Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.

Here I am, sitting at my computer in my dorm room in Middlebury, Vermont, and I've got to write all about my time in Southern California over spring break. There must have been at least 38.6 billion moments during the trip that were awesome enough to merit mention here. With any luck, I'll remember half of them. Because I am lucky enough to be friends with the photographically inclined David Russell, I have a huge photo library, courtesy of the big man, at my disposal. These pictures should help with the storytelling.

FRIDAY MARCH 22
I wrote a blog post that day from LAX about flying and seeing the Little Colorado Canyon. The fourth and final airport of that day was San Diego International. After getting to the hotel, I did my pre-race workout (a short, easy run) along the boardwalk with Patrick. Nice and relaxing.

SATURDAY
Race day. Got up, got in a van, sat down in the bleachers of Point Loma Nazarene University's beautiful track, met my dog, parents, brother, grandparents, aunt, and cousin, and eventually raced the 1500m. Not my favorite event. Didn't do too well.

PLNU track with Pacific Ocean. Pretty cliffs in between. See last year's post for pictures of cliffs. Damn, I should probably go hunt for that link now, shouldn't I? Most photos in this post courtesy of David.

SUNDAY
This is our long run day. 15 solid miles. Like last year, we spent it in Penasquitos Canyon. For pictures that I took off a Google search, see last year's post again.
After the run cam Jamba Juice and a nap. After Jamba Juice and a nap came my first Ducks game of the season. David, Pat, Craft, and I loaded up in a car and drove to Anaheim, making a quick stop in Newport Beach along the way. It became very evident that people who don't grow up where we did appreciate how beautiful our city is a lot more than we do.

They couldn't get over the fact that we live here.

Not quite front row, but not bad.

Okay, so we were in the very last row with the back wall behind us. They were cheap, guys. Worth it.

The game didn't go very well. 2-1 loss to the hated Red Wings. But afterwards we drove back to Newport and hung out at the Satterfields', who were having a barbecue with the Murphys. So my friends got to meet Jack, who is hilarious and therefore a good person to meet. It goes without saying the Spongebob quotes were thrown around quite a bit as my two friend worlds met.

MONDAY

This is the good day. The real good day. We had Monday off of organized practice, so a group of us took the opportunity to drive six hours (round trip) and see Joshua Tree National Park. Seeing as we live here, guys, we should go to JT more often. As in, at least once ever.

The crew. Or at least part of it. Note the eagerness of Sebastian (blue tank, second from left). He probably saw a rock.

The conquest begins.

Jake Fox, aka The Man.

Left to right: Me, Taco, Chuckwalla.

That would be Kevin. Not Dales. Sorry.

This is the photographer himself, Big D.

Power stance by me.

I told you he was The Man.

And his favorite president is Chester A. Arthur.

A real Chuckwalla. Funny 'cause, y'know, Chuck. Let it be known that I was the first to spot this little guy.

I wish I could say Chuck and I planned our outfits.

Well played, Mark.

Yes, there were girls on this trip.

Hangin' out. 

Just trying to prove that this place is cool. Because tunnels are cool. Okay, you get it. Moving on.

On top of Ryan Mountain. Let me introduce them to you, left to right: Melake, Juliet, Chuckwalla, You Better Know, Taco, Foxy, Big D, Seb, Kate, Sarah, Kevin, Mark. Now you know.

The preciousssss will be ourssss.

Mountains and stuff.

TUESDAY
Track workout, not easy. Lots of great Mexican food throughout the trip, by the way. That's important. Tuesday night dinner at a hotel owned by a Middlebury alum who let us eat there. Good dinner. But before dinner, we hung out around the hotel, as captured so magnificently below.

David, Pat, Craft, Foxy, Mark, and Me. Oh, and Chuck.

And then Happy Sebastian (redundant) joins the party. This is not a staged picture. He is actually just this energetic and giddy all the time. Nicole, you can vouch for this. You met him.

WEDNESDAY
We ran early in the morning at Mission Trails Regional Park, which is absolutely beautiful. One of my favorite places to run, right alongside Garland Ranch Regional Park near Carmel. Thing about Mission Trails is that, since we were running, nobody had a camera. I shall therefore resort to Google.

We got up on top of South Fortuna Peak, a thousand feet up. Really tough stretch of the run, really worth the view of the entire San Diego area from the top.

Looking down from Fortuna. We yelled at the women's team, who were running on the boring road 1,000 feet below.

After the run, we went to Coco's and ate the greatest breakfast of all time. Pat's cinnamon roll french toast and my banana walnut pancakes were probably the two best calls of the day.
A number of hours later, we drove up to Torrey Pines. Again, last year's post has pictures. But David also took some. A very small sample:

A pensive Chuck contemplates the world through the waves.

Chuck immortalized by Caspar David Friedrich.

Our afternoon run at Torrey Pines was of particular interest because our route took us through a nude beach, which was predictably populated by a handful of old men, and, for a few minutes, us. Definitely no pictures of that.

THURSDAY
We ran a track tempo in the morning, which couldn't have done anything other than suck. That evening, Taco had us over to his beach house on Coronado (his main house is in LA), where we ate his parents' delicious food and enjoyed the sunset. The two pictures here are actually of my taking, with my phone.

Big D and Melake enjoying Taco's pool.

View from Taco's roof. Not sure why I didn't snap one a bit later when the sun was dying in spectacular fashion.

FRIDAY
Easy pre-race run on Mission Beach. Watched some decathlon. Had a great burrito at La Perla. Listened to "Mr. Tambourine Man" (the Bob Dylan original, not The Byrds' version) about a thousand times in the car. But that's nothing new. It's been our team song for a while now. Take a look at my recent post titles if you don't believe me.

SATURDAY
Ran the 5k much better than I ran 1500 the week before. 16:07, I think. I was happy with that.
After the meet, I had dinner with my parents at a nice restaurant on Shelter Island, then got on a plane and spent the night not sleeping enough en route to Burlington via Newark.

SUNDAY
Saw one of my professors at the Newark airport. She said she had my graded paper with her. Scary. Got to Middlebury at 10:15 am. Went on a run with Seb, did not enough work, and called it a night.

MONDAY-THURSDAY
Back to the grind. On Tuesday the professor I saw in Newark gave us a quick talk on why she gave so many people Ds on the paper, before actually handing it back. Definitely had me worried, but whaddaya know I got a B+/A-. (Yeah, noncommittal grades are weird.)
Housing lottery numbers for next year came out at some point during the week. Low numbers are good numbers. We (the rising juniors on the distance team) didn't get too lucky. Poor Chuck. 1487 out of somewhere around 1550-1600. I got 1295 and Kevin got 1096. We'll see what happens. As we ran by an old wood teepee thing in the woods yesterday, Pat joked that that's where Chuck will be living next year. Again, we'll see.

FRIDAY (today!)
I only have one class on Fridays, and the professor had some conference or something, so no class! Slept in and wrote a blog post.
In less than an hour, the Vermont state finals for the National Geographic Bee are being held in Mead Chapel, which is less than a hundred meters away from where I am sitting right now, in my room. I definitely want to check that out and be embarrassed at how much smarter a bunch of seventh graders are than me.