wow what just happened

Its 2:30 pm and I just woke up after sleeping for 12 hours... the last few days of my life have been an exhausting but awesome blur.

Last Saturday, Sean, Sabo, and I drove down to Santa Cruz for the Santa Cruz Bike demo day. Sean is a huge mountain biker and has been begging us to get bikes, Sabo wanted to try out some bikes before he got one and I wanted to ride for a bit before I bought anything. Santa Cruz is a company that makes baller mountain bikes that are anywhere from $1500 to $5000. They are super light, super durable, have tons of travel on the back tire etc etc etc


They have these demo days where they take a certain number of bikes and let people ride them on trails all day and then sell them afterwards for 60% to 40% off. They had the demo in Wilder Ranch state park, where there are tons of trails by the ocean that look like this:



We left our house at 7:30 to get there by 9:00, grabbed a few bikes after waiting in line and took off. First off, mountain biking is really, really, really fun. Second off, mountain biking is really, really, really tiring. I have never felt like my quadriceps were LITERALLY ON FIRE after exercising for such a short amount of time. Sean of course leads us away from the flat trails by the ocean and up some hill into the state park and off we go. Sabo explains how he actually likes to ride UP hills because of the challenge and the workout, I just mutter masochist and start calling him sicko as I wheeze my way up this relatively small incline. Sean is of course already at the top smiling and just loving life.

We get to the top and then the downhill (WAY MORE FUN) section starts and we just weave our way down this hill through these winding paths. Sean just disappears in this cloud of dust down the slope ripping through the trail at like 90 miles per hour, Sabo and I almost go over the handle bars and lose control off the path so we decide to take it easy and walk some sections. Sean comes back PEDALING UP THE HILL smiling like a kid on christmas saying how he wants to bomb it again and I realize i am now stuck in the woods with two sickos.

We ride trails for about an hour and then go turn the bikes in so other people could try them out. I actually got quite the rush from mountain biking even though I had never done it before and was going slow/had no idea what I was doing/etc. Sabo pulled the trigger on getting a bike and we had to kill a few hours until the demo was over and he could come pick it up. We headed into Santa Cruz and got some mexican grub (I finally ate fish tacos in California, I feel like that was on the "to do" list) and walked the santa cruz boardwalk for a bit which was cool. California has so many awesome places on the ocean, its just sick

So we drive back to Oakland and are debating going to Yosemite on Sunday morning to camp and hike for a few days. We were debating going because by Saturday night we had:

1) 3 guys
2) 1 two person tent
3) 2 sleeping bags
4) 1 sleeping pad

All of us had also left most of our warm weather gear back at our other houses, and I had no heavy jackets, no wool socks, no rain jacket, no long johns, etc (Yosemite temperatures this time of year go between 30 and 50 degrees). We decide to go anyway and scrounge up a sleeping bag and pad for Sabo from a friend at like midnight. We reason I will just make do without a pad, we will bring every warm thing we own and make it work, and all 3 of us will just cram into the tent (we will be cold anyway and will appreciate the body heat).

So we wake up on sunday morning and Sean is coming down with some bad sickness and has a swollen throat and stuff. He passes on everything warm he owns and tells us to have a good time. Sabo and I throw a box of triscuits, some pasta salad, half a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and granola bars into a cooler and set off for yosemite!



Im gonna split this up into two parts since it is getting long