Running On Empty

The most exciting time we've ever had driving economically.  

Dylan and I were driving back from Eugene to Corvallis.  I was in dire need of gas because the meter was at the last tick.  The estimated miles was calculated to be 34miles.  I remember from Eugene to the Shell near Corvallis was around 30-something miles.  We both thought the same stupid idea.  Could we make it before the gas runs out?  As you may know by now, we like a challenge. 

So off we went.  I was really tired, so I let D take the wheel.  It was a hell of an adventure for the next 40 minutes.  We had to drive around 60mph the whole way and we might not even make it.   So we thought of everything we could to conserve gas.  We closed the windows and sunroof.   We turned off the stereo.  We turned off the headlamps (luckily the sun was still out).  We turned off the A/C (shit. the sun's still out).  It was around 8 o clock so the sun was at perfect eye level, blinding the hell out of us, baking the inside of the oven that we had just created.  But whatever, we are not going to back down.  

Beads of sweat started forming and the temperature was rising.  I looked at the GPS.  16miles to go.  Looked at the estimated miles left: 18 MILES.   okay we're in good shape.  So I turn on the fan to cool off a little bit, you know, so as to not suffocate?  Instantly, the meter jumps down to 15Miles.  I panic and shut the fans off.  What the heck just happened?!  at this point we're yelling and panicking not knowing what to do.  He's yelling at me for turning on the fans, I'm yelling back for him to calm down and focus, it was a mess.  

But wait.  We see a big semi truck coming ahead of us.  We both smiled.  Let's draft that sommabich all the way there!  Cutting out all that headwind+aerodynamics mumbo jumbo would be huge for us.  So the next 11 miles D is trying his hardest to stay as close as he can to that semi.  It gets nerve racking as I look between the GPS and the mileage meter.  7...7,  6....6,  4....3  NOOOO what happened?!  we're so close!  1.2 ....0  a big fat zero shows up on the meter.  and we have 1.2 miles to go.  What does this mean?!  We're panicking even more than before, I'm imagining hiking over a mile for gas.  It was like waiting for a time bomb to explode.  

But it never did.  We coasted in neutral to exit, and slowly drove into the Shell station.  We made it!!  I look over at the data meter thing and was ecstatic.   I had driven nearly 500miles on that one tank.  Record broken!

I usually get around 400 for a tank.  but 496.2! That came out to 36.25 MPG.  (previous record was 462miles from my Davis to Eugene trip on one tank)

Who knew driving economically could be so fun?  The ambition, the panic, the pure joy.  Now I know why "Hypermilers" do what they do.  This can easily turn into an addiction.  Good times ol' chap.  Good times.

Driving Log:

Snacks: Hot Cheetos, Apple-Os, Famous Amos Cookies (damn forgot to get baos!)
Drinks: Redbull, Cherry Coke. (hella needed it. Only had 6 hours of sleep due to festivities J)

Cop Sightings: 5 (there was one bridge that had two patrol cars side by side)
Mini Sightings: 2 (both on the bay bridge, I’m suddenly unique haha)
Mini to Cop Ratio: 0.40 (lost again)
# times Traction Control Saved My Ass: 4 (It was raining most of the drive. Only 2 minutes of light snowfall, phewf!)

Est. Miles Travelled:
Avg MPH: 72-75
Max Speed: 91.9MPH
Est. MPG:
Est. Cost:

Left SF: 12:04PM
Stops Taken: 2
Arrived Corvallis: 8: 42PM
Travel Time: 8’38”

Birthday House party until 4AM? STILL GOT IT BABY

Driving Log:

Snacks: Hot Cheetos, Apple-Os, Famous Amos Cookies (damn forgot to get baos!)
Drinks: Redbull, Cherry Coke. (hella needed it. Only had 6 hours of sleep due to festivities : )

Cop Sightings: 5 (there was one bridge that had two patrol cars side by side)
Mini Sightings: 2 (both on the bay bridge, I’m suddenly unique haha)
Mini to Cop Ratio: 0.40 (lost again)
# times Traction Control Saved My Ass: 4 (It was raining most of the drive. Only 2 minutes of light snowfall, phewf!)

Est. Miles Travelled: 576 miles (google)
Avg MPH: ~75
Max Speed: 91.9MPH
Est. MPG: 30.75
Est. Cost: $59.9 ($3.2/Gal)

Departed SF: 12:04PM
Stops Taken: 2
Arrived Corvallis: 8: 42PM
Travel Time: 8’38”

Birthday House party until 4AM? STILL GOT IT BABY

Fun Random Night

I hope you had the time of your life

That was the song that I last heard from Andy's car (reminder: get Andy's CD), and we were karaoke-ing the hell out of it.  It also wasn't the only song that we karaoke'd.  We sang a crap load of songs throughout tonight.  Man today was a regular day that turned out to be one of the funnest random days I've had.  I wouldn't say it was the time of my life, but it was pretty damned awesome.  And I'm sure Andy, Gary, Henry and Kevin can vouch for this haha.


Mundane Morning
Morning for me these days is pretty much after 12PM haha so bad.  I was planning on going to this WIA orientation at one of the EDD One Stop Centers to find out more about government subsidized training, but... I arrived late.  Poo.  When I got to the area (that Market, Mission area that confused the hell out of me) I hella couldn't find the place.  So even if I had skipped my "morning" shower, I probably wouldn't have made it.  Oh well.  Henry got off early, and Gary took the day off and it was a sunny day so I wasn't really kicking myself.  We ended up playing Altered Beast and River City Ransom at my place, fun!

Four o' Clock Fro-yo

It was a pretty warm day for Autumn so we met up with Mel for fro-yo at Lakeshore Plaza.  Something like Nuubi Fro-Yo? I think it was new.  It was selfserve and I went way overboard on mine.  There were like 12 flavors! So I just went crazy.  I had 5 different flavors and 5 different toppings.  Total cost? $4.49  oops.  Next time I gotta control myself.

Spontaneous, Ambitious, Delicious
Hmm.. that spells SAD.  Which is what we would have been if everything didn't fall into place like it did tonight! (heh maybe)  So at Lakeshore, Henry get's the ambition to be spontaneous and buys a set of Boxing Gloves and Mitts too (relevance).  Here's when the day started getting fun.

I was originally planning to eat at home, but Andy mention's Chinos and cleverly lures me to eat at Henry's house.  We ate some, played some rockband, and we started boxing!  I had brought my gloves too, so now we had two sets.  Perfect for some light sparring.  This is what lured Kevin to Henry's house haha.  It was a lot of fun sparring with each other.  We got to test our own fighting skills (since training mitts don't really do that) and just randomly fought each other.  I felt so uncoordinated in a sparring match! And it's actually pretty hard to get a good hit on the other guy.  I think I fought Gary and Henry, and man when you get hit in the gut you feel it.  But the gloves give good enough protection to not do any lasting damage.  I'm so glad that everyone was so into it! Good investment.


Gary decided to go to Safeway and buy some Wine haha.  So random.  I felt like it turned into a Ladies Night: Men Edition.  Wine and Boxing? Great times!  While we were sipping on the Reisling (quite tasty, sweet and sour, i like!) Gary bought, we watched Man Vs. Food on the Travel channel.  I swear the host is going to die of some heart disease.  A 4 patty hamburger thats got the diameter of your head? That can't be good. 
 
Then this show Meet the Natives came on, and it was actually pretty entertaining and interesting!  It's about 5 tribal natives from an Island in the South Pacific coming over to the US to see what life is like here.  Those guys are so naturally funny, and they're really looking at our world with virgin eyes.  They described a sleeping bag as a "tube" and have never seen a snake (which one of them was terrified of ).  In a way, this show may be exploitive, but I think it's always interesting to see cultures mingle (why travelling is so fun!).  They were exposed to cattle ranchers, New Yorkers, and even "the Orange County people".  Man those people are so superficial it makes us look bad.  The OC'ers explained to the natives that they had a lot of mirrors around the house, because "you always have to make sure you look good in Orange County".  They even brought them to a Botox injection appointment, which was pretty cringe-worthy.

But the most interesting part were the questions that the tribe wanted to be answered during their 5 ambassador's vacation.

1. Why are we so obsessed with money and possessions?
2. Why do we allow pollution even though we know its bad? 
3. Why do we treat our pets better than some of our fellow citizens?
4. Is the United States still a peace keeper? Do we look out for others? 

Very interesting perspectives coming from a tribe that has never been exposed to our kind of society.  It's pretty cool how people exist in a society that is entirely untouched by "modern" technology.  It's also refreshing to see the happiness the guys had living a simpler life. 

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!  So another food program comes on showcasing different unique restaurants around the country, and by now all our mouths are watering.  This one restaurant in LA I think serves only Peanut Butter Sandwiches.  Once we see the Peanut Butter/Marshmallow Fluff sandwich, we start looking at each other.  We're like fuck it, we gotta hit up Safeway again and make us some peanut butter sandwiches haha.  It was SO worth it! and this was when we were all buzzing from the wine.  We picked up bread, Peanut butter, Strawberry Jam, Marshmallow Fluff, Condensed Milk, Nutella, M&M's and Lactose-Free milk (to prevent Andy's lactose farts, which happened anyway).  Haha yea, we went all out on creating many different combinations of PB sandwiches.  I only had room for 1, so I made the PB and Marshmallow.  It was sooo delicious! Really hit the spot.  Some other combinations we made were: Jam and Marshmallow, Jam and Condensed milk, Jam, PB, and Marshmallow, and Andy's famous, PB, M&M's, condensed milk, and Jam.  (need to grab pictures from Henry's camera)


It's Karaoke Time!
Lol for some reason when we got back from Safeway with the sandwich ingredients, we were breaking into song left and right for the next of the night.  It was hilarious and felt great to belt out our favorite ballads.  I think we were buzzed and hyper from all the sugar.  Lol we were so ridiculous.  We also streamed Karaoke from Youtube on Henry's big screen TV.  I swear we never have to hit up a Karaoke place again. We sang 

• Unchained Melody - Oh, My Love, My Darling, I Hunger for your touch
  
• You've Lost that Lovin Feelin - You never close your eyes, anymore when I kiss your lips
  
• I'll Make Love To You - Close your eyes, Make a wish, and blow out the candle lights. 
• Nice and Slow - It's seven o clock on the dot, I'm in my drop top cruisin the streeets
  

Top Gun - You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin

Man it was so awesome, we let it all out with no care in the world!

Gary said it best: "Should this be a Thanksgiving tradition?" aha maybe, maybe not.  But I'm down for more nights like this.  Good clean random ass fun.

Today is Thanksgiving, and I'm thankful for all my friends (you know who you are!)

Sorry for such a long post haha.  I mostly write about events for myself to remember later down the road.  And today was a memorable day.  If you made it to the end, you are awesome!! 

Post-Halloween Post

Been on a mini-blog-posting hiatus because life has been hectic, but good hectic.  Now that I finished taking the GRE's I can post again.

(10/29)Drove back from Eugene starting at 10:30PM !! and we got back to sweet ole' San Franciso at 6:30AM (its great to be back).  The drive was a lot more fun with Dillon and David there.  We actually saw the moonset! I don't think I ever noticed the moon setting before and I wish we had a decent camera.  It just sat there on the horizon getting flatter and flatter; kind of like a ball slowly losing air, pretty cool and funny.  There was also this one stretch of road where there were no cars so i just opened the sun roof.  It was pitch black and the stars were amazing, you could almost get lost in them (not trying to be poetic or nothin', it really felt like that!)  Too bad it was dangerous to look at them for more than a second while driving.  Lucky Dillon and David!!

Spookfest EVIL105

Dillon was cookie monster!! I wanted to be cookie monster last year, but didn't know how.. Angel was Quailman, I was Odlaw >:] and David was a Sumo wrestler.  They were all huge hits amongst the peoples but David's was freakin' golden:

It was the first time my cousins have been to an event like this, and they were stoked!  And boy were they in for a big surprise...when we were waiting in line, we witnessed this one girl in leopard print relieving herself IN LINE 3 FEET AWAY FROM US.  I'm sorry they had to see that, and I'm pretty sure that set the tone for them for the rest of the night.  We finally made it in and saw everybody else, it was good to see everyone again and in awesome costumes nonetheless.  Andy and V's Mickey and Mallory was superb! 

Right when we walk into the palace, I just realized that it was pretty much a Rave haha.  So I turn to Dillon and David "uhh.. welcome to your 1st rave?".  Then almost immediately after that, a druggie comes up to David..:"Dude.. you got any pills on you? any Acid?" lol it was gonna be an interesting night for them.
Later on...
Druggie #2 looks at David in his Sumo costume: "Hey man! you got any drugs in there?"
David: "nope"
Druggie#2: "Man, thats too bad.  You coulda fit a shit load of drugs in there" lol
Dillon also tells me he saw some guy freaking out in the bathroom yelling "OMG somethings wrong with my hands"

Yea, it was pretty shocking stuff for them haha, I hope they had a good time.  I'm sure David did.  That sumo costume caught so much attention from girls it was ridiculous.  It would take forever to walk across the place with him, because they all wanted pictures with him.  Dillon on the other hand, attracted much attention from guys haha.  There were these 3 guys that thought he was the DJ from Crystal Method (cus he was also in cookie monster costume) and wanted pictures and autographs from him haha.

Henry was my arch nemesis, Waldo.  He told me that he got pinched in the ass many times.  I, on the other hand, had recognition issues. No one knew who the hell I was! haha I guess I can't blame them, cus I didn't even know of Odlaw until a month ago.  Some funny quotes of the night:

"OmG! you're a bumble-bee too!! :)" umm.. sure?
"Look its BEE MAN!! BEE MAN!!"  I'm not a bee!!!
"You're the most awesome Waldo in this place!" Thanks! Not waldo tho.
"Dude.. so.. are you supposed to be like.. the Asian Waldo?"  -_-'

Finally, someone who gets it :)

Best music of the night was definitely Infected Mushroom.  I saw the cousins get into it rocking out, and saying "yea you were right, they are awesome live."  Then in the car ride back Dillon goes: "To be honest, the music the whole night sounded exactly the same to me" (face-palm).

Oh yea! forgot, favorite costumes we saw:

Isn't that awesome? a group of friends dressing up as Street Fighters, they looked great.
And the next night, I saw this guy in a laundry basket with dirty clothes.  I dono why, but it was my favorite for the night haha. 
But my facebook favorite, or favorite of all time was Szeto's Sriracha. awesome.
http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs063.snc3/13047_863994011923_1211500_48542444_3412629_n.jpg

Solo Roadtrip to Eugene!

It was pretty fun overall, I really like driving long distances.  It's pretty peaceful and kinda liberating.  All you need is your favorite music, and its a go! I definitely want to do a cross country roadtrip some day.  


Playlist:
1.  Live 105 - Best station in the Bay, started off with IINTERGALACTIC PLANETARYY
2.  Beatles Love Album - road trip singalong, i need to see the Cirque du Soleil Love show
3.  Infected Mushroom - Vicious Delicious
4.  Never have I ever played Never Have I Ever on the phone, until now. thanks Meg! that was a good hour killed.
5.  Across the Universe Soundtrack - More singalongs :)
6.  The Hush Sound - So Sudden, Like Vines, Goodbye Blues - great roadtrip albums!
7.  Tiesto Kaleidoscope
8.  Daft Punk - Alive 2007 - RoooBooot


Food:
-Virginia's Veronas, nomnomnom
-Beef Jerky Original (peppered is so much better, or Jamaica Me Crazy!)
-Japanese snack mix, nomnom
-V8 Fusion, water, Mt. Dew 


By The Numbers: 
Minis Spotted: 2 :)
Cops Spotted: 4
Mini to Cop Ratio: 0.5 :(
Max Speed: 95 mph
Avg Speed: 63.8 mph
Miles, Davis to Eugene: 466 Miles
Gas used: ~14.0265 gallons
Fuel Economy: 33.22 mpg  (supposed to be 32 Highway, pretty close)
Rest Stops: 1
Caffeine drinks: 1 (mountain dew)

Highlights:
+ Taking a 3 hour pit stop in Davis and having a bomb ass burrito at Davis Taqueria with Franky. 

+ Playing Never Have I Ever on the phone with a drunk friend haha, it sure helped me fight the deadly burrito food coma.
+ That IS300 (Brian?) after the Oregon Border.  He creeps up behind me really fast and passes me, and I got this sudden urge to keep up with him.  Right then, it was the mountain twisties and man it was fun.  Put a smile on my face!
+ Making it to Eugene from Davis on 1 tank of gas! I swear it was on the brink of empty.  When I reached the gas station, it said estimated 1 mile left O_O.
+ Getting to David's apartment at 2:30AM at the tail end of a college drinkfest, and staying up playing video games until 5 o clock! (DIY, Video Games, blog post coming soon)