Run With a View

...I'll have been running for a solid fourty minutes or so, dodging slower pedestrians, watching cars whoosh by, inhaling the exhaust and feeling every footfall come back at me from the hard pavement. City running. There are lots of small test-your-willpower hills in my running route too, so I'm soaked, nearing mental and physical exhaustion and hoping for a miracle. It's usually about 5K into the run when I get to my favourite view.

Suddenly, suburbia falls away and leaves me with sun soaked fields that rise and fall like the tide of the earth. Open roads and often, the breeze visits the salty sweat on my forehead, giving me a cool down. All my muscles and limbs seem to take in the air and relax and my pace slows, but my head turns on to take it all in as I muster the power to go on. It's awesome and the photos don't do it justice.

I biked out there today to snap a few pictures anyway, because I wanted to attempt to share it with y'all.

Photos: August 5-7

August 5th. Cowboys & Aliens.
It's my goal to figure out a way to wear this hat in a real outfit without looking like Indiana Jones. Also, to marry Sam Rockwell, because he's adorable, no matter what movie he ends up in.

August 6th. The Hill.
Every day when I drive home from work at night and the streets are a little empty, there's a big hill. My favourite thing to do is speed up the hill, then to take my foot off the gas and bomb down it with nothing but gravity to accelerate. I love the speed and the freedom.

August 7th. Cat's Eye View.
The after work nap!

Annnnd I missed the eighth. OOPS. I'll just have to update with two pictures on one day or something....

Photos: August 1-4

August 1st. 15 minute break.

August 2nd. Walk the tracks to the store.

August 3rd. Late night.

August 4th. Dimoitou!

Blogifornia #3: The Joshua Tree

Today rather than driving all over the valley and blowing money on stuff, we headed out to Joshua Tree National Park. It was awe inspiring and humbling. When you're in a big city it's easy to become a number, but when you're standing next to a palm tree that is probably hundred of years old and many times your age, you get a big sense of wonder about the world.
Let's just say I had a lot of life to think about today.
For the six hours of the entire trip I got psychotically shutter happy, and consequently came back home with over 160 pictures of the gorgeous, to die for desert landscape. Before this trip I had never seen the desert, let alone walked through one. It's exactly like you see in the movies. [Minus tumbleweeds. I saw no tumbleweeds...Sad!:(] I even spotted some signs of life including something that looked like but was not a chipmunk, a crow, and a desert fox. Possibly a coyote, but this thing looked downright foxy to me.

What really hit me was the fragile nature of the environment. The park is named after a Joshua Tree, which is a spiny tree that looks like this:
A Joshua tree will grow approximately one inch a year. In order for it to grow branches, it has to experience a decent frost, that sparks the survival instinct in the tree that literally makes it grow. On top of that, they have to be pollinated by a specific moth. The chances seemed to be totally stacked against this prickly thing, and yet THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF THEM. Many of them were well over 8 feet tall making them hundreds of years old.

It makes me think about the random chances and risks that are so common in life. What are the chances of things happening, vs. what are the chances of things NOT happening. Nature is tough, and it's going to outlast us all, bar nuclear war or human mutation.
I'm so over my head in the wave of all that California has to offer, from perpetual summer jogging weather to mountains and back again.

Sunglasses at Target: 13$. Epic accidental photo: Priceless.

Snaps from the Past

I've been trying to de-clutter everything so that the move out in a few months and the packing that go with it are easier than cherry pie....whatever that means. I was rifling through papers today when I found a bunch of old photographs of my dad in his childhood. My mother sent them to me for a project in first year, and now in the final stretch of the third I've found them again.

I tried to scan them, but my scanner and my computer are giving each other the silent treatment.

I believe my dad is the charming little man in the bow tie. I thought it was fitting to post some of these pictures since it's family day... What better way to pay tribute to an excuse for a three day weekend than to look back at your collective past?


Looking at the photos really gave me a sense of nostalgia, but it was for a time I had never actually experienced at all. Finding these photos made me realize just how much I want to go through the photos I have, and print out the ones worth keeping. Before I was born, my Babcia's house (my mama's mom) burnt down in a fire. All of the photo albums and memories were lost. I think in the future if a hard drive breaks of a computer shuts down, we'll suffer the same consequences.

All of these thoughts are on the heels of some bad news, so I guess my tone might be a little grim at the moment. Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by another massive earthquake, the second one in the past five months. It was a 6.5 on the Richter scale, and it killed a couple of people.
My older sister and her boyfriend live in Christchurch-- thankfully they weren't hurt but they have to leave their home and get away from the city center for fear of bad aftershocks.

I guess the overlying theme here is that you shouldn't have to lose something to realize how much you love it. You should seize the opportunity to spread love (the Brooklyn way, or otherwise) NOW.