The recently past weeks and months of summer have mostly come and gone, and I have been doing many fun and diverse things and meeting many people of many different kinds. I have been enjoying myself so much, actually, that I have not updated my blog as much as I would ideally have it. Sometimes I feel like a memory packrat, in that I like to persist my experiences, my feelings, my thoughts in an undoubtedly safe and exact manner. I like to collect pictures from experiences in my life, to classify them, to organize them, to see through them and relive moments from the past, since they remind me of meaningful moments, of the person I was at the time, and I can then reflect on how those experiences changed me as a person and led me to become the person that now looks back upon them.
I collect videos, pieces of writing, contact information, favorite quotations, any kind of concept of reminder that touches the inner part of my being which I feel is most meaningful, most important, most fulfilling. The one part of my being that I think is unequivocally worth forging, changing, experiencing, and knowing more about. I collect memories for that reason - to remind myself of what I have at some point in my life truly known is important, and to be able to express to others what I feel is most important in the best way I can, in as many dimensions as possible. Not just in writing, not just in images, not just in audio, not just in words, not just in gestures. Life is rich with so many dimensions of expressing things - the more richly one can perceive something, the more profoundly one will understand it, feel it, know it, embrace it, absorb it as one's own.
Sometimes I do feel that, as I record my memories in the best way I can, I also miss out on the fullness of my experiences. I traveled through 12 countries and through over 25 cities last year in Europe and Asia through 70 days, and it was great. I also took over 14000 recordings, in between images and videos, of all the places I went through. It was great, and it is what I wanted to do. I learned about photography by simple experience, and I recorded many of my experiences to a point far beyond what my current memory's immediate reach retrieves. But in doing so, I may have missed out on talking to the local people, on getting to know the culture a bit better, on experiencing other dimensions of the localities. I may have focused too much on the places and the images, and too little on other noteworthy subtleties.
Sometimes I feel the same way when I write my blog posts. Although some of them are mere quick rants of whatever my mind is trying to blurt or spit out, more akin to sneezing or to defecating than to an art of expression, sometimes I pour considerable effort into writing posts that describe my thoughts and/or feelings clearly, precisely, and in an interesting fashion. In a style which in the future will make me happy to know that I once wrote in such a way, and so that it will be also be attractive and clear to other people who are interested in thinking about the things of this world. It is a worthy question, however, whether one's effort is better spent on recording important and/or transcendental experiences for the sake of future personal reminisces and for expressing them to others, or whether it would be a better value to gather more experiences with this time and effort, to live, to see, to learn, to acquire more knowledge and perspectives of the world.
As with most questions in the world, though, I think the correctness of the answer will rarely be absolute. During this summer, I have very seldom felt the need to write, so I simply have not done so often. Right now I do feel a drive to write, to say what I think, what I feel, and to make a recount of what has happened during the summer. I have crossed many experiences and they have crossed me, and I feel I would not do their richness justice without persisting them as I have done with others in the past.
How to start? How to crisply summarize over two months of rich and diverse experiences into a blog-post-sized linear sequence of words, when I could write entire chapters, I could draw dozens of images, I could record hours of video/audio material, and I could tell people the feelings that I experienced along with the richness of voice tone and body gestures, and STILL not achieve the full richness of my experience.
I will describe as cost-effectively as possible. It is now 2:15:31 AM on a Tuesday, and tomorrow I am supposed to work on the GeoGame project along with Jerry, so I should wake up at a time that could still be considered reasonable for a graduate student to wake up at. Thus, I will narrate my memories quickly, one by one, going through the features and details which I consider to be most meaningful. I guess that's what we always do. :)
SKYDIVING
I wrote a blog post about having gone skydiving once. I may or may not have publicly posted it (tautology!), but I do not think I described it in detail. Anyway, I met Orkun Karabasoglu, foreign student from Turkey, at the UC turnaround as we were waiting for the 11pm bus that would take us to Southside, along with Julian from Colombia and Leon from Colombia. We went clubbing that night, and after that I hung out with Orkun mostly to go clubbing, and sometimes we talked about wanting to go do other activities, such as skydiving, rafting, or skiing around Pittsburgh. Eventually, he made a plan for us to go skydiving, and he sent out an official announcement through the CMU explorers club to the whole CMU community. I recruited Filipe from Portugal as part of the group, and although organized in a hurry, Orkun and I managed to gather 9 more people to go to the skydiving event, including Andrea from Guatemala, Julian from Colombia (who decided to go a couple of hours before leaving Pittsburgh), and Ashik from India.
I drove a full 12-passenger van for 2 hours to get to AerOhio, where we signed dozens of pages of waivers to assure the company that we would not sue them if we were to get hurt during the activity. I signed up for AFF (full training and near-most individual skydive available for first jumpers) along with other 4 guys, including Julian and Orkun, while the remaining 7 people in the group signed up for tandem jumps, which although $70 cheaper, did not include real skydiving training.
We were taught many things in the training. It was supposed to last 6 hours, but it ended up taking 9, in between a lunch break and Orkun's very long and detailed questions about what to do in emergency situations. Our teacher, Peggy, seemed a little exasperated at the end at having to extend her class for so long, but bore on patiently as we learned the tricks and trained the movements we were supposed to do once we were up falling in midair.
The first AFF jumpers got on the plane hours after the last tandem jump in our group had finished. All of the tandem jumpers waited for us for hours on end to get on the planes and jump. First went CJ and Filipe, and both of them seemed to do really well. Their landings seemed flawless. Then Julian and I got on the plane, and about 20 minutes later, after our instructors tested us on the hand signals that we were to receive in the air, we arrived at the jump altitude and hung on the border to jump off the plane. My instructors grabbing me from my sides - check-in, check-out, 1, 2, 3?? I do not really remember what happened in between 2 and falling in midair. Suddenly I was somewhere that could've just as well been anywhere: my ears heard nothing but noise, and my eyes saw nothing but blurs. I was virtually blind and deaf for a few seconds, and as my mind freaked out and tried to make sense of what was going on, I eventually recognized the prevailing noise as really fast rushing wind on my sides, and tiny patterns of farmland and trees in between the blurs of white I perceived from the clouds.
First thing I remembered, the pattern I was supposed to do. What was it? Oh yeah, look at my altimeter. Ok, 11000 feet. WHAT? I was dropped from 14000, and I'm down 3000 already?!? No time! No time! Ok, tell my left instructor! I look to my left and shout "ELEVEN THOUSA..." and I stop, when I realize that the instructor to my left was not there. I kinda freak out, but then just go on to the next step, and I shout the altitude to my right instructor. Again I look at the altimeter - 9000 feet. Amazed, it goes down fast! Again I shout to my left. First I don't find her, but then she appears and grabs my arm! I'm glad to be able to shout to her - "NINE THOUSAND!!!", then I do the same to my right instructor, who starts giving me a fist signal. I think: "Fist signal... fist signal... what the heck does that mean? Stretch my legs? No... that's the two fingers. Check my altimeter? No... I already did that... what did the fist signal mean? He's still doing it... oh he's taking my hand... OHHHH YEAH... I had to check that I knew where my parachute pull was! Ok, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, three times now. One, two, three. There, I can do it. OK, altitude now? HOLY... !!! 6000!! Darn, I gotta pull! But barely any time has passed! Awright then..." I wait for the 5500, it comes by quickly, I wave my hands, I know where the pull is, I pull it, and then suddenly, ZOOM!! two bullet-like objects are fired down from my sides at super high speeds, and a split second later I realize they were my instructors, who I can now not see at all, and I feel a pull up on my shoulders that I recognize as my parachute.
At that time I forget about everything, and my body is just in full adrenaline mode, frantically trying to figure out what to do. I realize I have just finished the most exciting part of skydiving, and am now gently floating down to the ground thanks to my canopy, so I breathe in and out repeatedly, calming myself down to a state where I can think more clearly of what to do next. I now see the terrain below me more clearly, but without my glasses, I still cannot at all make out where I am supposed to land. Just when I'm thinking about recognizing nice soft farmland I can land on as opposed to hard tree branches, I hear a voice in my helmet calling me: "Tony! Tony! Can you hear me? Over!" Very relieved, I answer them by yelling out my responses, and they guide me by telling me to turn either right or left at 45º, 90º, 180º, or 360º (yeah, the last one doesn't make that much sense) angles. Since I don't know much better, I obey what I hear to the best of my ability, pulling on the strings above me to guide my canopy. Though I did not notice at this time, I had not taken even one look at the canopy over my head, even though my training included quite an extensive repertoire of examples of what could possibly go wrong with the canopy while skydiving.
I eventually landed in a not-very-graceful manner on the landing zone (I fell forward on my knees and arms), but suffered no more than a hand scratch and a little embarrassment from it. After that, Peggy told me how I had not jumped off the plane but instead had held on, and even though the instructor to my right side pushed me off the plane, she did not hold on because she had already jumped out, and that was why she had separated from me in the first place. We then hung out for a while, waited for Orkun to skydive, he did OK, and then we drove back. I drove only for part of the trip, and Suddarshan took over for the rest of it while I slept, since I had barely slept the previous night, and he was pretty much the only other allowed driver in the group. Once back in Pittsburgh, I dropped everyone off where it was most convenient for each person, after which I still helped Leila move her bed, other furniture, and stuff to her new place (which conveniently fit in the rented van). It was about 3AM when we finished, and since I had to return the van by 5:30AM, I just decided to stay awake until it was time for me to take the van back to the airport. 24 exact hours of rental accounted only for one day of rent, and I went back home, happy about having completed the Skydiving activity I had previously only heard and wondered about. I believe we skydived on... Saturday May 29th.
ATB@DC
Having had more time to talk during the skydiving activity, Julian and I talked a bit more during the following week. He casually asked me what we were doing the next weekend, so I picked the potential activity that was most prominent in my mind at the time - an ATB concert that was going on in Washington DC that Saturday, which I had found advertised on facebook. I didn't really expect him to agree to it, since I didn't know whether he liked electronic music or not. However, he said yes. Excited at having company for the potential roadtrip, I started looking more into it, found that tickets were about $23.50, and looked for other people to invite. I invited Andrea and she agreed to go, and asked me to buy her a ticket online. So I did.
Looking over the facebook event, I saw this girl posting something along the lines of "This concert is going to be great! Anyone from Pitt want to join me?" Her picture showed her face as blonde, excited, and pretty, so I sent her a message and told her I wanted to go. Her name was Simeona Zalcikova (with some accents over the last name's letters), and over facebook chat, she seemed to be a highly excitable person, really pumped up about the concert, and a top fan of the famous DJ ATB. We first chatted, then we texted each other, and at the end decided that we were indeed going to meet each other at the intersection of our highways en route to Washington DC, have some lunch together, and then drive together for the rest of the way.
So in the end, I joined up with Simeona and two of her guy friends, while Julian recruited this Peruvian guy called Jose Flores and Ashik from skydiving as extra passengers for the trip. I was both impressed and happy about this, since our group had quickly grown from 2 to 5, and even with an addition of 3 random people from facebook. There wasn't much planning involved - we all simply met up at the UC turnaround at about 10 or 11am. Andrea didn't show up, however - she said she would rent a car, drive alone, and meet us at Washington DC later on. I thought it was quite a weird plan, but it was her decision, so we drove off east to Washington DC.
I drove two hours until reaching Bedford, PA, where we found an old-style motor show in one of the main roads of the town, and looked over it as we waited for Simeona and her pals to show up. We met, Simeona and I hugged (we had quite a bit of energy pent up to meet up each other), and found a place to eat. We found a pizza place, ate together, and then drove off to Washington DC again.
When we got there, we check into Motel 6, where the night was about $110 for every 4 people, which was not that bad, considering we were only staying for one night. We unpacked, were getting ready, and then Simeona came along with the news that we needed fancy clothes to get into the bar that was hosting the concert. I thought that was preposterous, since fancy clothes are not to be worn during trance concerts, but I confirmed it myself with a lady from the club on the phone, so we all decided to go to Walmart to get "fancy-looking shoes".
So we went, we took a long time to decide, we bought our shoes, we ate Subway, and then we went back to the motel (after getting separated and lost for a while). My phone's battery died completely during the way back, and we lost communication with Simeona's group during that time. Luckily, I had already bought my iPhone FM transmitter and charger for the car by then, so even though my phone lost all charge, I was available to slowly recharge it and regain contact with them to guide them (and us) back into the motel. By then I had called Andrea and she had confirmed with me that she would NOT be going to Washington DC... she was sick and was staying home. "Bummer", I thought.
The concert was pretty close to the motel, so we walked. Once we got there, we asked for our Will-Call tickets, and got inside. The place was fairly full, and we walked around for a bit as the DJ in charge played good dance music for all of us in the club. It was pretty loud, but the rhythms were ok, so I was for a while entertained by following the rhythm and jumping to it through the dance floor.
Waiting and waiting, ATB took charge only until about 1AM. It was fairly disappointing, to say the truth, since I was expecting him at about midnight. I was so disappointed by this, that before he appeared, I left the club that had a no-reentry policy, walked to a nearby McDonald's, bought a milk and some fries, and just sat down and ate to recover some of the energy I had lost from waiting so much. When I got back to the club and re-entered with Andrea's conveniently still-available will-call ticket, ATB was already in the box, and everyone was dancing and enjoying hard. I joined in, but I think his excessively late appearance fairly turned me off. I mostly walked around after that, and though I did do some dancing, I was not so excited as I was before.
Julian, however, had found another source of excitement. When I saw him, he seemed to be talking to a girl close to the bar. I watched for about two seconds, and suddenly they were making out, pretty intensely, passionately even. I just looked at them a little enviously, and thought "good for him!". I then walked a bit more, and I found Ashik with two girls following him, and as he walked by, he talked into my ear: "the one on the back is for you!". "Fine by me!", I thought, so we went into the crowd and danced once more. The girl I was with was very reluctant to engage in any activity, however, even dancing or talking, so I didn't attempt much with her - she was not that attractive, in any case. So I then just went around and back to Simeona, mostly, who was having a great time next to Gary, a tall wide guy who Ashik delights in calling "big retarded guy". Simeona seemed the kind of girl who would show signs of flirting fairly strongly for a while, and then abruptly rescind and go on to flirt with some other guy. When I found this out, I thought it would be best to avoid being around her, both physically and emotionally, so I walked by myself through the crowd and tried to have a good time by myself.
One example of her flirtatious behavior was when we were in the motel getting ready. She had a room of her own with her guys. However, while I was taking a shower, she was trying on clothes, and she came into my bathroom, and asked me if I thought her dress was cute. A little shocked, I opened the curtain to my face and thorax, almost about to pull it all the way to talk to her, and told her it looked great. Unfortunately, at that time, liquid soap went into my eyes and I felt them stinging, and that forced me to close the curtain and rinse my face quickly. When I had finished doing so, to my dismay, she was no longer in the bathroom.
In any case, during the concert, Julian ended up kissing this girl for about 3 hours straight. He tried to get her out of the concert and back to the motel, but she didn't want to go. Ashik spent all night trying to talk to girls and succeeding somewhat, but never getting as far as Julian did. I'm not sure what Jose did - I think he just stayed at one spot and jumped and danced to the music. Simeona was totally psyched as she sat on Gary's shoulders and screamed and danced to heart's content. That she had a good time is indisputable. As the concert ended, we found each other on a street corner, from where we headed back to the motel. Then we went into our room and got undressed to go to bed. Simeona, however, came into our room and talked to us for about an extra hour afterwards. I was tired of her behavior, though. She seemed overly bossy and self-absorbed, besides showing no signs of actually putting out for me or for anyone else in the room, so I decided to ignore her prattle and go to sleep. I actually went to sleep right as she was sitting on top of me through the bed covers.
The next morning we all woke up pretty tired, except for Jose, who went out for a photography session through downtown. When he got back, we checked out of the hotel and decided to tour around Washington DC before heading back to Pittsburgh. We had breakfast with Sim's group, but then our groups separated, once she had to go drop off the other guy she was with (Mike, whom Ashik and Julian called "The Mutant") about 20 minutes away from where we were.
iPhone led us to the Air & Space Smithsonian Museum, where we walked around and took pictures to our heart's content. Sim and her group joined us there, and then we decided to walk to the Washington monument and the Lincoln monument to get to see it also. On the way, however, we noticed that Sim was walking really fast - she wanted to do everything as quickly and efficiently as possible, and Gary was following her OK. I did too for a while, until I noticed that Julian, Ashik, and Jose did not have that intention. They were walking at a leisurely pace, and did not want to speed up because they were enjoying the walk itself. Torn between Sim's efficiency and my group's preference, I proposed that we split up so that we could check out the monuments at our own pace. So we did, and so we enjoyed it quite a bit. We walked to the Washington monument, I saw the US flag circle, I walked down to a tree by it, we walked to a water monument with the names of all states etched on columns around the water, and we put our feet in the water and just relaxed and enjoyed the view around us.
About an hour later, we left back for Pittsburgh. Julian took over the driving on the way back, and besides running over a dead deer on the highway and filling up the tank with gas, the trip back was fairly uneventful, and we got back on Sunday night/Monday morning pretty tired, but very satisfied at having finished a great roadtrip together.
Cedar Point
During our conversations together, Julian and I had also planned to go to an amusement park in Ohio called Cedar Point, 3 hours away, and we eventually set upon a date for it: June 19th. We later changed it because we went to Washington DC that weekend, and we reset the date for June 26th. We rounded up Ashik and Jose for the trip, and Julian also asked a colombian girl called Maria Luisa out with us, whom she had met at a latin-dance bar called Tusca on Southside.
We were supposed to meet up at 6AM at Forbes and Morewood. I arrived at about 6:05AM at the UC turnaround, but no one was there. I waited, and waited, and nothing. So I called Julian, who I then found out was just waking up. He told me that he would be on his way shortly, and told me to tell Maria Luisa, who was most surely already there, that people would eventually be coming. Ashik and Jose had also not yet woken up, I found out when I called them, so I hurried them all up by phone, and went to talk to Maria Luisa, who was discreetly sitting down at Forbes and Morewood. Eventually everyone came, and we drove off, northwest-ward this time, going towards Ohio.
The weather forecast said that it would probably storm, but we decided to go anyway. We had breakfast at some diner on the way, and then drove off again. Once we got there, we found a nice parking place, and used the tickets I bought for a special online price ($38 each) to get inside the park. Once we were inside the park, we just... ENJOYED!! That place is a ROLLERCOASTER PARADISE!!! It has SO MANY ROLLERCOASTERS!!! We first did the Raptor, which was a hanging rollercoaster, and was AWESOME!! (No cameras were allowed, though...). The Iron Snake, the Mantis, the Millenium Falcon, the Magnum, the DRAGSTER!! (120mph max) and so many others!!! It was SOOOOOOO MUCH FUN!!! We had a large cheese pizza for lunch between all of us, and then we continued going on all of the rides. I went 3 times on the dragster, 2 times on the Millenium Falcon, and once on all of the others. It was fantastic. Wonderful. Total adrenaline gratification. I was sooo psyched.
In the end it did not storm, it didn't even get cloudy at all, and I guess the weather forecast kind of scared people away, because it wasn't too crowded. We ended up sunburnt and physically worn out, but so happy. We started driving back to Pittsburgh at around 11PM, and as for the previous trip, Julian took over the wheel on the way back at night (especially because my glasses had broken). I woke up already near the Pittsburgh airport, and it was not too long after we arrived at each of our houses. It was a great trip: HIGHLY recommended.
MORAINE STATE PARK
A few weeks passed after during which we did not go on consecutive weekend activities with a group, but rather just hung around Pittsburgh during things that just happened to happen around. We went to see a movie projected outdoors on Flagstaff (a part of Schenley Park right beside campus), Julian and I climbed up on the base of a bridge inside Schenley Park late at night and went up a LOONG way up to the bridge's bottom center, and we met Polina, a russian girl that Julian met through Katia, a religious girl whom Julian had a bit of history with that included religion in it. Polina was pretty cool, and we organized a trip to Moraine State Park with her, during which I first got to know her. Maria Clara from Colombia also went with us - she had gone skydiving with us several weeks ago too. It was a nice sunny day - we enjoyed picnicking at the grass beach on the park's south shore, and wading around/swimming around the roped-in swimming area in the lake right next to the beach. It was not too deep or too large, but it was good enough for getting refreshed and wading around a bit. We played a little soccer, Ashik and I played on the swings, and eventually we all left back to Pittsburgh. It was a fun trip.
RAFTING
One of those days, I got an email from Amelia Kriss, a GSA representative who regularly sends out emails about CMU happenings, which invited us to their annual rafting activity in Ohiopyle, at the special price of $35 each. I'd never gone rafting, so I told the gang and they agreed to go. Well, Julian, Ashik, and Maria Clara did - Jose was going to New York that weekend or something. In any case, that was also FUN! FUN FUN FUN! The bus had to wait 10 minutes for Ashik to arrive, who had woken up late and almost didn't find a bus to get him to the UC on time. He got there still fashionably late though, and we made it to Ohiopyle on the completely full GSA-provided bus.
Once at the site, we had to sign waivers and stuff, then we were given life jackets and helmets, given basic instructions, put on a bus to get to the launch area, taken to our rafts, given even more instructions about how to raft, and then asked to take the rafts down to the river. One of the most amazing things happened right there. We knew we were getting really wet during the rafting, so we all had wettable clothes. However, no sooner had we gone into the river, than we were UNDER DENSE, HEAVY RAIN. It started out of nowhere, even stormy-like, and all of us rejoiced as the water signaled a highly wet and fun day.
Our raft fit 6, so we recruited a young Korean married couple to fill up our raft. They were cool people, and we talked a bit before doing the actual rafting. I got the position at the front right of the raft, and being as I could see a lot of what was going on in the front, I gave many of the orders throughout our journey down the river. "ALL FORWARD!!! RIGHT FRONT, LEFT BACK! RIGHT STOP! LEFT BACK!!" etc... It was fun to lead! I think I did a pretty decent job, although the people in the raft said that I was too enthusiastic. In Ashik's words: "Curb your enthusiasm". Hehe. It was super fun, in any case. We had to walk a bit of the route though - the guides said that people sometimes died on that bit of the route through the river, so they decided to be safe and made us walk a path that took us until after that piece of the river.
The most fun parts came when the rapids were coming by, and then decisions had to be made really quickly. Can we make it to the right of this rock? Will we get stuck by that rock under the water right there? How do we get it unstuck? BIG FALL! BIG FALL!!!! ALL FORWARD!! AAAAAALLLLL FORWAAAARD!!!!! And everyone screaming and paddling like crazy, trying to make our descent smoother than the rocks made it seem. Some of the rocks in the river were as big as houses, but those were ok, since bumping on them only made us bounce back, and then we could steer to go in the direction we wanted.
Our raft didn't flip once during the trip, and although we congratulated ourselves for it, we think we might have also gotten lucky about that. We did our best, certainly, and I think we did a pretty good job. But there were times when I thought that we really had no control over what was going on, and we did not flip only because we bounced off another raft that was already stuck on a rock.
We had lunch on the river bank, provided by the rafting guides, as we rested for a bit. We spent about 4 hours along the river, in between rafting, having lunch, and carrying out rafts. It was a really fun experience, and I also HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.
PITTSBURGH TRIATHLON
During all this time, during the summer, Lucia Castellanos and I had been (kinda) training for a triathlon that was due for August 1st. She proposed this idea to me sometime in April, and I agreed to it. The entrance fee was freaking $100, but I liked the idea of doing a triathlon, so I paid for it and trained with Lucia on a program that she got from a couple of sporty friends she knew in NY and in Mexico. Sometimes we went to the gym, sometimes we rode stationary bikes, sometimes we swam in the pool, and sometimes we ran. Sometimes Julian joined us, sometimes he didn't. It was very regular at first, but after I left for Austin for a week-long vacation and Lucia left for Europe with her boyfriend for a few weeks, our rhythm got irregular and we didn't train quite as often. We still trained, though, and I still kept watch on my weight (which I managed to get under 160 :). However, in between all the activities that were going on in my life, I was not consistent, and during the last 2 or 3 weeks, I barely trained at all.
Then suddenly the day of the triathlon came, so I borrowed a bike rack from Khalid, referenced by Lucia, to take our bikes to downtown. It worked excellently, and we got there at a good time. I picked up my packet, marked my bike, let some people in yellow shirts mark my 396 number on my left shoulder and calf, put my bike into the transition area along with the stuff I thought I would need, and waited with Lucia as the Olympic triathlon groups started off first and as our own groups were gathered to start later on.
The race itself was good. I don't think it was very challenging, but it definitely took a good bit of effort. I started off at the very back on the swimming part, and it was nice to feel how I was passing a lot of people on the way. Lots of people I wasn't passing, of course, but knowing that I wasn't almost the very last helped my confidence quite a bit. The bike ride was ok. It was a roundtrip 20k. When I arrived at the 10k marker at the end of the uphill on the 79N highway, I was pleasantly surprised - I thought I still had a long way to go to get to the 10k marker. I was ok with it, though, so I started on my way back. As I was going down, I found a pair of sunglasses just lying beside the road. I decided to stop and grab them, and so I did. They had a white frame and amber lens, and I felt pretty sporty with them on my bike.
Going downhill on my bike really made me realize how much slower a mountain bike is in comparison to a road bike. I pedaled with my full strength on the highest gear available going downhill with my chest to the handle, and I still barely even got to go A BIT SLOWER than the road bikes that were not being ridden with that much effort. I think the next time I do a competition like this I'd like to at least inflate my tires fully. The final run was fairly uneventful. I ran along the riverbank for 2.5km, and then back. Right when I saw the finish line, I decided to do a final sprint, and I still passed 3 people in front of me before arriving. After that I didn't do much but eat bananas and cookies offered by the event and wait for Lucia to finish too.
CREEK FALLS
That very same day, I had planned on a trip to a natural swimming pond about an hour away from Pittsburgh, near a town called Creek Falls. I agreed to go right after the Triathlon as a challenge to stay energetic after the competition. Polina, Ashik, Julian, and I went. We packed up some food from Giant Eagle, and drove down south with the help of iPhone GPS. The trip was pretty boring, though. The supposed waterfall was located in a very sleepy town, and though a very nice woman gave us directions to get to the waterfall, it seemed that the locals did not like to see so many brown-skinned people around them, and Julian and Ashik said that they threatened to harm the car if we parked around where the waterfall was. I was asleep during that time (the triathlon exertion must've gotten to me), so I don't remember that particular event. In the end, we sat beside the river, and ate fruits and chicken. I fell asleep for a large part of that time, but it was nice to be outdoors in any case.
MISCELLANEOUS
It is now 5:48:51am, and I would like to go to sleep. However, so many other things happened during the summer, that I would at least like to list them to keep them persisted. Details may come later, but at least mentioning an event will allow me to read it and evoke a nice truthful memory of what happened during that time. Here goes (not in chronological order):
- Meeting Laura Stokes (through Roger, the Giant Eagle homeless person, who I decided to talk to after I was having existential/meaning thoughts while buying groceries).
- Going to HotBox-second saturdays (Laura invited me to her dance show the next saturday after we met).
- Moving into my place (I moved into my place around June 1st-2nd, with Harmony and Theo).
- Taking Harmony's rabbit to the vet (One weekend, on July 10th, Harmony's rabbit got an eye infection, but she was going to NY that weekend, so she asked me to take Pocky to the vet. I waited for about 2 hours in the waiting room, and in the end they gave me a cream and some drops to put on Pocky's eye for the next week). $148 for a vet bill. Wow.
- Buying my $50($60) bike (I wanted a bike. So I found one on Craigslist. Nice guy, was moving to Germany, no longer needed his bike. He advertised it as $50, helped me fix it up a bit before giving it to me, I gave him $60 for it. I've been using it to get around all over, it's awesome. I also used it for the triathlon).
- Meeting a lot of Au Pair girls (Julian, Ashik, and Jose were meeting a lot of girls at bars, especially at Tusca, and these girls included Au Pair girls who were in Pittsburgh for a few months. We went to a dinner near Robinson Mall celebrating someone's birthday, and I got to meet all these girls from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Spain, etc... It was OK, but the girls all live kinda far away and, though nice, did not seem to strike me as anything especially special. They were ok, though).
- Buying my $71 camera glasses (After going to Cedar Point, rafting, and doing my triathlon, I decided that it would be awesome to have some glasses with a camera on them. So I bought these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003DVMJAW/ref=oss_product
- Losing my bluetooth earpiece (After going on the Creek Falls trip, I couldn't find my bluetooth earpiece again. I'm still looking for it, but I'm almost accepting that I'm going to have to buy another one. Not too bad, though... about $9-$13, was it?)
- Hauling the couch for the house for a mile with Theo (When moving in to my current house, Yi asked me to get a free couch with a U-Haul. When I called U-Haul, however, they had no available vehicles, so I told Theo about the situation, the guy Yi asked me to ask help from, and I said that the only way to get the couch was to haul it. Surprisingly, he agreed to it, so we carried a pretty heavy couch for 1 mile downhill to our house).
- Bought 3 bikes for $50 each (Julian found a Craigslist announcement in which a nice bike was being sold for $50, as well as two others, and he asked me to take him to this place and get the nicer bike for him. Ashik also went, thinking about buying a bike. We all got there, and the bikes were pretty decent, just like the seller. We tried the bikes, we tried them, and we bought them. I didn't really want to buy mine, since I already had mine, but I figured that the bike quality was at least as good as $50, so it would be pretty easy to resell for a much higher price after a little fixing up, and that promoting bike use is a good thing anyway, so I bought the third bike. Luckily for us, I still had the bike rack that Khalid lent me for the triathlon).
- Fixed Laura's bike at Kraynick's (Laura had a bike she had not ridden in 2 years. So I took her to Kraynick's and we fixed it up).
- As I was taking Ashik back to his place after he stayed in my living room for about 10 days, we took his bike to Kraynick's, since its gears were having trouble changing, and Ashik wanted to adjust the handle and seat positions. We then went to drop his stuff off, played tennis for an hour, and met Laura at the UC turnaround at 7PM to head off to a Baha'i meeting.
- Hosted LOTS of couchsurfers at my place (For some reason, during the last two weeks, couchsurfers from all over asked me to host them! I was glad to do so, but a little surprised that the demand had been so temporally dense). I got to host:
- Jeff Weathers from Dallas, TX and OCD friend en route to NYU for MBA, built his own helicopter.
- Ben Wooltorton from Australia, traveling Canada & USA, en route to Philadelphia.
- Paula Castello, initially coffee/drink, ended up staying two nights the next week.
- Michael & Lothar from Germany, cool guys, bought an iPod while here, took bridge pictures downtown.
- Dustin King, going to Philadelphia, studying at Bradford, PA, seemed gay.
- Steward McCoy, from Iowa, going to Washington DC for an internship.
- Leneve, new CMU grad student, civil & environmental engineering, looking for an apartment meanwhile.
- Ashik, moving into his place with Andrea, needed a place to stay while his toilet was fixed.
- Laura invited me to a dance show called Swank Easy in the Space Upstairs, and proposed to Julian, Ashik, and to Jose to go. Leneve (couchsurfer) also agreed to go, so we all went in my car and enjoyed an AWESOME show. AWESOME. At the end, everyone was even so happy and inspired as to dance on their own, with upbeat jazz background music.
- After the dance music show, we went to have some food at Ritter's Diner. It was very fun, until Ashik and Laura began discussing over religious/creationist stuff. They ignored the rest of us for about 2 hours while discussing those topics across the table, drowning pretty much any other conversation we might have had between the rest of us. In the end, I had to go to the table after having waited in the car for about 30 minutes, and very firmly told them that we were leaving. They were really oblivious to all of us.
- Salsa dancing at Mexico City, meeting Lexie Mastro. Awesome girl :).
- Dinner date with Lexie Mastro on Saturday, Kiss. We talked about Dr. Seuss, her sisterhood, our families, and an accident her little brother was involved in. She's so smart and observant.
- Rock-climbing date with Lexie Mastro on Thursday, sticky notes, kiss at number garden. She left for college two days later. I'm happy she took time to see me right before that, though. She called me "quite a stellar boy". :) She also said she was only "casually dating", which most probably means that she's kissing boys she likes all around. That's OK, she's experimenting. It'd be nice to see her again once in a while, though... we could get along so well together.
- Sex with Paula Castello. Pretty much just kissing her lips, neck, and breasts, and fingering her pretty intensely for about an hour or so. So responsive. Details in another post.
- Sending Jerol a wire for $2475. She was short on money - and her paycheck is barely enough to keep her and the kids ok.
- Became the Cokemeister, replacing Mary McGlohon. It's been nice loading coke into the machine. Not-so-nice is dealing with mistaken orders from Coke.
- ChargeCar events/competition. Electric cars! There's a CMU project that optimizes electric cars with a supercapacitor, and I made an initial algorithm that does precisely that.
- Baha'i meeting with Laura, Julian, Ashik. She invited us, we went. I was surprised that Ashik went, but we all went in a curious and open-minded state of mind. We biked there, too, which was fun. Julian beat me in all 3 races we did on Forbes, too.
- Driving to St Mary's, PA on July 31st to see Amanda McCurdy, whom I met at Lorena's wedding in Chicago on June 2006, and had not seen since, but had kept in contact with through MSN, MySpace, phone, and stuff. She's a pretty cool girl - she toured me around St Mary's and through Walmart (her workplace), and we had fun with her sister jumping around the trampoline on their backyard. It was very cool. That very night, after coming back from St Mary's, I went on a dinner date with Lexie Mastro to Olive Garden up north in Mars, PA. It was so cool. :) She's coool.
So see how I have done so much stuff? It took me a while to write all that down. In the end, I don't know if it was more valuable to write this blog post or to sleep - it is 6:12:36am now, and I still have not slept a wink. I'm going to now, though, but I hope I do get some work done with Jerry today. I want the GeoGame project to work well - to have no complaints on it.
