so it seems that everything is okay. The cardiac stress test ironically relieved a lot of stress for me and made…

  • parkway revisited

    The American River Parkway is probably the place where I really discovered my love for road biking. I used to bike there pretty often in the summer, but in the last couple of years I hadn’t ridden out there much, preferring to ride west from Davis towards Winters instead. This year though, I’ve been riding…

  • cardiac quandry

    Today I had an appointment to get checked out with my doctor. Originally my appointment was scheduled for Monday, but it conflicted with the delivery time for my washing machine. And for some reason the delivery company was unable to reschedule, whereas it’s fairly easy to reschedule a doctor’s appointment with my HMO. One of…

  • bassi falls

    I probably should be taking it easy, since I literally fainted into a face plant yesterday, but I figured a hike would be okay. I had already agreed to go on this hike to Bassi Falls, and it was supposedly a pretty easy hike. And anyways, I feel most recharged when I’m outdoors. The hike…

  • face plant

    According to Urban Dictionary, a face plant is when you fall such that you land directly on your face. Up until today, I never would’ve thought that it was physically possible to face plant. I mean, if you were falling, you’d try to break your fall somehow, you’d stick out your hands or something, right? Well…

  • horsetail falls

    I didn’t realize that it was Memorial Day weekend until Friday, when coworkers started asking what I’m doing for the long weekend. I didn’t really have any plans, just the usual, try to get in some biking or hiking. On Saturday morning I went biking on the American River Parkway. It’s nice out there this…

  • strawberry fields 2012

    I’ve been looking forward to the Strawberry Fields Forever century for a long time– pretty much since last year, when I rode the metric century (65 mile) course. I had failed to finish last year, so I was looking forward to redeeming myself by finishing the full 100 mile course this year. The Santa Cruz…

  • the seven P’s plus one

    There’s an old British army adage that’s called the Seven Ps. The seven Ps stand for Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. I guess the seven Ps are useful for both battle and bicycling. To those seven Ps I will add one more. Pasta. What does pasta have to do with getting ready for…

  • bye bye bianchi

    Since I bought my Specialized Tricross my Bianchi has been sitting in my garage gathering dust. I decided it was time to sell my trusty old steed. It’s been my trusty bicycle for the last three years, and with it I had cycled over four thousand miles. As I looked at the bicycle I thought…

  • moon over mendocino

    This weekend I went backpacking at the Mendocino National Forest. It’s a pretty easy and short hike, which was good because there were a bunch of kids who were going backpacking for the first time. They had mostly grown up together in church. It kind of reminded me of when I used to be a…

  • biking cool

    Summer’s here. Summer = barbecues. It was good to be back on the grill after laying off for so long. After the barbecue I felt like a fatty, so I decided to go biking. Today’s rides were near a town called Cool, which is just up the road from Auburn. I went to this trail…

  • foresthill divide

    After demoing bikes last week I came away with the revelation that the new bikes out there are nice. But they’re a little too expensive for me to justify buying one. But I figure if I ride at least twice a month I could reward myself with a new bike at the end of the…

  • korean junk

    There are some things that just can’t exist in healthy form. Kimchee fried rice is one of those things. I tried making a healthy version before, using brown rice and nitrite-free chicken sausage but it just wasn’t the same. A good kimchee fried rice uses a liberal amount of spam. The thing is, a few…

  • biking, burgers & bros

    The rain has been crazy this past week. Originally I had planned to go mountain biking with some friends at Santa Cruz but those plans got shelved because of the rain. The weather forecast said it would be sunny, but we figured that after a week of rain the trails wouldn’t be in great condition.…

  • some perspective

    Found this on Google reader today. It reminded me of how blessed we are. I am thankful for all of these reasons.