Halloween in Orange County

Weekend of Oct. 31, 2009

San Clemente, CA

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One of the many advantages of being cool like me is that you don't get eaten by cannibals. Well... that, and the fact that Hogan and I were given the opportunity to live on an Aircraft Carrier for a week. Not many people get to do something like that, not unless you join the Navy at least. The carrier we would be staying on was the USS Truman, which would leave port from Norfolk, VA. So we literally got paid to drive down to LA, fly out to Virginia, and learn all we can about jet engines/engine testing/pilot maneuvers/whatever on an AIRCRAFT CARRIER, and then come back to resume our regular jobs at the base in California. I... am... ok with this.
We got our tickets for the east coast for Nov. 1, which means we had an extra day to spend. We decided to visit our friend Nick, also an EEDP with an assignment in CA. He lived in San Clemente, in Orange County, just south of LA. That's right. We spent Halloween in beautiful Orange County. I am jealous of my past self.

Perfect weather and 72 degrees? ALL the time? COME ON, BOSTON, AT LEAST TRY TO COMPETE

Hogan and I drove down after work Friday, had some In N' Out (obviously), and basically just went to bed once we got to Nick's place. Fairly uneventful, except that I think we watched a bunch of Always Sunny that night. Good times. The next morning we got up and strolled down to the beach. It was a perfect day and I was boogie boarding in the Pacific Ocean on Halloween. I honestly thought that I would die before I ever uttered such a phrase. But no. That is a real thing.

This is the first time I have ever built a sandcastle on Halloween. It is also the first time I had built a sandcastle since I was 12. (We ended up hurling rocks at it until it was destroyed, so no worries)

Then we got some lunch somewhere along the beach and drove around the Pacific Coast Highway for a bit, checking out Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, and some other gorgeous, quintessential Golden Coast locations. When we got back to Nick's place, it was time to get serious about Halloween. Deathly serious. For starters, we all bought fake mustaches. You KNOW we're serious when we start buying fake mustaches. We also had pizza. Not really part of the Halloween costume process, but it is still very important. But Nick went as... I'm not quite sure what, but it included a fake mustache and an unbuttoned shirt, so it counts. Hogan was Buster Bluthe from Arrested Development. And I was trying out my Greenman costume for the first time...

There was a lot of ridiculous Greenman dancing

I immediately noticed how difficult bathroom excursions were in this suit. Also, Hogan had to hold my wallet and shit because there are no pockets. ALSO, eating a burger is a messy endeavor. Even taking the hood down, my hands got all kinds of gross. But it was totally worth it. Greenman was the hit at the first bar we went to. In fact, I actually came in second place in a costume contest that I DIDN'T EVEN ENTER. There was a pub crawl costume contest going on, and the bar we happened to be at was the last segment. They were about to send the contestants around to be judged when the bar chanted for me to get into the contest as well. So hell yeah, I got up and started air punching and Greenman dancing all over the place. You know, really making a fool of myself. It was great. The judge said that the only reason I didn't come in first was because he would have felt bad giving it to someone who didn't pay to join the contest. So... I didn't win a surf board that night. But oh man, what a great night. I got fake arrested by a bunch of ladies wearing cop costumes and we had a pretty fantastic time at a few other bars.

Buster never had a mustache, but you can't blame Hogan for wanting to wear a fake mustache, now can you?!

The punchline of the story is that at some point during the night Hogan and I both turned our alarms off. Either that or we slept right through them. Luckily Nick woke us up in time for us to book it to LAX to catch our flights for the east coast. Oh man, that could have turned out poorly.

Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/21/11 Seattle

Unfortunately, we had some standard overcast skies, which I am now used to, so we slept in until 7:30ish. The morning was fairly uneventful: packed up the tent FOR THE LAST TIME, enjoyed the amazing view of the Pacific Ocean from our campsite, watched an awesome dog romp around on the beach, went down and splashed around in the Pacific Ocean for the last time in the foreseeable future: normal stuff.
We drove around to the south side of Olympic, watching the scenic views of Lake Quinault and eventually driving into the Quinault Rain Forest. There was a bagel incident in which I ended up scraping up most of my leg. Don't ask.

Last chance to do really stupid things while hiking - I'm going to take full advantage of this opportunity

We did our last hike after driving around on some unpaved roads deep into the forest. Since we didn't really get the opportunity to, we used our 4-wheel-drive capabilities on these roads, even though we didn't need to. Did I mention this car is a beast?
Hiking in the rain forest is really interesting. There are huge ferns all alongside the path, making you feel like there definitely should be dinosaurs running around. There are a ton of frogs, one of which Scott "accidentally" kicked while hiking. We made it to a small lake, really pretty. The weather finally got it's shit together to provide a nice sunny sky. And the mountains off in the distance were fucking epic. I swear, I screamed from excitement no less than 20 times on this trip.
It was a decently long drive from the south side of the park to Seattle. Driving through Olympia, we decided to stop for lunch at a traditional Olympic (can that please be the actual word?) food: chinese food. SEE WHAT I DID THERE? I hadn't had chinese since we started the trip (HOLY FUCK) and I had an extreme hankering for some fake-asiatic cuisine. Delish. And the year of the Tiger description was spot-on. Basically: aggressively awesome. Yep. I grabbed a handful of the "take one" dum-dums and we hit the road like a goddamn hurricane.
On the drive, we FINALLY got an unobstructed view of Mt. Rainier.

I was on that? What? INSANE.

Holy shit, that thing is INTENSE. All the surrounding mountains are less than half it's height. It is so huge and so distinct that I absolutely lost my shit. I was so amped about finally seeing that big beautiful bastard (I think we ALL were) that we turned off the highway to try to get a good viewing spot. We kind of did? We also used this opportunity to fill up gas for the last time and scrape some of the larger bugs off the front of the car, including 3 cat-sized bees. Gross.
BAM! Seattle is awesome. We made it to the hotel around 4pm, unpacked the car, showered, organized our shit, fixed any ACL issues (mostly Nadkarns), basically just settled the fuck down before raging around a new city. We also trucked through our free thing of lavender spray that came with our Portland hotel. There isn't enough lavender spray in the Universe to cover up the smell of campfire smoke and B.O. unfortunately.
Joe met up with us and then we began the Great Seattle Adventure of 2011. He had a week-long conference the same time we went there, which is awesome, so we hung out all night. First place we hit was right around the corner from our hotel: Pike's Place. I love that place. We saw some fish throwing, the cafe where Sleepless in Seattle happened, where I sat in Rob Reiner's seat when Hogan and I went two years prior (I've never seen that movie, so I really don't give much of a shit). We then enjoyed some amazing weather and got our shit together to book dinner reservations at one of the seafood places on the Puget Sound.
We used our time to go hit up the Space Needle.

Nailed it

I hadn't seen it in such good weather before, and I had NEVER seen the nearby fountain turned on. It was apparently the nicest day of the year so far in Seattle, so every single citizen was outside, some of which were in bathing suits running through the fountain sprays. It looked hilarious and super-refreshing, so Joe and I joined in. Definitely a good move. I love that freaking fountain. It spritzes with musical accompaniment (oh dear lord that is WAY too graphic...). If we didn't have to go have a delicious seafood dinner, I would have stayed longer for sure. Then we rode the monorail to dinner!

Joe is great at taking pictures that look like album covers

We got down to our dinner place in time, but discovered that it wouldn't have the same sunset view as some of the others, so we said "fuck that." I don't know if you know this about me, but I enjoy a good sunset. We ended up going to Fisherman's Restaurant. They were worried we wouldn't be ok with a ten minute wait. I don't know what it is about the west coast, but they think a 15-20 minute wait is super long. This happened in Portland too. "Yes, I can wait the time it takes me to de-board a plane in order to eat a fantastic meal. It's no problem."
As we were led to our table, I got pre-pumped just looking at what an awesome sunset view we were about to see. But then I noticed that the only free table was literally the closest table to the water, right in front for sunset: literally the best table possible. Holy shit, the view of the setting Sun, the Olympic mountains (where we were this morning!), the Puget Sound, the Seattle skyline: I went from 6 to midnight. So ridiculously epic. I had yet another mini freakout session of the extreme awesomeness of the situation.

How do they expect me to eat a delicious dinner when this this view is already overloading my senses?

We ordered an incredible dinner: some bottles of wine (including two free appetizers and a free incorrect order!). Then Scott and I shared a romantic (spew) feast of seafood: clam chowder, clams and mussels, rabbit food, and 3 types of crab. The King Crab legs were fairly pointy and sharp, but they were all delicious. Especially the Dungeness Crab. Fucking great. Then I had a nice Seattle beer and, oh wait, more appetizers? The meal ended up costing like $65 per person, but hold the phone, GREATEST SUNSET OF RECORDED HISTORY WAS INCLUDED IN THE PRICE.

You have got to be shitting me

Delicious food, great drinks, amazing friends, the fucking SUN setting over the Olympic mountains, creating insane colors that don't even EXIST, all over the fucking sky. FUCK. Best. Meal. Ever. (calm down bro) It was definitely my "rose" of the entire trip. My favorite part was the end, when Joe was playing around with my camera as we ate. He took about a trillion pictures of Alex eating. It was a hilarious montage I shan't soon forget. Then I swiped a wine glass and we GTFO'd. (classic)
The night did not end there. NO SIR. We went back to the hotel to change into warmer clothes (pfffttt) and finish our bottles of beer (yay!). Then we headed to a microbrewery for some more local beer. It was last call (really? midnight?), so we grabbed some drinks as fast as we could. I started singing along with a Foreigner song that was playing ("I want to know what love is..."), and was accompanied by a slightly crazed looking dude with an epic beard named Vladamir. This dude was bomb. We started talking to him - he was a Mormon trying to get ex-communicated, enjoyed beer, and was all-around badass. He gave us some good bar recommendations and some chocolate covered strawberries. Seriously. He worked at a place that made them and uses them to get free beer. FUCKING AWESOME.

Yeah I dug right in

Everyone in Seattle is friggn insanely nice, but Vlad was just baller.
We left and headed past the gum-wall: literally half a block of walls covered in old, chewed up, disgusting gum. It was awesome. Vlad told us that it is the third dirtiest location in the world after the Blarney Stone and Mecca. Kind of cool though.

Gross

We snagged a beer at the bar Vlad suggested, and then opted to actually seek out the bar he went to - the Blarney Stone (Vlad freaked the fuck out when Colleen led him to the gum-wall/bar name connection). We had a few PBRs (so disgustingly hipster), said our goodbyes to Vlad (including a group hug), and then said our goodbyes to Joe as we headed back to the hotel to drunkenly flop into bed for the night. Great fucking day.