Hello All!

This is gonna be a post in 3 acts:

Act I – Sierras
Act II – Downtown
Act III – Whirlwind

Okay, I think that this one may set the record for the most photos I have ever included, so let’s get down to business!

Act I – Sierras

Saturday, December 24th: I get up and pack for my 9 day winter vacation.

From California Holiday Adventure

Now … I don’t drive very often.

In fact, it is pretty darn rare that your blogger finds himself steering a car.

As such, when the rental car company dude tried to talk me into upgrading to a Mustang for the weekend, I eagerly accepted the offer.

And, WOW was it extremely fun!!!

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Ripping it up to Nevada City on Christmas Eve, I felt like a teenager cruising in the sports car.

… And just as the sun was setting I rolled in.

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I spent Christmas Eve and the following morning at my Mom and Step Dad’s place.

Also, my radical genius step-bro was there. We chilled.

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Christmas morning greeted me with this view.

Ahhhhhhhh…

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From Nevada City I drove up hwy 20.

The trees lined the road in this incredible way.

Just towering over you.

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From the 20 I banged a right on the 80 and then over to the 89.

Lake Tahoe, majestically shining on Christmas morning.

Dope.

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Arriving at my Dad’s place in the evening, your blogger had a most excellent Christmas dinner with the Dad, step-mom Marry, and a schlew of little ones rolling about the house.

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The next morning we take the dogs up the mountain.

Some of the best hiking companions I’ve ever seen.

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There wasn’t all that much snow, but the creek was rocking some winter charm.

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We built a fire at one of my Dad’s chill spots.

… And we kicked it.

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Cracked open a bottle of champagne to celebrate, and spent the afternoon sipping the bubbly and hanging out.

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The Sierras were good to me.

Really damn good.

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Popping up at 6 AM on the morning of the 27th, I jam down the hill trying to make a 1:25 PM flight from SFO.

What with there being basically no traffic at all, I was able to roll into the city for a quick and impromptu chill with my homeys.

These rockstars were at the pad.

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And we brunched at a wonderful little cafe down the street, Arlequin.

Yo!

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Dropped the rental car off.

Lunched at one of my favorite spots in the world – terminal 2!!!

… And thus concludes Act I of the journey.

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Act II – Downtown

Dusk slowly settled on the skyline of Los Angeles as I was arriving to Jo’s place in Little Tokyo.

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I have such absurdly fond memories of this apartment. It’s where I first fell in love with my fellow blogger.

And what better way to roll in than to meetup with the LA crew!

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That night your bloggers rolled over to West Hollywood for dinner with Di’s high school friends, Andrea and Brian.

AND! There were some pretty rad dogs as well.

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We played this dancing game on the Kinect.

It was a blast.

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On the 28th we picnic’d on this gloriously grassy field overlooking LA.

You could even see the Hollywood sign!

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That night I went to one of the hippest apartments that exists on planet earth.

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The apartment is not the buddhist temple pictured above. It’s directly next door to it, and that view is from homey’s bedroom.

… Next to his painting setup!!!

Sooooo legit.

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Also, these fools were there.

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As were these.

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With the silly level cranked up to an 11, we spent one of the merriest evenings imaginable.

Dude.

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… Which brings us to the final night of Act – II.

Tiff and Chris’s wedding.

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Daaaaaaaaaaamn!

Di, You Are Smokin!

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The venue was crazzzzy nice.

The Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA.

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It was straight up baller.

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Now, I know should try and throttle back with posting so many pics of the fellow blogger.

But, seriously, you can’t really expect me to restrain myself when there’s such an arsenal radness.

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What an awesome time!

Tiff, thank you so much for having me at your wedding. You rock.

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And the posse.

You mobbed it hard.

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The boogy was reaching epic heights.

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As your blogger began sweating pretty gnar …

Time to transition into the after hours attire.

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And return to the boogying!

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With the Dudettes!

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This is Di’s fellow scotch drinking buddy.

He put on this party.

Word.

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As the bride and groom toasted us from the balcony, the night began to wind down, and the curtain falls on the second act of our post.

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Act III – Whirlwind

It’s now December 30th, night six of the Holiday Adventure.

We drove down to the coast to the town I grew up in – Carlsbad.

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Now, you must be asking yourselves, how do you come down from the most fabulous Persian Wedding possible … You go to Dave’s Surprise Birthday Party!

Gawwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhh!

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Happy Birthday, B.I.G.

You are one of the best.

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The crew was a most refreshing blast from the past.

With a dope cameo from baby James.

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Seriously though, I couldn’t be more stoked.

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Now on to the New Year.

After dinner with Di’s family in Glendale, we head to Malibu for a most excellent celebration at the Seider house.

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Complete with an excellent art tour …

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… As well much needed snuggly time …

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Your bloggers rang in the New Year in fine form.

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Fine form indeed.

CHEERS!!!

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Perhaps because I’d been on a multi day bender, it seemed very appropriate to rally the crew for a late night jump in the Pacific.

Men.

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The night wound down, the New Year arrived, and 2012 greeted us with a smile, and a cool ocean mist.

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I awoke to Eugene on the piano …

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And this insanely crazy Latigo Action Mission.

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Okay … first off, if you have made it this far, holy shit, huge props. This post has taken me several hours now, and I am beginning to really feel like I am over doing it.

But there’s just so much content.

What to do?

Well, we are close and there’s just one or two more adventures left, so I am gonna tough through this if you will.

Also, it gets super crazy at this point.

So Mikey grew up next to these storm drains that he would mission through as a little kid. And, well, he somehow convinced my fat ass that we could crawl under hwy 1.

What!??!!

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Well, we made it out the other side.

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I felt so alive!

It was like Shawshank or some other really gnar prison break movie where the dude crawls to freedom.

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We had to crawl back through though.

Ugh.

… But we make it to the other side and continue our charge down the beach.

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… Stopping for a quick medical diagnosis.

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And then launching over a planter.

Yo!

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We capped off the journey with another incredibly scary storm drain adventure.

I was scared like all hell.

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But at the end of the tunnel Mikey showed us the garden of eden.

no joke.

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Saying good bye to Mikey’s place in Malibu was tough.

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Really tough.

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Really, really tough.

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But, my home awaited me.

And as the sun was brilliantly shinning on the city i love, I said goodbye to SoCal.

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… And then Hello to NorCal.

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Got up this morning and capped off Act III with a glorious ride up the headlands.

Indeed, it was good to be home.

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And that wraps up one of the longest posts of my career!

Whew! Thank you so much for sticking around, you are amazing and wonderful and I am so grateful to have you in my life.

Hello All,

Your blogger is coming off of a four day birthday extravaganza.

There’s no way I can adequately express how honored I am to have such an awesome crew.

Seriously, I have been overwhelmed these past few days with all of the love and awesomeness the world has shown me for my 30th. Thank you so so so so much to all of my friends and family. You are the reason I am stoked.

Okay – let’s get to it. I bounce out of work Thursday afternoon to enjoy a twilight dock session.

From Pure Stoke

The posse then rolled down.

… And brought with them a little buddy.

ohhhh dude. ohhhhh dude.

so much pain.

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The plan was to do a cross city walk from the bay to Tommy’s on Geary and 23rd Ave.

It’s a solid five mile walk along one of the most ridiculously cool routes on the planet.

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In fact, the route is so rad, that we even took it last year for my birthday.

From happy holidays yo

San Francisco is such a wonderful city.

Seriously … The trolly driver let our drunk assess come onto the cable car for a few blocks for free.

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shenanigans ensued.

big time.

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Indeed, Thursday night was such an absurd blast.

We took like three hours to walk a good way across the city, just meandering and chilling and schmoozing and exploring and all-around loving this wonderful place we get to live in.

We also saw like three ferraris in this gas station garage.

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At Tommys’s we are greeted by my wonderfully wonderful fellow blogger.

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And then! As if the Nemiroff on our city walk wasn’t gnarly enough … The owner of the Mexican food place comes out with this bottle of tequila and pores a few shots worth of booze into my mouth.

(Spolier Alert: Your blogger is brutally hungover the next day.)

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I can’t feel any part of my body at this point.

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Okay, now to Friday.

Wanna know what’s great for massive bull-dozer-esque headaches.

Well, yes, gatorade and advil and six mile runs.

But, an even better solution is to drive down to Big Sur and refresh your soul.

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… in a hot tub.

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Di and I cruised down south to explore a place very close to my heart.

dude.

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We hiked out onto the bluffs to enjoy one of those sunsets that feel as if they can only exist in a postcard.

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My universe felt complete.

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So what do you do when your universe feels complete?

You take the person you love and march her through a freezing cold stream.

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Yup, I was at it again.

Lead Di on another crazy hike that was around nine miles and had this one point where you ascend like a thousand feet of elevation in just over a single mile.

But the views!!!

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At first the views were enough to mitigate the difficulty of the hike.

But then we climbed all the way up this gnarly peak at the hottest hour of the day and, well, probably over-extended our threshold for what constitute’s a fun hike.

Seriously, perhaps a small digital apology is in order here. I know, I know, the trek was grueling and I really enjoy the pain and maybe it’s not as fun for you … But, baby, I promise we won’t push it that hard again. Well, I can’t promise that per se … Because … Who knows how hard the next hike is gonna be, that’s the fun part about it! Wait, you may not see it that way. Hmmmm, maybe I should put more thought into this one and show y’all the beautiful view:

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… Meanwhile …

Completely unbeknownst to me my friends were rolling down the coast, headed to Big Sur for an off-the-charts surprise.

They were literally frolicking.

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Frolicking hard.

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… Meanwhile …

Di was doing her best to suffer through my pseudo death march and not curse at me.

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… Meanwhile …

I mean, are you kidding me.

While we were getting burnt by the blazing afternoon sun, subsisting off of cliff bars and bandaging blisters on feet (all things your blogger actually kinda likes) the other crew was enjoying chilled white wine on this friggin deck.

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They look happy.

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And wonderful.

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Gawwwwh.

What a bunch of studs.

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Okay, so the stealth crew rolls down to Big Sur to the trail head at Andrew Molera and wait for us to get back from the hike.

Mind you, I have NO IDEA they are coming.

So they stake out at the river and question hikers who had passed us earlier trying to see when we’d land.

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I think that they were even hiding in the bushes, waiting for us!!!

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And, just as I am crossing the river, I see Doug’s bearded man face and just couldn’t contain myself.

DUDE! The universe is good. It is so good.

Your blogger was elated. And really, to be perfectly honest, mixed in with the elation was this profound sense of humility. I felt like there was no way I deserved such wonderful friends. Even now, as I am writing these lines and looking at the pics and trying to remember how it felt to see them, I’m getting a little teary-eyed just thinking about how wonderful this world is.

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Stevenson College …

What a trip.

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We played some b in the park.

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… Still got it in us.

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Went back to the hotel where we had a nice chill sesh on the agenda.

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Indeed, a chill sesh.

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The trio busted out the instruments …

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And the silliness hit absurd levels.

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And I mean Absurd Levels.

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I literally like jumped on Aki and Tika and JR and Anna.

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After the silly session we went to the restaurant.

The night was perfect.

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There was even a cover band and we all got to hit the dance floor!

Yo.

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On Sunday morning, we drove home.

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… And now we are completely caught up.

Much love to everyone in the universe.

Hello All … Woke up this morning and shacked out 30 push-ups.

Indeed, after successfully knocking out 3 decades of living, your blogger feels exuberant on this lovely morning in the city. Also, being over thirty means that I can now be silly without worrying about what other people think.

Where ever you may be on this planet, and whatever your age, I hope you are chilling to the max. (I sure as fuck am!)

Much Love,
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