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By Johnny, July 19, 2008 11:52 pm

I decided to do a few things as part of my adventure for this beautiful Los Angeles Saturday. I pedaled up to my favorite train stop in South Pasadena and took the North bound train towards Pasadena. It was my first time riding the Gold Line up to the last stop in Sierra Madre. From there I made my way down 4 stories of car parking and rode over to Harbor Freight, Pasadena location. For those who don’t know what Harbor Freight is, it’s a store where you can find all sorts of miscellaneous tools and items you wouldn’t find at your local hardware store or even at an auto parts store. It was great because they had so many tools for all sorts of things.

I then cruised over to Sears across the street and bought a 15mm wrench. I finally used a gift card that had $0.94 of credit! One less card to carry. I made my way out of Sears and took the train to the Bike Oven. At the Oven, I had some time to work on my bike. I had to tighten up the chain ring bolts and rewrapped my handlebar. By time everything was over it was 5PM. Me and one of the volunteers decided to go get smoothies in Chinatown. We rode our bikes from Highland Park area and chilled out and chatted for about 30 minutes and went our separate ways.

I took the Gold Line and then transferred to the Red Line and got off Hollywood and Vine. From there I proceeded to the theatre that was having the 2008 Bicycle Film Festival. I was greeted by Mr. Rollers, a very well known photographer for the Midnight Ridazz. He offered to valet my bike and so I allowed.

First time getting my bicycle valeted and I don’t mind it at all, unlike car valets. I waited in line until 7:30 rolled around and we all finally got to see some movies about bicycles. It was inspiring. When we got out, the line for the next program was long! I wanted to stay back and catch this last showing but I was hungry and tired so I bolted out to the train station.

The train was crowded with families who spent their day at Universal Studios and were heading back home. I know because they were holding souvenirs. I got off at the Civic Center stop hoping to catch a bus and try using the bike racks in front of a bus for the first time. I waited almost an hour and no bus came so I got fed up and road home from Downtown LA to Alhambra. Fueled by popcorn, a smoothie, and a power bar from earlier in the day, my head was pounding as I made my 7 mile journey at 11PM. I quickly stopped by Yoshinoya and picked up a chicken bowl with a cup of water. A well deserved meal that eased the headache and my sore legs.

Not bad for a 19 mile day (according to my cyclometer).

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By Johnny, August 8, 2007 10:43 pm

Here’s the 5th day of our vacation. We spent our morning walking around downtown Portland. Like Los Angeles, Portland wasn’t crowded and it didn’t seem like it was the primary hub of the area. We cruised over to the International Rose Test Garden. We perused the rows and rows of roses and admired the view at the garden. When lunch came, we headed over to the Nike Campus in Beaverton to see Lori for the last time. She gave us an awesome tour of the campus. We bid farewell and went on our way to Mt. Hood. It was a beautiful drive to the base of the mountain. Still had some snow on the mountain. We then headed over to the Hood River and eventually made it across to Washington.

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By Johnny, July 29, 2007 10:14 pm

We’re back at Tammy’s place right now. We decided to grab some dim-sum this morning in Richmond, British Columbia. It’s like a Alhambra or Monterey Park of Canada. The dim-sum experience was pretty different. First of all, there isn’t any carts perusing the aisles of tables. Instead, you order from a sheet of paper similar to a sushi menu. Of course, none of us knew how to read or write Chinese so we had to dictate to the waitress what we wanted. Before we went to British Columbia, I was told by many people that the best dim-sum in world was in BC. It was even better than San Francisco or even Hong Kong. Bold statement until we had ours. It was in fact the best dim-sum ever! The har gow and shui mai was large and plump. Every order was excellent!

Victoria, British Columbia was also a good experience. We rode in and out of Victoria to our ferry on the local bus. We only had 3 hours to walk around town. I know we didn’t see all of Victoria but we had to get going. It was mass chaos getting back on the ferry. At first, they did not allow anyone to board but eventually they sent us all in without even charging us a fare. Apparently there was a security issue so they had to load the last ferry. We were exhausted when we got back to the hotel after a late dinner.

We’ll be going home tomorrow. Before that we’re planning to check out the Chinatown in Seattle since we haven’t been there yet. It was a good vacation and I’ll definitely visit these places again. Next time, on planes instead of our 2,000 mile drive.

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By Johnny, July 25, 2007 11:34 pm

We’re currently in Federal Way, WA with my grade school friend, Tammy. Our day started with a visit to downtown Portland, OR. We checked out the Pearl District, Chinatown, and various other locations in the city. There were barely any people walking around the streets and construction work was all over the place. The place was filled with homeless folks and crazy people. We saw a guy walk around with 2 green balloons in his pink blouse and singing. As long as you kept to yourself, they didn’t bother you. We then went over to the International Rose Garden in Washington Park. The city of roses did not disappoint when it comes to beautiful varieties of roses. We went back to meet up with Lori at Nike, and she gave us an incredible tour through the Nike campus. It was awesome and everyone learned alot from her. Kinda makes me want to work there. It would definitely be a different type of lifestyle in Beaverton. Something I would need to get used to. Something I’m not ready to do just yet. Nathan joined us for lunch, and we said our good-byes and proceeded to do the tour of Mount Hood.

That was another 1.5 hours to Mt. Hood. We ended up at Timberline Lodge, which is the base of Mt. Hood and took pictures and bought souvenirs. We drove another 1.5 hours out of Mt. Hood to the Gorge. We attempted to reach the dam in Bonneville. Unfortunately, they were closed by the time we got there. We called it a day and proceeded to drive to Tammy’s place afterwards.

I bought myself a nice messenger bag. No it’s not a purse! I’ve always wanted one to carry things. I can test it out tomorrow when we head into Seattle for the entire day.

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By Johnny, May 29, 2006 2:09 pm

The Memorial Day holiday brought a great opportunity to pay another visit to Las Vegas for the 3 days off. It was also a birthday celebration for Chanthou as well as a celebration for me being debt free. We left for Vegas Saturday morning and did not arrive until 5pm. The traffic wasn’t too bad. There was some delay’s on the way to Hesperia, but it was negligible considering we did not experience major traffic from that point on.

I played some craps and a $50 1-2 NL game when we got there. Unfortunately lost about $150 before we even went to eat dinner. We enjoyed a nice dinner at an Asian noodle place in the Hilton (our hotel). Did some saki bombs and saki shots for Chanthou’s birthday. After dinner I went back to the 1-2 NL game and bought in for another $50. At the end of the night I walked away with $377. So I was up $177. We spent the next morning eating dim-sum in Chinatown Las Vegas. Because I had won the night before, I decided to give everyone a treat and paid for the bill. We then went to see a magic show at the Tropicana hotel. This was my first Las Vegas show I’ve ever experienced. The show was okay and I’ve always enjoyed watching magic so it was a good experience.

After we finished the show, we went back to the hotel. Rich and I decided to lay-out at the pool. It was nice. The pool was cold and the weather carried a breeze towards the end of our 2 hours out in the sun. I did get a bit of color, but nothing to really brag about.

We get back up to the hotel room and discovered that the girls had received comp dinner at our hotel for signing up with a player’s club card. Sweet! We stuffed ourselves with all sorts of buffet food. There was even free alcohol at the buffet.

After dinner, we went to see Fremont Street, the original “Las Vegas Strip” in Downtown Las Vegas. I really liked it there. It was also a first time for me being there. We settled down at the Binions Hotel and played some craps. Lost another $140 there. We left Fremont at 11pm and went back to our hotel. Obviously I had to visit the card room once again after the successful night I had before. With the initial $50 buy-in, I had slowly accumulated about $650 and became big stack in a matter of 5-6 hours. Unfortunately, I had lost $400 in a matter of 2 hands afterwards. The second place chip-leader had busted me with a set of Q’s. We actually both had Q’s and I thought I was good since my cards were Q-10. Unfortunately, he had Q-A. That hurt. I grinded out my last $200 for another 3 hours until I lost it all. I rebought w/another $100 and played all the way till 5am this morning. I lost it on busted up flush draw against another Q top pair. The cool part about both poker nights, I came across a couple of regulars who were very receptive of me. The first night I had an older gentleman who joked around with me and told me all the regulars that played with us that night along with their style of play. This morning, the guy who beat me w/top pair Qs shook my hand and said, “I’ll see you in the circuit.” He thinks that I play professionally! A great confidence booster to a down weekend. At the end of the trip, I had only spent $300 of the $600 I brought. Not bad considering I had treated for dim-sum and paid for other expenses besides gambling.