The 4th

We spent a wonderful afternoon at the pool at Grandma's house with Dave, Mary Lou, Missy, David, Jake, and McKayla (Derek had to work).

April read Harry Potter, I can assure you that my reading material was not nearly as interesting.

After a Barbecue at Dave and Mary Lou's, April and I rode our bikes down Ballona Creek to see the fireworks at Marina Del Rey.   This is the second year that we have done this.  We love it because we get to watch both the Culver City show and the marina show while we are riding our bikes.  Plus we can ride our bikes right next to where they launch the show at the marina. Nike came along and did a great job of keeping up with us on our bikes. 

He also did a good job of not getting spooked by the fireworks.

Biking, hiking, and philosophizing

Because April is pregnant she wasn’t exactly up to running the LA Marathon this year so yesterday we rode the LA Bike Tour Marathon instead. The race started at 5:00 A.M. on Exposition Blvd at the USC campus. 

There were about ten thousand of us that rode the course which mostly followed the path the marathon runners took after we finished.

It was fun to get to ride through the streets of LA without any cars to contend with.

April waves as we ride through Korea Town

We missed Julie as she ran by USC but April caught up with her at about mile 14 to run with her for a few miles and to snap this photo.

Kristi was down in SoCal for the long weekend so we met up with her on Saturday and hiked the Baldy Mountain trail in the Angeles National Forest.

Tree hugger!

Really, the redwoods were beautiful.

 Afterwards April and Kristi dropped me off in Claremont so that I could catch the last plenary session of The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology  conference that was held at Claremont Graduate University this year (or as April calls it “my little philosophy club”).  It really is “little,” there were probably only about fifty or so of us in the auditorium.  But most of big* names in Mormon philosophy were there.  Professor Bushman’s presentation was very good and I even ran into an old Utah philosophy buddy.

*relative to the very tiny group of people who are into this sort of stuff.

Mom and Dad Visit

April and I were glad to have my parents come down and visit us for the weekend. For those who don't know, I will be graduating from law school on My 8th. In an unfortunate cosmic alignment my brother Mike will be graduating from the U's management school on the exact same day. This puts my parents in the very awkward circumstance of being in two places at once. So the have decided to divide and-uh-split the baby. My mom will come down here and my dad will stay up in SLC. In the meantime, they decided that they would both come down now, in part, to take some "fake" graduation photos.

While they were here we also did lots of other fun things like bike riding through Marina Del Rey, with Uncle Dave and Aunt Mary Lou, and touring Venice beach.

(here's the guy that jumps barefooted onto broken glass about to do his thing)

(and the two-headed turtle)

We also walked through downtown Culver City.

(From left to right: Harry Culver (seated), with Nike (also seated), Mom, Lillian Culver holding daughter Patricia, April (seated), Kiki on ground, and Dad)


And toured the temple grounds.

And of course we hit up a few of our classic culinary haunts including: Pinks,

Diddy Riese, Las Fuentes, and Tahoe Galbi (our favorite Korean barbeque in K-Town). If you've never had Korean BBQ you are missing out. they give you a variety of meats (all you can eat and most of them in some form of sweet marinade) that you cook up to your own liking on a grill in the middle of your table. You also get a smorgasbord of side dishes.
I think my dad enjoyed it the most. He even developed quite a liking for Kimchi.

Not long after I dropped my parents off at LAX on Monday I had my second real trial. I represented another MTA bus driver who was refereed to us by my last client. It went about as well as we could expect, and maybe even a little better. We should hear a verdict in a few weeks or so.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

"There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind."

Shel Silverstien

Saturday, Steven and I travelled the Ballona Creek Bike Path to its end (several miles later). We started at Duquesne and Jefferson, and went to Marina Del Rey. After that, we connected to the beach path where we pedalled farther than we've ever done before. Once we got past Manhattan Beach, we reached the zone of unknown beach. We stopped to watch the hangliders off the dunes, and the fishermen off the pier.

After Manhattan, we went to Hermosa and Redondo Beaches. At Redondo beach, we found a neat outside mall. We had dipping dots and french fries and saw cool cement carvings of whales and fish on the ground.

Finally, we reached the end of the road. The Strand ends at Palos Verdes. We took advantage of the last bit of beach to cool off in the ocean and eat lunch.

After an hour of rest, we continued on our journey up the Palos Verdes hills. By this time, we had gone about 25 miles and were pretty tired going up the steep hills. We went a few more miles until we decided to give up and come back home after taking in the beautiful views from atop the cliffs. 50 miles is pretty good, right?

Ballona Creek

April and I just got back from the beach. Instead of diving to the beach we’ve started biking there. There’s a great bike path called Ballona creek that starts about a mile from our apartment. From there we have a direct path along the creek without having to cross any streets all the way to the beach.

Once there we can connect to "the Strand," the famous bike path that follows the beach all the way from Will Rogers to Torrance County Beach. This week we biked to Dockweiler. We did some body surfing, sunbathing, had a picnic and then biked home.

Last week we stopped by the UCLA Marina on the way home. They were having their annual open house. We got to go sailing for free in a Catamaran. Afterwards we had dinner at Marina del Rey and biked home. Lots of fun.

Youtube of the Week: Lazy Sunday. So it it’s not technically Youtube. NBC has started posting SNL clips on their site and what’s better they even let you embed them. Thanks to Tom for putting it up first.
I nearly cried back when they pulled Lazy Sunday off of YouTube but now NBC has made up for it and I can watch it whenever I want. I think what I love most about this short is that it feels real. It seems like a real New York Sunday. These guys must have written the rap about what they actually do on weekends. All of the hyper-specific references enhance the sense of reality. Best lines: “Mr. Pibb and Red Bull equals crazy delicious” and “you can call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re dropping Hamiltons.” You may or may not have to sit through a commercial on this one to but thanks to the writers’ strike less of that ad revenue will go to the studios.