Changes

I've learned a lot in the past few weeks. I took out my first loan. I bought my first car. I bought car insurance. Up next - becoming a California citizen!

Honest Tea

At work I drink tea. Lots of it. I've fallen in love with Honest Tea's "Just Green Tea," drinking maybe 3-5 glasses a day. It's so addicting, 0 calories, organic, and healthy! And, as a side project, I've been collecting the bottle caps, which have quotes. So far I have around 60 unique ones, that I hope to get up on the internet one day. I'll rank first in SERPs for Honest Tea quotes!

Stanford 25, USC 24

Work has been much of the same and I continue to feel more distant from Stanford. That is, until this Saturday, when I checked NCAA scores and found that Stanford had beaten USC 25-24! I couldn't believe it! Jenny and I were on campus that evening, and were fortunate enough to catch a large crowd gathering around Maples. Over 1000 students, alumni (as old as upper 50s) came out to cheer on the newly revitalized Stanford football team as they rolled in at midnight. As far as sports moments at Stanford, this ranks right up there with Nick Robinson's trey at the buzzer to beat Arizona in 2004. For once, an entire campus was united and behind the football team, which just last year had only won one game. And now that I'm an alumni, I can really see how the players, they're just kids too, were so happy to get off that bus to fans. Many of them, for the past four years, got off the bus at midnight to an empty campus, rejected from yet another lost. But that night, they were heroes and they deserved it. Guess all of the good things happen once I leave. But, as they say, once a Cardinal, always a Cardinal.

Officially no longer a student

Classes start tomorrow at Stanford. Now I really am no longer a student. =[

The Day I Almost Died

Yesterday I crashed into a tree and probably totaled my car. I was heading to the gym around 11am and it had been drizzling all morning. When I made a slight left on E. Bayshore, my tires lost traction and my car turned left. I over-steered to the right, causing my car to do a 180 that took me onto the embankment to my right. I collided with a metal fence and a tree, damaging my front bumper, driver door, and rear of the car. Luckily, I was not hurt and the impact was probably at 5-10mph.

As I was sliding out of control, the only thought that really went through my head was "Oh shit, I might die." This has probably been the closest I've been to really hurting myself, and surprisingly, I didn't think very introspectively about anything. A part of me said, "No, I want to live," but I felt the outcome of the situation was beyond my control - I was at the fate of my car and the surroundings I would run into. Guess I'm more existential than I thought.

I'm surprised I'm not more shaken up about the situation as a whole. I probably have to pay a ton to get a new car, but part of me is excited about change in my life. Guess that's me and my optimism about any situation.

Moody Road

For my bike ride today, I headed south on Foothill Expressway to El Monte Road and then Moody road. After making the turn into Moody, I actually turned off onto Altamount, and rode that up about 500 feet before thinking that I had gone the wrong way and turned around. That little detour was tiresome, but when I went down the hill I was able to get up to 39mph, the fastest speed in recent memory.

As for the ride up Moody, it's pretty easy. Low grade climbing, if you could even call it that, for the first few miles, and then finally a pretty steep uphill for a mile. You then get dumped off on Page Mill, which I took down at a fairly fast pace and then rode back home.

All in all:

The Route

27.06 miles
14.6 average mph
39.0 max speed
842.0 calories burned
1:51:07 time


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What the heck Cardinal's

The St. Louis Cardinal's, once 1 game out of first place, have now gone on an 0-7 losing streak. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I really really hope they make the playoffs, but after this past week, I'm not sure they deserve it.