Episode 33 - Done with Junior Year!
Skydiving, traithlons, and tours
I remember telling myself that I wanted to keep this blog post up pretty consistently once I got back from my study abroad, and as all you loyal subscribers know from the complete lack of posts the last few months, that plan has completely fallen out the window.
Why?
I’ve given it a think, and I’ve determined that the primary cause of this lack of writing has come from a lack of time, which in turn is caused by me taking actual classes at UCLA and having club commitments and a job again.
Not good.
I really enjoyed writing and later reading these posts, and find that I don’t have much to look back on for the last few months except for my Return to UCLA and Paris posts, and my iPhone camera roll.
So here is the solution: I still don’t have the time to write full blog posts about my daily existence (each one of those takes anywhere from 5-8 hours to write), so I will post monthly recaps of the highlights and things I’ve been doing. I’ll give myself 5 days of wiggle room (in case I have an exam, get sick, etc), so if it is past the 5th of the month and I haven’t written the blog post yet, text me and ask me where tf the blog post is. Emma, I’m counting on you especially!
And if you don’t have my number to text me, then I don’t know you well enough for you to ask me these kinds of things. lol
What a plan!
Also, when I am on a significant travel trip (back to Paris, or on a ferry to Alaska, for example), I’ll clutch up and write a proper post as well.
Hooray! Dennis, congratulations on getting your shit together. 💪
I wasn’t too sure where to start, so I figured I’d reread my most recent blog UCLA blog post, and start from there.
*looks back at previous blog post*
*sees it was published on February 21st, literally 4 months ago*
God damn, that was a long time ago!
To keep my sanity and prevent this post from being a million words long, I’ll do an extremely brief overview of March, and then quickly transition to spring quarter of this year.
Everyone on board with that plan?
*scans the room*
Seeing no hands raised, let’s proceed.
March
The main highlights I have for the month of March were that I went on a weekend trip to Death Valley NP with Brooke (my girlfriend, remember?), raced and won 3rd in a criterium bike race (despite not really riding since Paris lol), and ran the LA Marathon again (this time, actually training a bit).
Let’s start with the Death Valley trip.
Brooke and I decided to go because
Brooke had never been to Death Valley.
I thought it would be cool to go again.
We had planned a week-long road trip to Dallas, TX, and back to see the total solar eclipse at the beginning of April, and wanted to do a shorter trip to see if we’d kill each other after being in a car together with each other for that long.
I’m happy to report that we didn’t kill each other, and it was a fantastic trip! Badwater Basin (the lowest point in North America) was full of water from the recent rainstorms, so we were able to float in extremely salty and low water. It was sick. I also loved the geology of Death Valley, which is just super cool every time I go.
Next part of March: bike race.
I won 3rd! Hooray!
The bike race was a criterium, which means you bike in a one-mile circle for 30 minutes in a semi-abandoned industrial park in the middle of nowhere. Whoever crosses the finish line first at the end of 30 minutes, wins. This kind of racing also serves as an effective form of therapy for men.
I crossed 3rd, so I got 3rd place. Brilliant.
And for the last part of March — running the LA Marathon.
I ran it last year with no training, so I decided to run it again this year and actually train this time. I did a few runs beforehand, bought nice new road running Hokas, and was all ready to go. I even convinced my friend Akshat to run the marathon with me, and he signed up 2 weeks before the race with no training himself and the desire for a great story.
I started with the 3:45 pace group (meaning their target final time was 3 hours, 45 minutes, my goal was to finish in under 4 hours), and was feeling great the first 10 miles of the race. Miles 10-15 were a struggle, and then I completely exploded at Mile 15. The last 10 miles were brutal, and I finished in 4:20 — not quite my goal, but still 50 minutes faster than last year!
The real winner was Akshat, who finished the marathon in five and a half hours, Ubered back to UCLA, and took a 3-hour final, 2 hours late.
After winter quarter, I headed back home for spring break, which was extremely relaxing and very much needed. I spent the first few days at home, where I enjoyed delicious lattes and the company of my family and chickens.
Then, we went to Hawaii. Hawaii! OMG!
We went to the island of Kauai, which was quite possibly the greenest and most lush place I’ve ever been to. Rainforests, palm trees, and beaches everywhere, just like the pictures!
The funniest part of Kauai is that there are wild chickens and roosters EVERYWHERE, which I did not see on any of the other islands. Apparently, all the islands have had chickens since the Polynesians first settled them, and they gradually went extinct as imported mongooses ate their eggs and hunted them to extinction. The mongooses were never imported to Kauai, and so the chickens remained.
Or maybe that’s all a lie, and the person who told me was just flat-out lying their ass off. Who knows.
The best part of the entire situation was that my dad would trap these chickens with string and birdseed, and it was crazy watching a hunter in action. Check it out here.
Other highlights of Kauai include so many trips to the beach, lots of reading and rainforest hikes, a super cool, all-you-can-eat boat to the north side of the island with the famous cliffs, and skydiving for the first time EVER with my sister. It was so so cool!
April
April was my month of truancy, where I didn’t really do much of school.
For the first two weeks, I went on a road trip with Brooke to check out the total solar eclipse happening in Dallas, TX. That entire trip honestly should’ve been a full blog post, but unfortunately, it’s too late to do so now. Looks like I’ll just have to go on another trip soon instead!
The trip was 3,000 miles of driving over 8 days, which is quite insane just thinking about. We visited 6 National Parks (Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains, White Sands, and Saguaro), hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back in a day (several people die each year attempting this hike), randomly stopped by the self-proclaimed chili capital of the world in New Mexico, and checked out the border wall in El Paso.
We stayed at my dad’s college friend’s house in Dallas, with my entire family flying over to meet us there. Brooke met my entire family, we walked around suburban Dallas, and I learned that it is extremely important not to confuse immigration with tourism.
Plus, the solar eclipse was extremely cool! It was just dark for 5 minutes at 1 pm on a Monday, the crickets started chirping, and you could look straight at the sun without it hurting your eyes. Well worth the trip!
And yes, the Texas stereotypes are all true.
We got back on Friday, and then on Sunday, it was time for triathlon nationals.
I joined the club triathlon team in February and had only raced one triathlon in the entire racing season. That race was in San Diego, but due to hazardous ocean conditions, the swim portion was swapped for another run portion. So the race was a run-bike-run, not a swim-bike-run.
Which meant that my first ever triathlon was during triathlon nationals. As Borat would say, “Very nice!”
The 1-mile swim was catastrophic, and I was just happy that I didn’t drown. The farthest I had ever swam before this was a quarter mile.
Out of the 900 competitors (men and women), I had the 12th slowest swim. It was so bad that the lifeguards sitting on their surfboards asked if I needed help, and I laughingly told them that I was fine, just really slow.
I passed around 150 people on the bike portion, and cruised through the run for a top-500 men finish. Not bad for my first triathlon!
After triathlon nationals, I spent Week 3 of the quarter catching up on schoolwork (I hadn’t done ANY during the road trip) and worked a bunch of tours (gotta get the bag). Over the weekend, I went to SF for a UCLA conference, where I sat on a panel in front of 800 students and their families and tried convincing them to come to UCLA. It was awesome! I consider it my first-ever business trip.
And a few of them ended up committing, too!
During Week 4, I went back to Paris to visit all my study abroad friends, which y’all should totally read about in detail here!
Nothing too crazy happened in May — I hung around LA mostly (except for a weekend trip to Boston to see my friend Gloria graduate), studied some more (I’m still a student at the end of the day!), and spent a bunch of time hanging out with friends and Brooke. Good times!
And so somehow, junior year is all finished up. Crazy to think that a year ago, this blog didn’t exist, I hadn’t met my Parisian friends yet, and Brooke and I didn’t know the other existed. How quickly the times changed!
Stayed tuned for the proper June post, and Emma, please don’t let me slack off from my blog ever again. It’s been so fun to be back writing.
:)