Indomitable Spirit

Commercial being aired during the US Open (Oh So Funny!) with the song “I’m So Pretty” from West Side Story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-_CgWugraA

I just found out that in the community room at my apartment complex we have a 70″ Sony HD Television….wow. I am watching US Open in high def, and it is awesome. I don’t think I’ll be buying a TV anytime soon. I am reserving this room for every Colts game that I can get out here…which is frustrating. It turns out we have a Fox Sports Grill restaurant, but they won’t know until tomorrow if they will carry the game vs. the Bengals. Otherwise I will be calling every sports bar around to find the game.

Otherwise, things are good, getting situated just fine. I got a bunch of furniture for my room, check out the pictues page. I’ll be getting my computer monitor (19″ flat widescreen) sometime today. Super excited, I haven’t had a desktop monitor in over a year!

I’ve been working out too, at the beach. Early mornings are nice, the beach opens at 6 am, and I can drive and park about a 5 minute walk from the beach. Since I’m old and go to sleep really early, I can get up around then to go! Practicing forms on the beach is very serene and peaceful, and a good workout on the legs and balance as well. I need to start working out the upper body though if I want to be able to surf!

Next week I start “working”. I’ll only be taking two classes (Research Seminar in Informatics, and Machine Learning), but these don’t start until September 22. Most of my time will be focused on research. I’m going to start my reading list of papers, books, etc. to start narrowing down a research topic, and meet with my professor (Pierre Baldi) to discuss.

I’ll also be in a Tae Kwon Do class, which meets just as IUTKD Club is finishing up (4:00-5:20 PST). So it will feel like I’m there, just a little late. Check out the class and the video about it and the instructor (he’s pretty awesome). Hopefully I’ll also be able to take the Surfing class!

Anyways, I’m going to watch a little more US Open tennis then run some errands on campus.

I made it to California! Last day of driving was cake, didn’t get lost and traffic wasn’t that bad. I left Kingman, AZ at about 3:45 am. It was wierd driving for 3 hours and being in the middle of the desert when the sun came up…Nothing around for miles and miles but mountains and sand.

Moving along, I moved into my new apartment with ease as we are on the ground level. Its a step (or 10) up from Terra Trace in Bloomington, thats for sure! Most notably the kitchen, with island bar, huge fridge, and lots of storage. However there is no air conditioning, but strangely we don’t really need it. The weather is just that perfect! Haha. I know you hate me. There’s much more to talk about the apartment and complex, but I’ll save that for later.

First things first, I went to the beach yesterday (Saturday). It’s about 8 miles to ride there, takes 15-20 minutes. I first went to the beach at Corona Del Mar, which was nice but extremely crowded. I got some sun, went in the water (~70 degrees), and walked around for a while. I’m pretty sure that the bottoms of my feet are sunburnt, as well as my scalp and pretty much everything else. I may have the blond hair for California, but I still have the paleness of Indiana.

Not content there, I rode up the Pacific Coast Highway (it has bike lanes!) to Newport Beach. On the way in I stopped at The Crab Cooker for a great bowl of red clam chowder and a piece of smoked salmon. For those of you TV junkies you might know this place as the “Seafood Shack” in Fox’s hit series “The O.C.” It was delicious, and not trendy at all. I then rode down to Newport Pier and the beach, to 15th Street (one of “The O.C.’s” beach hangouts). It was a lot less crowded there than I expected for a sunny Saturday afternoon. Guess those aren’t as rare as they are in Indiana. Not many surfers, the surf report said that the best waves were in the early morning, so I missed out on that.

Come back later for more on my new life as a trendy SoCal fashionista.

Overall, today was much better than yesterday for travelling west. The breakfast at the Days Inn in Albuquerque was shite, so I went across the street to the Owl Cafe and had great Huevos Mexicanos (muy caliente!!!). This kept me over almost the entire trip for today. I made a detour in Arizona to take a drive through the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest National Park, which was worth the time and money. Check out the picture page:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kmdaily/GoingToCalifornia

for all sorts of pretty pictures (and a few from the drive up to that point). Then, the weather turned crappy - cold and rainy. Who knew that it gets cold in Arizona in August? I got out of my car about 50 miles past Flagstaff and it was windy and 50 degrees! Very strange indeed. So that part of the drive (up to about 30 minutes before Kingman, which is the last city in Arizona before the Mojave Desert) sucked. Then, it cleared up and was much warmer and much easier to drive. So I am here in Kingman, about to go to bed (its only 6:18 pm here) and getting up at about 3-4 am to drive through the desert to Irvine, CA. It’s about 350 miles, 200 through desolate, hot desert, and I would like to avoid melting. So check out the pictures while I sleep!

So today I am going to blame on Tyler, who jinxed me. And I quote: “Hopefully your drive is uneventful, but eventful enough to where you don’t fall asleep at the wheel.” The trip was fine at first; a nice breakfast of biscuits and gravy, OJ, and coffee, and light traffic and beautiful sunshine leaving OKC. I made good time to Amarillo. The scenery changed a lot over this part of the trip, from rolling green fields to red clay soil and buttes and plateaus. Check out the picture page (http://picasaweb.google.com/kmdaily/GoingToCalifornia) for some examples of me taking pictures while driving (dangerous!!!).

Despite all the roadside signs begging me to eat a 72 oz. steak dinner for free (if I eat it all in 1 hour), I steered away for some Dyer’s BBQ in Amarillo, TX. This was about halfway to my destination of Albuquerque, NM (287 mi from OKC to Amarillo). Full and satisfied I continued on my journey. About 55 miles west of Amarillo, my trusty, Swedish-made car top carrier decided to fail on me. And by fail I mean the top of it flying off at 75 mph (along with my clothes, shoes, vaccuum cleaner, pillows, and air mattress). Make sure you check the above mentioned picture page if you missed those pictures the first time. The cartop carrier was destroyed, unusable, a large, hollow paper weight so they say. After some frantic calls to AAA, the New Mexico State Police, and my dad, I waited for about an hour for them (not my dad) to show up. I didn’t think I could fit everything that was up above into the car, but I did, although blocking all views and mirrors of my car except for the front windshield and driver’s window. The state trooper helped me with a few things, and I decided to continue to Albuquerque, where a REI outfitter store awaited. This is the only time that I enjoyed having cronstruction traffic at one lane and 45 mph.

2.5 hours later (about an hour ago as I’m writing this) I got to the REI store, and luckily was able to get store credit for the destroyed car top carrier (well half of it, the other was still on the side of the interstate 150 miles away) as well as a brand spanking new Thule (Swedish-made again) car top carrier for only ~$450 (Check it out!). Oh well, it’s my parents anyways! Well I’m off to Applebee’s for a much needed drink or two, or three….

First, Thanks for everyone that came out to Scotty’s and Nick’s for my last night in Bloomington! It meant a lot to me to see you all for one last time (for a while anyways).

Today is the day that I’ve been anticipating and dreading all at once since May 6: finally moving to California. I packed up my car last Thursday and bummed around B-town (thanks Caitlin, Tom, and Melissa for housing me) until today. I left Bloomington at around 9 am after stopping at Scholar’s Inn, and a generous donation of food and caffeine from Deanna got me going. I sit and write this from the Crossroads of America, Oklahoma City, OK. I travelled 737 miles today (at almost 40 mpg!) in around 12 hours. If I had gotten a decent night’s sleep last night, didn’t feel like crashing now, and it wasn’t 20 miles away (and I could have stayed closer!!!!) I would be at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill!. But since not, I went to McDonald’s and am now going to sleep. Check out http://picasaweb.google.com/kmdaily/GoingToCalifornia for pictures and maps of my trip! I’ll write more tomorrow if I stay somewhere with Internet!