Not so many discounts

Back in the day, I got a Shell Mastercard because it gives me back 5% on gas that I buy at Shell. Well, just the other day I was at a Shell and looked at the credit card application. Guess what... no more 5% discount! I guess when gas was $2.50-$3.00, it wasn't too bad, but they're probably losing a good chunk of cash now that gas is $4.50 out here.

Cali stop

I'd heard of the California stop (where you roll through the stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop) before I moved out here, but didn't really understand why people did it. Now that I've lived here for a little while, if you're in any sort of residental area then there's a stop sign every block or two. It gets really lame having to stop 4 times every 1/4 mile. So you end up just rolling through the stop signs....

Jersey

So I flew into Newark, NJ this past weekend to chill with some friends in the NYC. While flying over Jersey, I noticed they have a LOT of baseball fields. In the south, there's more 'open' fields; we use to always play football growing up in my neighborhood in Florida. I guess baseball is much more popular in the north compared to the south.

Oh yeah, while the 'C' Terminal at Newark is really nice, there's a severe lack of bathrooms for the number of people in the terminal.

The pic is of lower Manhatten from my buddy's apartment in Union City/Hoboken in Jersey.

New pad

You know it's a bacholer's pad when the first thing in the fridge is alcohol. Still organizing the place, but we have the pool table, dart board, and TV location set up.

Need a used car? Go to LA

You can find any car used in LA you could dream of. Ferrari? There's 53 currently listed on Craigslist. How about a 1965 Aston Martin DB5 converted to left hand drive? It's only $300k. Even for more 'normal' cars, like a Honda S2000, you have your choice of 50 completely unmolested, low-mileage examples. Try a search in Ohio and see how many pop up.

Tour de France!

So it's about stage 5 of the Tour de France. Those guys are animals.... In either stage 3 or 4, there was a guy on a break-away for about 4 hours. IIRC, he averaged 330 watts of power for that time period! That's about my peak! And in a sprint, the top guys do like 1500-1800 watts for 20-30 seconds. Freakin amazing.

Oh, today was an individual time trial. It's superstition that the guy who gets number '13' wears it upside down. Now you know...

Oil City?

So... I was at a bonfire in Huntington Beach, CA for the 4th of July. Huntington Beach is known as Surf City. Well, just a little bit off-shore are a number of oil platforms and big ole tankers. First time I've seen that!

June Gloom

So..... every morning in June around LA looks like this.... gloomy. Hence, 'june gloom'. Pretty much like how it rains every afternoon in August in Florida. Just one of those random weather patterns.