The riding yesterday was fantastic. We spent the entire time working on the 2-point while trotting. This was much harder than I was expecting. The stance is easy enough and trotting is easy enough, but combined was pretty difficult. I know that once I find that sweet spot and get the stance right a couple times in a row it will become so simple and easy. I made the mistake of trotting the horse towards the barn, which apparently can make it run away with you. I could tell that Amanda was somewhat upset by it, but I had no idea it would be that big of a deal. I’ll make sure not to do anything like that from now on.
We went to the farmer’s market yesterday and got a ton of stuff. All of it so far has been tasty. I got a honeycomb there and for some reason I expected it to be crunchy. Of course it wasn’t at all crunchy it was waxy and tasted exactly like honey. I feel kinda stupid for expecting it to be otherwise, but what can you do? I got 10 avocados since they were only $1 each and served 5 of them for the game of thrones watching night. I also got some spicy yuba strips that were sooo tasty. There was a new butternut squash based sauce at bolani, and I ended up getting it. While it is really good, the tomato still goes better with the bolani bread. The pesto is still fantastic with cucumber. A lot of the stalls were missing since it was forecasted as being rainy. Two of the stalls we wanted to go to, the Miso Suke and candied nuts, were among those missing. We got a great haul and I’m looking forward to having some more of the strawberries tonight.
Nick took Stephanie and I to a place called the Chocolate Garage, which is a place for chocolate tasting in Palo Alto. The chocolate there is 60% and higher, with some special milk chocolates. I ended up getting a really good dark chocolate, Dick Taylor’s Madagascar, a good milk chocolate called The Boss, and chocolate covered almonds.
A group went to the Stanford Theater last night to see North by Northwest. I really enjoy the movie and it is such a precursor to so many other spy movies. Stephanie and I were joined by Bergfeld, Nick, Riley, and Omari. Afterwards we enjoyed some of Oren’s Hummus. It was tasty, but not as good as usual. We should have gotten the hot tomato dish with egg as that is one of the tastiest things. After that we went to the Hookah place and smoked some. The pineapple one was really strong, and the double apple wasn’t that flavorful.
The riding today was great, as I was starting to really get the hang of 2-point while trotting. I think that next week we are going to go even faster and get up to the cantor. I’m really excited as this is showing that I’m understanding how things work with the horse, and my posture is really good. Amanda is a great teacher and I’m glad that she is the one showing me how to ride. I think they assigned her to me as they suspected I’d be hard to teach, but since I’m a fast learner we are going really quickly through the lessons. I need to watch some videos to get a better idea of the proper stances, but besides that it is going great!
Stephanie and I hiked mission peak today, and it was really nice out.
The views from the top were phenomenal, but there was a lot of smog across the bay.
Stephanie was having trouble due to allergies and being really tired.
Sunday morning bright and early I went to meet up with Nima and Caryn at Stanford to play some squash. We both got there at 8:40, so we threw the frisbee around until the facilities opened at 9am. After they opened we played 3 way squash until 10:30.
After squash I called my parents and talked to them for about 20 minutes.
Then Caryn, Nima, and I went to meet Steph and Nick at the California Avenue Farmer’s Market. I got my regular Samosa and ended up having lunch there with the amazing Lamb Curry Wrap. After that Nima and Caryn joined me at Shoreline Lake for a relaxing talk and sit. We just sat by the bay most of the time and talked about life. If they end up moving close I’ll have to take them out sailing on the lake.
After that I went to home and played some more Minecraft with Nick. Then, I left to join Stephanie for some horseback riding. Smoothy was being good and I got some 2 point and trotting in. Stephanie was having a really hard time getting Calypso to do anything and Calypso even reared up on Steph once.
We went to hang out at beachhead, then joined them for dinner at Tofu House, where I got the number 1. I’d like to go to Tofu House more often as it was delicious and not that fatty, just really salty. After that we sat down and watched My Cousin Vinny, which is a really awkward but good movie.
Today Nick, Steph, and I went to Big Basin state park for a 10 mile hike along the Berry Creek Falls Trail.
The hike was gorgeous and I reallu enjoyed it. The trees are so massive and the burned out hollows ibt the middle of the trees is pretty impressive also.
There were a ton of banana slugs. Steph was super exited fir the first few but they were so frequent that she soon stopped pointing them out.
The falls themselves were very pretty and unique. There were three big sets of falls.
We had lunch at the first set of falls.
The second set of falls had a slippery path that wound down the top to the bottom. It was a little frightening but not too bad.
The Berry Creej Falls was the last large waterfall. It was just slightly the largest but I thought the first set was the prettiest.
At the end of the 10 mile loop were the biggest trees. The one above has a full sized tree coming off the trunk halfway up and it looks like a branch up against the main trunk.
Steph and I went to hookah nights and got the pineapple with mango
I got pretty good at blowing smoke rings. I was able to get a few small ones through the big ones.
