Living la Vida Isla Vista

Sup.  I'm Ann and I live five minutes away from the beach.  No biggie.  So close that I, who can barely run a lap at the ARC, can run there.  Glorious.

This can be my view every morning, if I had the ability to wake up a bit earlier than I need to go to work, and  run for 2 minutes.  Ridiculous.

In all honesty, Santa Barbara is absolutely gorgeous.  Cold, but when the sun comes out, it is absolutely breathtaking.  I love Isla Vista.  Maybe not so much when I was trying to finish up my two soil science papers and neighbors blasted music from 8-5...ish.  (YEA.  Who gets up at 8 to blast Party Rock Anthem??  Oh wait, I do!  I belong here.)

Today I went for a nice Saturday morning run, and just seeing everyone walking around IV to get to their favorite breakfast place/ doing the walk of shame/ hungover was just so...peaceful!  There's something really special about this place, and I'm excited to explore more of it.

IV is how I imaging Berkeley if it was near the shore...and slightly more relaxed...with a tad less crime...and less homeless people.  OK.  Let's just say it's like, downtown Davis near a beach, but way more ghetto.  And apartments everywhere.  And it's not 100 degrees in the summer.  :(  Boo.  There's a chance for thunderstorms today!!  CRAZY.  As I type, I'm hiding underneath the covers...in a sundress.  I dressed very optimistically today.  And also, since I don't have to work today -- no lab wear!  Yayy.

Anyways, I tried taking some pictures of Isla Vista that would really capture the atmosphere.  I decided that riding my bike + taking pics at the same time was an excellent idea, and this poor skateboarder  in the picture fell (literally, seconds after I took this picture), and I totally ran over her.   Ahahahaa.... 

She's ok.  These Isla Vista folks are resilient.  Probably should work on their skateboarding skills but whatev.

IV. Palm trees everywhere!

I was extremely lucky in getting a bike so quickly.  After the uh, unfortunate incident with my  mini van and a parking lot pole, I immediately headed straight for craigslist to find a bike that won't fall apart. I managed to get this black, super ghetto looking, cruiser from a guy who just got his PhD in History!  And he's from San Jose!  MY PEOPLE. It's a tad too tall for me; I'm going to have to figure out how to adjust the bike seat.  But it gets the job done. :)

That's it for now!  Here's some pictures of my favorite ocean.

Food time.

A combination of eccentric taste buds and never eating out as a kid made me incompetent in recommending food eating places.  Luckily, my first cousin, once removed, AKA UNCLE GARY (yesss even though he's only 4 years older than me, I will reserve the right to make him feel old.  Right back at ya, patriarchy.) is out to remedy that.  

First off, investigative journalism at its best.  We went to some tasty smoothie place, but they wouldn't let me take pictures, so all I got is the menu before they started yelling at me.

I got the coconut and grass jelly drink to the right (SUPER TASTY.) and Uncle Gary got the watermelon coconut grass jelly.  I think mine tasted better.   I didn't get a chance to remember the name of the place though, but I know its somewhere in Chinatown, haha.  Just know that it existed in May 2011.  :D

Another tasty place is this: 

Hehe, I feel like Stefon from SNL.  Except less creepy and enthusiastic.  Feel free to read the rest of the post in his voice though - that's exactly what I'm doing.  

The restaurant, according to Uncle Gary, is owned by Koreans, but they make Northern Chinese food!  Not that I know anything about what those northerners eat, except that they don't eat copious amounts of rice like we do.

I ordered the house special, which was noodle fried in sauce, I think.  Again, can't read Chinese.  I am useless. D:

But I can tell you it was delicious.  There's sauce you add to it (obviously, from the picture) and it is amazing.  MMM.  The noodles are all soft and chewy, and ahhh now I'm getting hungry.  I think it's a midnight snack time.  Plus there's tons of side dishes that came with the noodles.  Kim chi, some onion thing,  mmm.

Wiliwilinui Ridge Trail

[disclaimer.  I started writing this...before Saturday.  What a procrastinator....]

Oh my goodness.  If the world ends Saturday, I am SO HAPPY I got to see today's Giants game.  

Speaking of which, look what I saw on the bus today: 

Awesome.  It got to Hawaii too.  Good thing I practiced for this by doing a zombie apocalypse Choose Your Own Adventure Book.  (Although I managed to survive by being a wimp...and ending up as part of a military experiment.)

Anyways.  Last Saturday we (me, my cousin, my aunt, my aunt's cousin, my great aunt.  3 generations of badass-ness) decided hike the Wiliwilinui Ridge Trail.  I had told them I really wanted to try a hike that uses ropes, and apparently this is the easiest one.  

The trail starts at the top of this super fancy gated community.  I wish I wasn't so sleepy (we had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 7 AM. Yup, I'm going to be screwed once I start school again), otherwise I should have taken pictures of the houses.  I think it's one of the most expensive places to live in Hawaii.  

This sign makes me happy.   There's a cute little scrubby thing for your feet.  It reminds me of Matt H's fancy nanotech lab where there's this sterilization room you have to go through before entering the lab.

The first thing you run into are a bunch of strawberry guava tree, a highly invasive, but tasty, treat.  

Mmm.  Tastes like guava.  And guilt.  It's so bad that the 1954 soil book I'm reading complained about it, while praising the virtues of bermuda grass in the same sentence. 

The path was initially very nice, and along the way we found a walking stick for my great aunt.  I like it. She looks like Gandalf or something on our adventure.  

And oh, now that trail starts.  Awkward. 

Along the way we saw a bunch of tower material.  I'm terrified of electricity, so yay. 

This is my new favorite fern! (fern?)  I like the dichotomous branching. :D

And now I know why there are cell phone tower equipment down in the beginning of the trail.  There is impeccable cell phone reception up there:

This is a koa baby leaf.  It turns long, like the yellowish leaves in the background when it gets older.  WILD. 

I took a lot of pictures of it because I thought I discovered tree AIDS or something.  And then wikipedia crushed my dreams.  

Hehe, this is less puzzling. 

This plant though, I'm sure has something wrong with it.  There's definitely two plants here...

Hawaiians have this term called ahupua'a, which is basically a land unit that's like a pie shape, starting in the mountainous forest and extending to the ocean.  From up where we were hiking, it was very easy  to see where this land division came from.  It just seems natural with all these ridges slicing the island into delicious pie shaped ecosystems. 

This is naupaka.  There's two kinds in Hawaii: ones found on the beach and ones found in the mountain.  They have really cute half flowers (I don't know if this picture does it justice).  According to legends, the two naupakas are separated lovers...one who is in the mountain and one who is on the shore.   Awww, adorable.  

And kind of sad...

Not naukapa.  Probably an orchid?

Aaannnd now the trail starts.  Woopeee.  

This is definitely the part that is ranked moderate in the hiking scale. The original plan was to leave my great aunt behind so she can do sudoku on a bench, but she's too badass for that.  She followed us up on the stairs.   

That's her! BADASS.

'Ohi'a lehua.  This is the Big Island's flowers because it's red.  For the volcanos. And Pele. 

Down there's Hawaii Kai, I think. 

On the ridgey part of the ridge hike.  I can't imagine going through this when it's muddy and feeling like you're going to plunge to your doom any minute.  But that's just me. 

Another lehua picture.  They must be a big deal because my relatives were super excited to see them. 

This place is just spectacular.  If you guys are ever in Hawaii, I highly recommend it. 

Cook pine.  Probably from the Cook Islands, but no one really knows.  Or well, I don't know.  It's disconcerting to see a coniferous tree on Hawaii, but they have such awesome needles!  Look that that!

Yellow lehua.  Weird.  

Then we got to the part where you have to rappel yourself down with a rope once you get to the top.  Now we left my great aunt down to take pictures of us.  

I was SUPER excited.  

Unfortunately even though there's a sign there's still a tourist made trail.  That's probably why the death rate hiking on the ridges is so high. Boo.  Along the way we heard some guy talking to the police about hearing some guy's call for help though.  Spooky.  

You can literally see half of the island at the point.  Ridiculous.  That's the north east side, where the trade winds come from.  Mmm. 

That's the north side.  I think Chinaman's Hat is there.  It's an island that looks like a hat.  

After the hike we went and picnicked at the beach.  The disgusting beach filled with sludgy brown water, probably waste runoff from the storms a couple of nights back.  There's an ocean naupaka that's half submerged in the water there.  Fate was really unkind to it.