Back in lala land

Tisa and I are back in LA after a great vacation in Yosemite with Tisa's family, and a couple days in Merced as a layover before heading home.

Tons of highlights throughout the trip, had a really nice time with everyone there, and was happy to have Brian meet us in Yosemite for a week.

Tops on the trip was a hike up to Cloud's Rest in the northern yosemite wilderness. 14.4 miles round-trip, pretty decent day hike. At the end, there's this awesome part with all these Granite slabs that ascend to the top, at one part, we walked along a five foot path next to the drop off (which probably descends about 4,000 feet to the valley). Pretty exhilerating. Phenomenal view of halfdome. I'll post some pictures as soon as they're uploaded.

The Tick!

Ticks are pretty awesome, and not just because of the show on comedy central. And, in part homage and part elegy to one such creature, I have this story to tell:

Tisa and I took an 11 or 12 mile hike to wrap up spring break... this was four weeks ago, so I'm playing catchup on my blog. We left a car at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, then drove up to the Switzer picnic area to begin the hike. We figured, 11 miles or so, mostly downhill, meh! Not bad at all, right?

Well, 11 miles can take its toll... Tisa and I both ended up very sore (despite the 130 miles we had travelled by bike the week before). We passed through some really incredible areas, and only ran into one other hiker the the first 8 miles or so. Several ducks swarmed us as we crossed the stream, flying back and forth overhead, making the crossing quite difficult but memorable.

And, the last 4 miles or so, I began to feel like I had scraped my knee. Weird though, since I was wearing jeans, and had only leaned against one rock while taking a picture.

At home, we discovered the tick. Carefully embedded in my knee cap. After consulting numerous guides on what to do, I poured some vaseline on it, hoping it would crawl out for air. No luck. Then, I twisted and pulled, twisted and pulled, and eventually, I think I got him loose. Though, there still might be tick teeth in me. Which is always a nice souvenir.