California Hiking & Riding Trails

Heading back to the Anza-Borrego Dessert, you might ask why the hell do my hikes always take place in California's largest state park.

At the trailhead

Everyone tries to keep up as Alex zips past wayyy ahead

At the peak

Me and my funny pose

Kevin and Tracy hang to dear life... smiling!

Some of the wonderful dessert flora

Desolate and empty... the vastness of land is quite humbling.

This hike is definitely one of the hottest, literally!

My Birthday, 2007!

I never really celebrated my birthday full scale before, but this year was pretty close!

My housemates (the best ever!) were so kind enough to celebrate it for me. On March 15th, my actual birthday (I say that because I never exactly celebrate my b'day on the actual day, but on convenient weekends), they put up a small party for me. We had dinner, presents, sang the birthday song, and even CAKE! Gosh, I can't even remember when was the last time I had a birthday cake!

Me, Christy, Matt, Melissa, and good ol' Oliver

It has been too long since I was in the US that I never celebrated anything like I used to back in Malaysia. New Year, I was sleeping... Chinese New Year, watching tv... Birthday, dinner with friends (back at Purdue), but this year I get to change a little bit of all that by igniting the celebration engine!

Not only did I have a sumptious and meaningful dinner, just yesterday (Saturday) they took me to SeaWorld, for an all day paid for event! It was wonderful I tell ya!

At the dolphin show

At the Sea Lion show

In which we were greated by this fatty~!

The Shamu show was SPECTACULAR~!

Orcas (Killer Whales)

The best Housemates in the World!

wait... we're missing Oliver~ :'-(

Mt. Cuyamaca

Group photo at the base of Mt. Cuyamaca

This is a really easy hike. Situated at the edge of the Anza-Borrego desert, Mt. Cuyamaca was a victim of forest fires a few years ago. Therefore the sights weren't very spectacular, but it was interesting to hike through burts trees, and try to catch some vegetation that survived, as well as sprouting new trees. It is quite amazing how nature works as it razes it from you, only to give back new life~

The Ladies really know how to Bug (pun intended)

Dead trees on the left, flourishing trees on the right.
Handsome guy in the middle~

The gang that conquered Whale Peak reunites

No, I went on a HIKING TRIP, in case you're just looking at pics and not reading~ :P

At the Peak

All over the world, I'm known as Banana Boy for many reasons... :(

Whale Peak

Probably the most adventurous hike I have ever completed in my life, was at Whale Peak of the Anza-Borrego desert.

Red line indicates hike towards the TOP

Blue line indicates the hike BACK

At the trailhead (although technically there's no trail!)

We started off at around 6.30AM when Chuck picked me up and headed to Anza-Borrego state park (the largest state park in California) which is in the eastern side of San Diego. It was about a 2 hour drive to reach the trailhead and required some off-roading too~! Situated in the desert, I knew this was going to be interesting as I've never been to the desert for real in my life~!

We even managed to see some ancient pictographs at the foot of the mountain.

Are we there yet???

Whale Peak was the most technical hike of all hikes in the schedule. There were ALOT of boulder climbing, bush crawling, and cliff hanging... okay, there were no cliffs... but let me tell you this, in any hike that you take, the last thing you want to experience is getting lost in the desert! You see, the hike that we took didn't have a trail for us to follow. But we had "professionals" on our team with GPS navigators and other hikers leaving ducks (a trail mark in the form of stacked stones) so that we can find our way. Although we are sure to find our destination with the GPS, it doesn't necessarily tell you the best route to get there (and no GPS is clever enough to tell you, "make a left turn after the bush in 300 feet!"), so we have to figure out ourselves the way to get there (and the straight line is definitely not the easiest route!).

Taking break in the shade among the boulders

We made it to the TOP... after 3 gruelling hours!!!

Irina looking fabulous against the view of the Salton Sea

Me, Grace and Tracy at the very peak!

Eddie (Lisa's son) doing his balancing act while I do my squats~!

Even though we were in the desert, there were alot of unique vegetation that is beyond normal. Needless to say, my perspective of the desert made a 180 degree turn as it is not necessarily a place of morbid emptiness!

It is MUCH steeper than it looks!

The grand finale was the best in this super technical hike, where we traveled a little further to the dry-falls. The dry falls is a dried-up waterfall that runs through the valley during the rainy season, then opens up to a vast opening in the crack of the ridge before it plunges more that 600 feet below. Since it wasn't the rainy season, hikers can maneuver through the crack of the mountain until you reach the opening. The view from the opening, SPECTACULAR~!!!

Enjoying the amazing view at the crack of ridge, Dry Falls.

I have to honestly say, when I saw the valley through the opening, my breath was literally taken away by the splendor of the view. Needless to say, I got teary eyed!

Our path required us to climb in the crevace of two mountains. Hence the arduous yet exciting boulder climbs.

Notice the blue extension near the base? That was the path towards the amazing Dry Falls!

Notice how embarrasingly wriggly our path (in red) towards the peak?!

I've never felt such humbleness to the greatness of mother nature. The Whale Peak hike at Anza-Borrego was truly a humbling experience. The desert, the views, the fact that we took a longer and harder route to get to the top were all part of the adventure package. It is definitely one of those things that I can add to the highlights of my life~

Sansa e280 MP3 Player

Behold my new Sandisk Sansa e280 MP3 player.

























Having been music-less on the for too long since my free iPod broke two years ago, I decided that it was high time that I got myself a new MP3 player. After intensive research and check to my budget, I decided that this 8GB flash memory baby is the one for me~!









You might ask why wouldn't I go mainstream by choosing the so popular iPod Nano, but I just refuse to go for an iPod after having bad experiences with it. I also think that iPod has become quite monopolistic and corporately stingy as there are lots of products that just cater for iPods and the worst is the use of iTunes that forces you to manage your songs with it which in my opinion is a the worst application for music management, EVER~!

With my Sandisk, I can play videos, make voice records, radio records, picture library and of course play music. It also has a miniSD memory slot for memory expandability~!!!

With all these features, navigating thru the interface is probably the only thing that is less superior than the iPod. Other than that, everything is great~! Sure, watching a video is a bit difficult because of the small screen, but it is bearable, you just can't watch your movie with subtitles because it is too small and would be pixelated.

The size is similar to the Nano, just a little bit thicker, so you can share many of iPod's accessories. The look is pretty slick and fancy and best of all you can change the batteries yourself~! A huge savings if you were to use any iPod where you need to go to the Apple Store and pay thru your nose to get the battery replaced. The battery life is pretty good too, I've been using the gadget the whole day while I was at work for 3 days until the battery was low.

Transferring files to the Sansa e280 was a breeze as you just need to drag and drop your music files into the music folder when you hook up the player to your computer. You can only play QuickTime (.MOV) files and JPEG or BMP pictures where there's an included software for you to convert them.

The Price? I got it at a bargain at B&H PhotoStore online for $170, shipping included. Not bad, as this baby goes for $250 everywhere else, and the iPod Nano goes for $220 for the 8GB version.

All-in-all, there could be some improvements in terms of the interface, but other than that, it is a wonderful all in one multi-player for you to show off~!