Bishop’s Peak sunrise hike

Posted on Friday, March 20th 2015, 1:58 by Alexandra

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I have finally done it, I have hiked the tallest peak in SLO and it wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it would be. And I wanted it to be special because I am not sure I am gonna do this hike again. So for this special occasion I woke up at 5 am with Kelsey and her three friends from Iowa. 30 min later we were on our way to the bottom of Bishop’s Peak and the hike started soon before 6am. It was pitch dark, but no clouds so all the stars were out and it was so pretty. But it was not enough to light up the trail so we all walked with our phone lamps on. I have to admit that it was a little bit scary not seeing anything except a little bit ahead of our feet, but we didn’t hear any snarls from mountain lions. A relief. The first part was the worst part, it was just uphill on a trail. My calves did not like that. The rest was zig-zagging up the mountain side and wasn’t bad at all. We took a wrong turn once but realized after two minutes that it was wrong and was on the right path the rest of the way. It was not very warm but perfect hiking weather, we didn’t get super sweaty or tired.

We got to the top early after hiking for almost an hour. It was only 1.2 miles to the top which was not too bad actually, a pretty lagom hike. But we were early, and that meant that we had to sit up there for half an hour before the sun came up over the hills. It was windy like crazy and very cold. And we were also 34 people up there at that unearthly hour watching the sunrise with us.

It was amazing, so beautiful! I had kinda hoped for clouds so we would be over them, but this was beautiful too. You could see all of SLO and all the hills and tons of birds of prey sailing with the winds. It was a wow-experience. I might do it again for a sunset hike, but I will prioritize the other hikes first.

The way down was scary. Ever since my fall down the Potato Chip Rock in San Diego I am scared like an old lady going downhill. But we all survived and after the hike was done we bought breakfast at Slodoco. Yummy! I watched half of the pilot episode of iZombie on The CW and then took a two-hour nap before my hair appointment. iZombie seems like a fun TV show that I will start following now too. So many of the shows I watch right now are on The CW, a good TV channel, simply. It is about a girl who becomes a zombie, but she can control herself and tries to hide it from everyone, including her very attractive fiancé with whom she broke up when she became undead.

At 12.30 I rode my bike all the way to the train station and a little more to the hair salon I had an appointment at, Salon Glo. Rakesha took care of me today and she did an amazing job! It took 2.5 hours and now the worst of my split ends are gone, and my growth is pretty much invisible and looking more natural and beachy now. I love it! I can totally recommend her. And the prize was very nice too. $135 for all of that, and I even got a nice scalp massage and hair mask and tips on how to keep my hair in better shape. After schampooing my hair, I will towel dry it, then put in conditioner in the bottom half of my hair, rinse, and then be done. If there is water in between the conditioner and hair, it doesn’t work. It makes sense, and I will do this from now on so my hair can start getting healthier. Because now, half my hair is with split ends, but I wanna keep the length, so this will help. She was also very friendly. I am happy and feel like a new person.

I rode my bike back and was so tired the last 10 minutes when I reached the south entrance to campus. My butt and thighs hurt. It was no fun, so I chilled for a bit at home, took a shower, and then went with everyone downtown to Farmers Market. It was very nice, we got dinner and I bought some Olallieberry jam. I have never heard of it before, but apparently a ollallieberry is a mix between a blackberry and raspberry. It was good one and now I can mix it up with my normal strawberry I have at home for my pancakes in the morning. Which I am gonna stop with next quarter since I’ve told myself to be more healthy. Whatever.

I stayed at home after that. I was planning on going downtown again with Julianne for some partying, but wasn’t in the mood, and of course not in the mood for line dancing either. So I stayed at home, packed and prepared for tomorrow’s roadtrip up to San Francisco. I am excited!

The girls came home early from line dancing, a couple of them being so very drunk. I don’t handle drunk people very well when I am sober, but I feel sorry for Kelsey who has to drive them down to LA and take care of them on her own when she leaves here at 2:30am. I wish her last night here could have ended better than being kicked out of a line dancing event.

I had a great time with her here this week. I have been a little bit of a party pooper, but I have my reasons for that. It’s been a rough quarter and I am just starting to drop everything and start over with my last quarter in ten days. Today, my first day of spring break was great, it couldn’t have been better (except maybe for the late night’s events); a sunrise hike (which is so unlike me since I hate mornings), a new haircut, and a very pleasant Farmer’s Market. I have a good feeling about this first and last spring break of mine!

Pitch-dark start of the hike. SLO in the dark. It is not a very big city. The birds were floating everywhere. A 360 degree photo from the top of the tallest peak in SLO. It looked like nothing.It’s not a huge difference, but the growth is gone, it’s more even and looks so much more healthy. I love it!

Long Thursday

Posted on Thursday, February 26th 2015, 23:36 by Alexandra

I only have two long Thursday’s left before this quarter is over. Today I was doing stuff non-stop from 11am until 7pm. It was a long day with my feverish and very tired mood. I survived though and got some new information about the internship process, I can’t really say the Urban Planning class was very giving today, German was okay and fun as usual, and we had a guest speaker for two hours at the lab. Was rough. I thought Shannon and I would be able to analyze the peak hour bus routes after the lab, but since it was after 6pm it had to be the off peak. But we needed to do that too. So we basically just sat on the bus route all the way around, wrote down the arrival and departure time of all the stops and also how many boardings and alightings. It wasn’t too bad.

Then I spent I short while at the Farmers Market and had dinner downtown before going home where I had a big slice of warm cookie/cake with ice cream. I see double now and so look forward to sleeping for as long as I want tomorrow.

Farmer’s Market

Posted on Thursday, October 23rd 2014, 22:14 by Alexandra

Three hours of sleep last night again. What’s wrong with me?! But I survived a long day with my three classes, a nap, and a trip to the Farmer’s Market. In the lab we were divided into groups and then had one busy intersection per group and we were gonna count all the pedestrians, bicycles, buses and cars. I counted all the buses and the cars and in the beginning that was crazy.So many cars everywhere and they didn’t go where my paper said they were supposed to go. But I think my numbers are pretty accurate. We sat there for one hour and it was way more fun than sitting in class for three hours.

At 7:30pm I went to Farmer’s Market downtown with Lauren, Kelsey, Julianne and Margarita. We started our evening with going to the ATM to take out money. But my card was declined because of unusual activities. So I called the bank and talked to them for the next 20 minutes and couldn’t buy anything because I didn’t have any cash. They didn’t know what was wrong and didn’t help me in any way. Stupid Bank of America. They told me to go to the bank office and get a temporary card. The card I have works (as far as I know, I haven’t tried to use it in the past few days) in stores and online, but not with ATM’s. I am going grocery shopping tomorrow, I hope it works then. Kelsey was nice and lend me some money so I could buy pomegranate juice and a corn on the cob. I felt better after that.

I am going to bed now, I have a really really long day ahead of me tomorrow. But all fun stuff, it will be a nice day 😀

Kona Pier Beach (30jan)

Posted on Friday, January 31st 2014, 23:24 by Alexandra

This morning was so beautiful! No clouds at all and it was just amazing seeing the clear blue sky again. We started the day pretty late today again, no hurry on Hawaii, no. We walked north and were heading for a beach we could see from our hotel. But we stopped at the Kona Farmer’s Market on the way, I bought some water, a loaf of pineapple banana bread, and a new bracelet, the one I bought the other day didn’t feel right on my wrist. This new one is green with tiny turtles and beads on it. Much better! Caroline bought some fruit and I wished I could do it too. But without knives it’s kinda hard to eat a pineapple, mango or papaya. They have so many crazy fruits at those markets; strawberry papaya, apple bananas, rainbow papaya and bananas the size of my pinky.

When we came to the Kona Pier we saw a tiny man-made beach there. It was seriously the tiniest beach I’ve ever seen and it was right by the boats and it wasn’t particularly nice. The sand was white, but felt like salt under our feet. We asked the girl in the rental booth for the big beach we could see from our hotel and she said it was a very rocky beach and lava rocks were in between the sand and the water. And it was private property. So we decided to spend the day at that tiny tiny beach. I don’t know, it might have been like 50 meters wide or something.

It was burning today so if you didn’t go in the water once in a while it felt like you were melting away. It was awesome! And I just imagined being on a nicer beach.

At 4pm it got cloudy and windy so we left the beach soon thereafter and went to a coffee place right next door. I had a chai latte and we got free Wi-Fi there. I didn’t have my computer with me so I just went through Facebook, checked my e-mail and account balances. I have not been spending a lot of money lately so I have like $600 in total (both American account and Swedish). So I will have enough money to pay for my extra baggage back home on Monday.

For dinner we had cup noodles on the balcony with a view over the darkening sky. It was a very nice and warm evening so I didn’t mind spending $2 on dinner tonight.

I only have two more full days here on Hawaii. On Sunday morning I will leave this amazing place, go back to San Diego and then to Sweden. I seriously can’t believe my countdown app that tells me that I go back to Sweden in four days!! Well, I guess I could say three days too, that’s when my big journey begins with a 9 hours layover in San Diego.

I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK! I’ve found a new me these past two weeks. The hidden part of me that wants adventures. I don’t wanna be stuck in Sweden. I wanna go to Australia and work as a bartender for a year. I wanna go wherever and train to be a surf instructor (I heard it’s very easy to be one if you just have the ambition and friendliness). I wanna explore more of USA. I wanna work at Banana Bungalow on Maui. I wanna travel! I just started and I don’t wanna stop.

But first I need to get my degree and earn some money. And I think that will work out. I just got a mentor for my thesis so as soon as we start with that I will get money from CSN. I got an email from Cultural Care telling me to call them as soon as I come home to Sweden because they probably want to offer me a part time job as a recruiter. And then I hope I will get that job at Liseberg this summer. I’m gonna save as much as possible so I can start my next adventure as soon as possible! Or I will get back to my boring routines so quickly and easily in Sweden that I will take my degree, start working and keep working until I retire and then eventually die….

2014-01-30, 20:22

Sunny view from our balcony. Kona Farmer’s Market. Hot dogs or legs?