Monthly Archives: November 2006

Horsetail Falls Hike

Posted by chad on November 24, 2006 2 comments

Christopher and I headed out this afternoon on a hike to work off our prior days gluttony. We headed over to Horsetail Falls, but didn’t actually make our way to the falls. Instead we made a detour to see if we could climb up to the summit of a steep cliff area.

Horsetail Falls Trail - Tahoe, CA.

Well we were not too far from the ridge before we thought it was probably best to turn back before one of us fell a few hundred feet to our death. (it got super steep rather fast toward the top)

Here’s a image of our elevation gain on the hike. And of course some stunning photos by yours truly…

Now playing: Amon Tobin – Triple Science – Out From Out Where

Strike two…

Posted by chad on November 23, 2006 None comments

Man, I picked the wrong holiday to stop sniffing glue.

The second pie was actually under cooked and super gooey inside. But, not in a good way. We made due with what was left of the first pass, and I 86′ed Pie 2.0 immediately. I’m going to blame the baking issues on the altitude and not my skillz. I’m a mad baker yo!

It doesn’t really matter, Kathryn’s Chocolate Pumpkin cake was delicious. Not to mention the fantastic meal they spent most of the day putting together.

Well I need to extend my hike tomorrow to ensure I work off all of the food I ate today! Can you say food coma? Right now I’m going to let the Turkey do it’s magic and drift off to deep sleep…

Pecan Pie 2.0

Posted by chad on November 23, 2006 None comments

I’m up in Tahoe again this year to celebrate Thanksgiving with Christopher and Kathryn. Unfortunately, this is the first year in many where I am unable to go skiing on Thanksgiving morning. You can bet that the snow gods won’t be getting thanks from me this year.

I decided on a Chocolate and Kahlua Pecan Pie for my dinner offering. Well that and a few bottles of vino, we are avid consumers of the fermented grape. My initial plan was to bake the pie at home and bring up with me, but of course as the procrastinator I am it took me until Tuesday at 9pm to realize that I no longer own a hand mixer. Thus, the baking had to wait until I got to Tahoe.

My first attempt was started less than a half hour after I walked though the door. The pie filling is super easy to mix up and since I went with a pre-made pie crust the whole thing was assembled and in the oven in about 20 minutes. Not too bad, huh?! I set the buzzer for 45 minutes, and sat back with a glass of Zinfandel. The minute the buzzer went off, I went over to the oven to revel my master piece. It didn’t take long for me to notice I had burnt the crust. Not good, not good at all! Ohh well Kathryn had made a great looking cake, so it’s not like we would go without desert.

Just as were about to finish dinner and our 2nd bottle of wine, I said:

“What the hell, I have enough ingredients to make another pie. Let’s cut into this one and make sure it’s at least edible…”

To my surprise it tasted great. I suppose any desert that includes Chocolate and Kahlua, regardless if it’s over cooked, is bound to taste good.

So this morning I took a second pass at it. This time without wine in my hand, which can make it was easier to keep an eye on the pie as it bakes. Sure enough, Pecan Pie 2.0 came out much nicer than it’s predecessor. I’m willing to bet it’ll taste just a good if not better too!

Happy Turkey Day!

Cable TV… No more…

Posted by chad on November 16, 2006 1 comments

Well, I just canceled cable TV. At first the plan was to downgrade to limited basic cable, because most of the shows I have been watching lately are available publicly. Paying $80 a month for this seemed a bit crazy to me.

So Chad, why do you need cable at all if everything is publicly available?

Good question! Unfortunately we are unable to receive NBC’s signal in the City. The station is all the way down in San Jose and they don’t feel it’s worth the money to fix the problem. At this moment I’m addicted to Scrubs, Heroes, and now My Name is Earl (Thanks Dale!) which are all on NBC. Thus the need for a cable feed, and limited basic should do the trick.

Anyway, when I told the operator what I waned to do she responded with:

No problem, we can downgrade your account. We’ll need to send out a Comcast employee to put a filter on your line to limit the channels you receive. This will be a $10.99 service charge to you.

My reply:

Umm, wait minute. You want to charge me $11 to put a filter on my line? Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that I have to pay a fee for you to limit my channels? This has no benefit to me only to Comcast. Why should I have to pay for this?

Of course she side steeped the question and asked me if I wanted to see if they could come up a special deal which wouldn’t require me to downgrade to limited basic. At that point, I stated:

Look, if you are unable to drop that charge then lets just cancel cable all together. I’ll just watch DVDs from Netflix.

And there you have it, a classic West move. When you are not happy with something silly like an $11 charge, go to the extreme and tell ‘em off! Funny thing is, this didn’t phase her in the least. I’m guessing this is a typical response.

Hell it’ll keep my ass of the couch and I’ll be saving a bunch of money in the months to come… Right?!

Damn! What’s going to happen to the cheerleader?!

Now Playing: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin: Kill Your Television – God Fodder

Scuba Trip Breakdown

Posted by chad on November 2, 2006 1 comments

Bonaire is a rather pretty island. Since the group I vacationed were hardcore divers most of the time was geared towards getting ourselves submerged underwater.

Bonaire

Over the first 5 days I logged 13 dives. The visibility was outstanding, over 100′ at times, and the sea life was remarkably healthy. The more I dove the more detail I saw. Which is probably due to me becoming comfortable hooked up to an air tank at 60+ feet under water to allow me to observe as much of my surroundings as possible. It’s pretty surreal to be at 80′ depth and looking up wall of coral, there’s a whole different world under water which most people never experience.

Here’s a list of notable sea life:

  • Spotted Eel
  • Green Moray Eel (huge in fact, probably 5 – 7 feet long)
  • Fire coral (others too, but don’t know what the names are)
  • Small shrimp dealios
  • Barracuda (only a foot or two long)
  • Turtle (I think it was a Leatherback, saw a few of these and quite large)
  • Stingray (it gave us a shifty glance and decided to keep it’s stinger for someone else)
  • Family of squid swimming around
  • Spotted Drum Fish
  • Large Lobster (3+ lbs)
  • Nurse Shark (I was drift diving and almost sat on this guy w/o knowing)
  • Large School Blue Fish (being chased by large tuna, it was sort of a dance and pretty trippy to watch)
  • Tron Fish (I’m pretty sure this is not what it’s called, but it looked like it had the blue glow suit on)
  • Small Blue Sparkle Fish

There was a lot more under there, but this is what I jotted down in my dive log book.

We also went out on a ship wreck dive, which was my deepest dive on the trip – 99′. This was also the same day which I had a little trouble with my left ear not clearing properly. This can be rather painful if you can’t equalize the pressure on your ears. It took me a little extra time to descend, but it was only a couple of extra seconds each 10′ to allow proper equalization.

On Thursday I decided to take the day off to join Sarah, our new German friend, for a trek in Washington Slagbaai National Park. After her stay on Bonaire, Sarah was scheduled to meet a couple of friends in Peru where they were planning on summiting some of the highest mountain peaks in the world. Anyway, this excursion was rather easy and flat. It was also the first time I took my Nikon out of travel bag, I’ve posted a few choice shot’s here.

The night life on Bonaire reminds me much of a small college town. Small bars playing house music, everyone drinking a little too much and having a great time in the process. I was lucky enough to have meet a few of the locals which gave me the privilege of tagging along with them a few nights to see what the island had to offer. Much of the time I had no idea what they were talking about, because they were communicating in Dutch to one another. Most of them are students from the Netherlands working for the resorts and an internship. Well at least the ones I meet though Buddy Dive did. It made the evenings a bit more enjoyable than just hanging around the resort pool bar talking with wasted Navy Seals telling crazy stories of hunting people down. (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

In short anyone who enjoys scuba diving would love Bonaire and should have this on their list of destinations to hit. But, if you are looking for a relaxing beach vacation, I would not suggest it. The beaches are pretty much non-existent, most are are covered with dead coral (think rough rock). Maybe a trip to Mexico, Hawaii or the Mediterranean may be a better choice for you.