An awesome 4th of July and riding The Bull at Old Pro
With the 4th of July blessing us with an extended weekend, Stephanie and I packed in all kinds of stuff into what turned out to be an amazing few days out here in California. We hope that all of you had an amazing weekend as well - here’s a quick look at what all we got into:
Friday, July 4th:We headed to Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, CA for some 4th of July fun. Our friends who live down the street camped out there to make sure that they snagged a few tables for the 4th of July festivities. I think that they made it there at like 4am and just crashed there until the sun came up. Troopers, I know. We hung out on the beach, grilled up some tasty meat and saw an amazing sunset, which then led to the fireworks show. I love 4th of July.
Saturday, July 5th:On Saturday we headed to a friend’s cottage to hang out at the pool for the afternoon, which was amazing. A little bit of much needed relaxation and sun-soaking is just what the doctor ordered.
After that we cleaned up and headed out to a restaurant that we haven’t checked out yet here in Palo Alto called Mango Caribbean. It was delicious and there was a guy rocking out the steel drums to songs that ranged from Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry to Kansas’ Dust in the Wind.
Finally, for our grand finale, we headed over to a popular bar called Old Pro in Palo Alto, where we enjoyed some tasty brew from a BEERZOOKA and we FINALLY had a chance to ride the famous mechanical bull. All of us gave it a ride and you can check out how we handled the mechanical beast below or over here on YouTube. So, how was your weekend? 
A one-win dynasty with the Janitorial Honeybees
So we have found some new friends.
New friends who not only throw amazing parties, but friends who also do other awesome stuff.
Awesome stuff like playing softball for teams that are named The Janitorial Honeybees.
Well, this past week our new friends had us join the team for their last game. The last game that would decide whether or not they would end the season as complete losers, or if they would finish with one final and only win of the season.
Stephanie and I joined up forces with the Honeybees for this final battle and helped them fight through 5 demanding innings that were filled with drama, action, heroics and letdowns.
After the dust cleared, the impossible had happened. The Janitorial Honeybees had came out on top for the first time all season. It wasn’t an easy win, but it was a team win and a win that will never be forgotten by me, Stephanie, the rest of the Honeybees and of course the random homeless guy who was drinking a Budweiser on the sidelines.
Yep, the Janitorial Honeybees ended the season with a solid 1-11 record and if you ask me, that’s a solid foundation for a future.
I can’t wait until next season - the dynasty begins.
Swarm honeybees! Bzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Teacher Stephanie graduates her class of 2008
Last weekend, Stephanie officially graduated her first class of California preschoolers here in Palo Alto. It was my first time seeing her school, meeting her fellow teachers and of course seeing all of the crazy kids that she deals with every day of the week.
Let me simply say that I have a whole new respect for her and for what she does each day while teaching at that preschool. The kids are awesome and hilarious, but it takes a special type of person to teach them every single day. Isn’t she awesome?
Of course I couldn’t miss out on getting some video of the sweet graduation action. Check out the video below or over here on YouTube when you get a chance and be sure to leave a comment and tell Stephanie congratulations!
I guess you could say we’re ‘In’famous…
This past week I woke up one morning and went through the usual routine… wake up.. workout.. check facebook. Like clockwork every day. On Thursday morning, however, things were a bit different. A random guy added me on facebook which is nothing too out of the ordinary, but I checked out his profile and noticed a link to his blog.. so I dug deeper into my facebooking stalkerness routine. To my surprise he had written an awesome blogpost about Ryan and I’s blog.. and how he had been randomly added as a friend by Ryan and stumbled upon our blog, only to end up wasting an hour (a good hour I might add) reading our posting and watching our videos.
This wasn’t just any blog review,however. This guy so kindly recognized myself as being quite a “hottie”. Haha. To quote the infamous words of Kevin, “I would want to douse Steph in Grey Poupon and whisper dirty things in her ear in German while doing things that we read in Cosmo.” Honestly, how can you read that and not die laughing or pee your pants.. I personally peed my pants.
This little posting got quite the response from readers, and suddenly turned into 200+ diggs on www.digg.com , which is pretty cool, right?!?! There’s just nothing like having somebody that you’ve never met before write up something about you. It’s so cool, and it’s awesome to see how others react to your blog when they find out about it randomly as well.
I’ve noticed that since living in Palo Alto I’ve really started to take on somewhat of a geek persona. I’m catching myself thinking about the internet more intuitively than I had before in the past, and even enjoying the spontaneous blog world from a different perspective. I’m amazed how things happen so suddenly on the internet, and how one day, we can just be two people who like to blog and the next day almost be on the front page of digg, it’s just crazy, and awesome. So, here’s to you Kevin, for making my day…
Back Home Again in Indiana!
Yep, we took a little vacay to spend some time at home with our friends and family. My awesome roommate from college, Holly, is getting married this coming Saturday and Ryan’s 10 year High School reunion just happened to fall a week before, so we figured we had a pretty good excuse to come back to good ol’ Indy for a bit. I can’t tell you how weird it felt to fly into the Indianapolis airport and think to myself, “I’m on vacation… in Indiana” haha. What a vacation it has been though; it’s only Tuesday and we’ve had enough fun to last us for the whole week already!
Shortly after arriving we headed up to P-Town for Ryan’s high school reunion. Wow.. really is all I can say. I didn’t know that Donnie’s( a little photo for your pleasure) could hold that many crazy Pendleton Arabians at one time! You know it’s a good reunion when you didn’t even go to the high school that the reunion was celebrating and you still had the time of your life. That’s all I have to say about that
Last night we attended our first Mojo Monday Night at the Spot since we left for CA two months ago. It was an awesome night, and we stayed out on the deck for most of it just soaking up the fabulous Indiana summer night. It’s comforting to come home and be with your old friends again. It really makes you step back and reminisce a little about the fun times of the past, and know that you always have an incredible support group of friends at home. It’s funny how I don’t really feel homesick at all when we’re actually in California, but coming home kind of brings some of those feelings to the surface a little when you re-live your previous way of life for a bit. It’s true that you have to move away to truly come to an appreciation of your home where you grew up. I know that I’ve viewed Indiana a little differently this time around. It’s our home and it will always be here, we’ll always love it, but there’s so much left to experience and explore.
Now it’s time to go and live up the rest of our week here! More to come on our crazy Hoosier adventures
The evidence of the Bay to Breakers madness
As Stephanie and I have continued our California journey together there have been many things happen along the way that I would call ‘crazy’ or ‘wild’ or even going as far as ‘pretty nuts’. However, there hasn’t been anything that has even come close to the madness that was the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco that we joined in on a couple of weekends ago.
We saw crazy people, we saw people doing crazy things and of course, we saw naked people. The race was 12Ks of pure insanity and for some unknown reason I waited until now to create and post the masterpiece of a video that you can watch below or over here on YouTube.
Let me know what you think about the crazy day that we had in San Francisco and be sure to enter in your email in the subscription box that’s located at the top of the column to the right. It’s the best way to keep up with what we’re doing out here in California - you know you want to keep up with us!
Stephanie wears men’s underwear in public
Ever since this past Saturday when Stephanie and I went to Bay to Breakers in San Francisco I have been wondering how to possibly blog about it in a way that lets all of you know how amazing the event really was. Basically, it’s a 12K ‘race’ that goes through the middle of one of the craziest cities in the entire world. The race is for real and was actually won by a really, really fast Kenyan who could have beat us all in his sleep.
But, the race is just a small part of the crowd who comes out to experience Bay to Breakers - most come out to dress up, push floats, drink lots of alcohol and stumble the 12K (if they actually finish) through the streets of San Francisco. There are over 150,000 people who participate and I would have to guess that over 80% were of the drunk, stumbling kind. Stephanie and I spent all day in the madness and after taking in all of the sights, sounds and shots we both agree that it was most likely the most amazing day of both our lives.
If you need proof of the awesomeness, check out the Facebook pics over here. Consider yourself warned and please prepare yourself for the naked man that me and Stephanie both snapped a picture with. Yeah, I said naked.
Here are a couple pics that I wanted to Crank for all of you to enjoy below and go ahead and make your plans to come out for next year’s installment - we’ll definitely be there and you should, too.
Stephanie in men’s tidy whities and me in her running shorts. What a couple, eh?
Stephanie put the split in banana split. Awesome.
Abdo rocked out a nightie like no one’s business.
Bikes rule the roads in Palo Alto
If you all think hard enough, I’m sure that all of you can remember the days when your only mode of efficient transportation to any place outside of your neighborhood was to hop on your bike and pedal your ass off. I mean, pedal your ass off ALL day long and not even care about it. We were young, we wanted freedom and it’s way better than having your mom drop you off.
I can honestly say that I haven’t consistently ridden a bike since back in the day when I was fifteen years old and had acne that even Proactiv would be scared of. Back in the day when I would dream about being behind the wheel of a new ride as I rode my bike to Drivers Ed each morning at 6am. Man, those were good times, but the days of peddling, peddling and peddling some more have been long gone up until I moved out here to Palo Alto. Now the bike is back and it’s back in a BIG way. Old people ride bikes, young people ride bikes, girls ride bikes, guys ride bikes and this one guy even rides one of these bikes and I have no idea why.
After becoming part of the biking community I came up with a few reasons of why so many people around here choose the bike as their main mode of transportation around town:
- It’s safe and very bike-friendly: There is a bike lane on EVERY road out here besides interstates. There’s even a Bike Boulevard that runs through the middle of the city and cars are only allowed to travel on a very small portion of it.
- Palo Alto is a VERY environmentally friendly place: It’s amazing how much people care about the environment out here on the West Coast. The only reason why I can think of why they’re so far ahead in the ‘going green’ game is that out here in California you have the most beautiful landscapes that you could ever imagine, which everyone loves and appreciates. When you have mountains, oceans, bays, amazing forests and everything else I think that you tend to want to protect it.
- Healthy and fit is the way to go: I rarely ever see anyone who is overweight out here in Palo Alto and I still have yet to eat any fast food at all. The amount of health-conscience people out here is amazing, which explains why people don’t mind taking the bike to work, etc. My landlord rides his bike 30 minutes away to work every single day and doesn’t think twice about doing it. Amazing.
Anyways, as you can plainly see, the bike definitely rules the road here in Palo Alto and even I ride the Brown Beast (my loaned bike) about two miles to work each morning, which I have totally grown to enjoy over the past few weeks or so. It gets you moving, it’s always amazing outside and burning a few calories in the a.m. never hurts, right?
I will try my best to give you updates on all of our biking adventures and I’ll keep trying to add a few photos like the ones below as well. Enjoy!
UPDATE: I was just reading the Palo Alto website and it appears that we are only one of four cities who have been designated with a ‘Gold Level’ designation. Sweet!
In May 2003, Palo Alto was designated a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. This three-year designation ranks Palo Alto with only three other “Gold Level” communities (Portland OR, Corvallis, OR and Boulder, CO). The award is only presented to communities with remarkable commitments to bicycling. The League cited Palo Alto’s strong commitment to education efforts and model policies in their commendation.
Stephanie cruisin’ on a beautiful day
The beautiful Brown Beast
Me and Stephanie trying to ride the Brown Beast at the same time….very, very tricky
This way seemed to work better…but, still very tricky and very, very dangerous
Abdo has his bike up in a tree, but not real sure why
Celebrating Cinco de Mayo at AOL?
Beer, chess, beer pong and hanging out at the AOL building. Just another day in Palo Alto I guess. Me, Stephanie and some of my newest homies and co-workers headed over to the AOL building tonight to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with some chess and some cerveza (that’s beer for all of you non-Spanish speaking folks). Here are some pics that thought deserved some time to shine in this bloggy-blog. Be sure to click the Crank Buttons in the bottom right and of the pics to see what I added to each one. Believe me, each one has a story of it’s own.
Also, be sure to check out the video that I created for the event at the bottom of the post or over here on YouTube.
Getting physical in the morning
I have officially finished off the week with yet another morning workout. Amazing. You know, I have always wanted to do the whole morning workout thing, even when I was back in Indianapolis, but now I have officially dedicated myself to the cause and I feel so much better because of it. It’s not always fun getting out of the bed at 6:00am, but by the time I hit the gym and especially when I’m done I feel a million times better about doing it. My gym of choice here in Cali is 24 Hour Fitness in San Carlos, which is only about a 10 minute drive away. It’s actually closer than the gym that I used to frequent back in Indy.
I’m so freakin’ happy that I’m starting to get into a routine that makes me feel awesome throughout the day, lets me hang out after work and that is all around a better way to get my workout in. But, don’t take my word for it - here’s an article that points out a few benefits of gettin’ a little physical in the a.m. - enjoy!