Magnitude 5.4 earthquake

So today I realized that I truly am a Southern California native. Its not that I go to the beach or that I play volleyball, but that today I sat through at magnitude 5.4 earthquake centered 1 hour south of Valencia. It didn’t cause any damage and was much smaller than the magnitude 6.8 1994 Northridge quake, but none the less it was very unexpected. My first thought was to get my shoes and leave the house. My second thought….just keep sitting by my computer, this is no big deal. I must be a local…

5.4 Earthquake Link

How big is 6 inches?

I was almost cracking up listening to this conversation between a women in line for a sandwich and an employee at Blimbie (its a sandwhich place kind of like Subway).

 

Lady: I would like the 4 inch Turkey on honey oat bread

Employee: Sorry, we dont have 4 inch honey oat bread.  Would you like a 6 or 12 inch?

Lady: Umm… how big is a 6 inch?

Employee: (looking confused) Uh, its like 6 inches long…

Lady:  How big is that?  This big?  (holding out her hands about 1.5 feet apart)

Employee: (still confused)  No…. its uh, half as big as that loaf of bread…

Lots of trash bags

I used to think that we bought a lot of stuff from Costco for Sigma Chi. That was until this shopping trip with my dad….

Thats right…80 boxes

Sonic!

I went to Sonic in Oregon and it was delicious!  Next up is White Castle hopefully on the way back to Boston…

Kayaking the Rogue

I probably don’t come across as a very outdoorsy kind of person, so it may come as a surprise to find out I just got back from a 6 day river trip on the Rogue river in Oregon. In fact, my family has been doing a private rafting trip like this almost every summer since I was 5. It started out on very mild whitewater, but once my sister and I realized that rapids are the most fun part of any trip we moved up to bigger stuff. For the past 10 years I have been whitewater kayaking. Its nice to be able to play in the rapids instead of just floating down the river in a raft.

For the most recent trip I was the only kayaker in the group. We did 6 days and 5 nights on the wild and scenic Rouge river. Its pretty mild whitewater with mostly class III rapids, but it’s a good setting for a family vacation.

Kayaking is actually a great sport for young people because its really cheap. Once you make the initial investment for a boat and gear is pretty much free every time you go. Compare “free” to the $70 it costs to go snowboarding (another hobby of mine) and you can see why kayaking is so nice. The only problem for me is that I don’t really have any friends that kayak, and it’s too dangerous of a sport to go on your own (drowning is not very fun). I’m sure I could find people to go with if I looked hard enough on the internet, but the other problem is that the closest river to my house is still 2.5 hours away. All of this adding up to the fact that I only really go kayaking for like 5 days a year.