california - winchester mystery house, yosemite, and the decemberists
i’m feeling… cool.
i’m listening to… augustana - boston, aimee mann - how am i different, a lot of random other stuff i forgot to write down.
well it’s been a long time since i’ve posted, so i’ll try to recap as much as possible!!
thursday, april 26th, 2007 — went to san francisco from seattle. lenny brought me to the airport. yeaaaaaaaaaaaah. i BARTed from the airport to xinlei’s work at embarcadero. dropped off my stuff and then we went to eat at some singapore/malaysian restaurant. ordered a taro bowl. it was okay. and a lychee ice. it was okay. okay restaurant. malay satay hut better, except for that one time. we BARTed over to the warfield in san francisco. essentially, the warfield is the paramount, but 1/2 the size. a pretty cool venue to be in, actually, because it’s like, kind of big, but well staged so that it’s intimate, yet everyone can basically see everything. very, very nice. and a super duper good decemberists show. super duper good. colin was super friendly. they were doing the can can during “mariner’s revenge song,” and they brought out a giant whale costume for it and stuff. man, what a good show. i am really excited to see what the seattle one will be like, man! really excited! lots of joking. and accordion girl is pimp man. yeah. they once again ended the set pre-encore with “sons and daughters.” at some point, they made the entire crowd basically give “magic fingers,” and everyone did it, and colin said, “it probably doesn’t look nearly as cool there as it does from here.” probably true. cool show. cool band. they looked like they had a helluva lotta fun, man. after the show, headed back to xinlei’s office to grab bags, then took the bart home to her house, where i slept over and stuff. yep.
friday, april 27th, 2007 — woke up at xinlei’s and watched some discovery channel. mom picked me up. we went to eat at jia jia le in walnut creek. it was alright. mom took me home, where i just hung out for a while. what did i do? i don’t know. oh yeah, surfed ebay like, forever, looking for clothes. why, i’m not so sure. oh yeah, and we have housecleaners now and they cleaned my room and stuck a bunch of my shit in places where i don’t know where it is, and let me tell you, that’s pretty fucking annoying. at night, went over to phil [hua]’s place and played “god of war 2,” which is pretty much um, AWESOME. must go back and finish it out?!!!!! I HOPE?!!
saturday, april 28th, 2007 — went to yosemite with sherry. wee!!!!! we’d been planning this for a while. on this trip we talked about road tripping across the country, visiting weird as places. three weeks minimum. things like, giant radio flyer, spam museum, etc. etc. anything weird. vivian and sherry’s tour of the country. also a lot of hypothteical questions, like, would you rather have a horse vs. pig, pig vs. dog, etc. etc. ? anyway, we got to yosemite and climbed around a little on the side of the road near a creek. some good first views of the park. some scary winding roads up to the park. lol. also got to listen to the newest jason mraz cd on the way back, the mra.z. one, and i must say, it is one of the weirdest albums i’ve listened to in a while, but i think i like it. anyway, enough about the way back since i haven’t talked about the way there yet. we passed by this one piece of land that had all of these cool volcanic-looking rocks and grass and prairies and hills and trees and creeks. WHAT A DOPE PLACE. i want that land. i want. anyways, i really think that land piece was cooler than the actual park, but whatever hahaha. 
we rented bikes, after much confusion with their shuttle system, and the bikes were about $6.50 an hour. lol. some brothers ran the bike shop, and they were quite friendly… we shoulda rented adult bikes, but they were rather tall, so we went with the kids’ bikes. big ass fucking mistake, cause kids bikes have such godamn tiny ass motherfucking seats. muchas asso hurtos. that’s for real, son! anyway, the brothers were super friendly til we found out they were brothers and sherry asked them, “who beat up who when growing up?” and then the younger brother got all quiet and to fill the void, the older one was like, “he beat himself up,” and from that moment on, the younger brother was no longer friendly to us HAHAHA. TRAUMATIZED? anyhow, the whole entire bike trail was 2 hours, and we took right about 2 hours. that was including a mini hike up to mirror lake and stopping a few times due to exhaustion. little bikes are good for one-handed biking, but bad for um, pain, and for going far distances. so it was kinda painful and hard to go up even the smallest of hills. we got excited when going down TINY little ramps. it was kind of pathetic hahahaha. :L anyway, we hiked up to mirror lake, like a half mile. on the way there, i decided to climb this sweet ass rock and the way up was cool, but the way down was kinda painful. think i rolled my ankle that i hurt skateboarding nubbishly again. rolled it a little or something. dammit? it hurts a little today. :/ and there were all these people in the lake and swimming around. it was hot, so i went and splashed water all over my hair in the mini waterfall and soaked my feet in, and let me tell you, the ride back was way better. it might have been better because i was cool, but also better because i started video taping the ride back a little more, and i wuold say to random people, “smile! you’re on my video!” and some people laughed, but there were a lot of negative responses too.
oh man, i almost forgot. i got hit on by like, an 80 yr old guy at yosemite. when we got on the shuttle the first time, he was sitting in one of those seats you normally offer to elderly people, and he made me sit next to him cause there was an open seat. i kept offering to give it to other people, but he kept saying, “it’s for you.” so eventually i sat down, thinking he’s an old dude, so what? and then he started conversing with me about living in sacramento, and i like asking people questions and making conversation, so i asked him a helluva lotta questions. maybe that was my first mistake!?!!!?!?!?! eventually he got a little weird and asked me where i was from and i said seattle, and he said he’d lived there before for a while. then i was asking about yosemite lodge, because that was where we were going to rent our bikes. then he said, “we’re going to be at yosemite lodge at 5, 5:15… you should meet us there. eat a meal with us.” and i said, “okay,” thinking i would never see him again. and before he left, he said, “oh, and you ARE very beautiful.” then i was like, “man, did i just get hit on by an 80 year old?” and this mom with three kids… asian husband, white wife… was nodding and laughing, lol. he gave me his seat after the bus got more crowded, and he said, “i was brought up to give ladies the seat,” and i very closely said, “i was brought up to give old people seats,” but i didn’t. haha. she was saying, how she used to think that it was mean to ignore people who hit on you like that, but then she discovered that they are the ones who are out of line. lol. interesting. i was like, “alright! i still got it!” and then sherry was like, wait, maybe he’s the one who’s still got it. hmm! true! anyway, made some more friendly conversation with her, and she had super cute kids, one of whom i took a pic of (even though i felt kinda bad for the older son, because he got like, no attention, since the younger two kids were getting all the attention of the parents… and they were all super cute kids). on the way back on the shuttle, after we had dropped off our bicycles three hours later, he got on the shuttle again. shit. what are the chances?!! bad luck, too, cause we had accidentally taken the wrong bus and he happened to be coming onto it. and even more bad luck, or is it fate? but i was standing RIGHT near the door because the bus was so full. ruht roh. so sherry and i were wearing tank tops. first thing he said to me when he got on was, “i told you i’d see you again,” and i was just like heh, heh…………………………….. he kept like, staring at sherry and i’s chests. not our faces. our chests. trying to look down our shirts, basically, and we kept trying to cover ourselves up nonchalantly. GROSS. at some point, he handed me a piece of paper and was like, “you should come visit me sometime,” and i managed to stutter out, “i… don’t get down here that often,” and eventually we got to a stop and people left so we quickly scurried to the back of the bus. eeps. luckily, after that, he stopped chasing and eventually left. gag.
anyway, on the way back, we stopped by in-n-out, and it was overall a very good trip, albeit an exhausting one. more people need to indulge in nature. yet another reason i wouldn’t live in the bay area — not enough nature. sherry and i were wondering… how did they find natural parks? how does water in waterfalls last for so long? how many other places are equally as beautiful yet never are turned into parks because they were ransacked by man?… guess we will never know.