but it's not the whole picture.
the whole picture takes a bit longer to explain, and what better format than this blog? so, here we go.
work is work. just that, work. in the past it was alot more for me; sometime around when the last time i wrote in this journal, work was everything. i was working 7 days a week, not doing much else. work all day, get home really late, sleep, work again. it went on for too long.
it wasn't acutally work's fault, it was part of the job. for anyone who knows me from gaia, they understand just by looking at the dates i was talking about. for those who don't understand, let me summarize: gaia, and the team that i was working on took on the projects of all projects... a flash based MMO. we were in final phases of alpha testing last august, and finally released right around halloween. the closer to release it got, the longer the hours got. the hours turned into weekends, the weekends turned into every weekend. and it kept going like that until after the first of the year.
the whole team was worn out, but at least we were finally able to get our weekends back. since then, we've been working our buts off fixing things that came up, and in general, improving the game that we released. compared to what we originally released in November, it's amazing what we've done in such a short amount of time. the slight downside of the continuous work is just that, it's continuous. every week. i'm proud of what we've accomplished and what we're accomplishing.
to add to all the stress at work, we've been heavily (since the beginning of the year) looking for a house. my wife and i are tired of all the rent / apartment hassles, and are looking to purchase a house in the bay area. to start with, it's a crazy idea that we're going to be spending almost a half million dollars on a house. that's just crazy to think about from someone who's never really looked at the prices of houses. to make things harder, the housing market in san jose is... interesting. most of the older houses are "nice" but really small, when you look at the raw bedrooms/bath size that we're looking for. the rooms all seem like kids rooms, and everything seems... cramped.
so we've changed our search criteria to newer construction, but all of those are "short sale" and have all kinds of loops to jump through to even look at them, much less bid on them. the family is being really helpful (my mother-in-law, and aunt-in-law are both realtors), but it's still a stressful situation. we've missed out on two great houses so far, just because we were too slow in submitting the offers.
ugh.
about a two months ago, when the rain started to let up, and the sun started to come out on a regular basis, all the pressure, and tiredness hit me, and i felt like i needed a reset. luckily, the motorcycle was waiting, and the open road was there to rejuvinate me.
then i got sick, with one of those annoying colds were you feel sick for a few days, and then you are coughing up your lungs for two weeks. it sucked. the worst part is that it was getting nicer and nicer out every day, and i couldn't function. i'm here trying to get better, get happier, reset things in my life and i come down with some stupid cold that would not go away!
at some point, i just said fcuk it, and threw the big ass SLR & some cough drops into the tank bag, and went riding anyways. i was already out of work for the day, the sun was snining, and it had snowed waaaay up in the hills, so i set out to see if i could get some pictures of it.
instead of re-writing the whole day, i'll direct you to the ride report over on pashnit.com - Mt. Hamilton Recharge Ride. it was a fun little trip, and i paid for it when i got home, coughing the rest of the day.
that night, i find out that i've got the following weekend entirely free, my wife was going to be out of town with friends. no responsibilities other than feeding the cats, and attend a birthday cookout on saturday. all i could think of... a whole weekend to ride, and that's what i did.
saturday morning, i set out for SanFrancisco with a basic plan of checking out the marin headlands north of the Golden Gate Bridge. zoom zoom i went on the freeway north from san jose, or "slab"-ing it as us bikers like to say. (hehe. i can say "us bikers" now.)
once i got over the bridge, i headed up to the typical tourist vistas, took some typical touristy shots. i just recently discovered autostitch so i was shooting panoramics with that software in mind. i know they suck this small... i'll link them eventually to bigger versions. i also kinda like them in the un-cropped format, and you don't, too bad.
i spent most of the morning on the marin headlands taking photos, exporing the goaty roads up there. i ended up taking lots of photos, and i'll eventually link to a ride report on pashnit.com with all the photos and details of the ride.
once i was about an hour out from when the party was supposed to start, i started to head back to san jose. the traffic heading back through sanfran was insane, lane splitting was the only option; i ended up splitting side by side with someone on a green KLR 650 for at least 10 lights. before i even got out of the city i was tired of the traffic. i ended up bailing off of the highway on the way home, cruising the santa cruz hills along skyline drive, showing up to the party over an hour late.
sunday was more of the same, riding up in the santa cruz hills for the entire day with my good friend ray. we tried out a bunch of new roads we'd never been on, re-experienced some of our faves, and generally had a really good time. we even stopped at one point to take a bunch of action shots.
by the end of the weekend, i had put over 500 miles on the bike, almost entirely on twisty back roads. epic.
...
the weekend proved again how much the motorcycle has changed things for me. i feel such freedom, such calm while being out on the road. any anger, any stress, any drama is gone. i just cruise along, rocking out, and just enjoying myself.
the moto is my zen.
1 Comments:
Awesome photos!