Spontaneous Roadtrip

Posted on by maxserov

Over the summer sometime July or June. Me, my brother, sister, and her boyfriend went on a expedition to Oregon. It started as an idea the night before to take a trip up to Big Sur for a couple of days and it turned into a week long trip up to Portland. We left in the morning & traveled all day. The first night we found a dirt mound off highway 1 & set up camp behind that. It looked amazing at night since all the lights from houses on the other side of the lake were on.

 We got up and found this gem of a beach a bit past Big Sur where we cooked lunch. After a hardy meal & a dip in the water we hit the road again. We made few stops to take photos or eat until we got to Mendocino. I’ve been there before, its about 2 hours above San Fran. Its a small town with gorgeous views & friendly people. I love the place, we spent a couple hours getting food & exploring the ocean views. After which we found a spot to camp a little up the road. The next day was all the way up to Oregon, we stopped by a beach somewhere on the coast. A small trail that led to an open beach hidden from the crowds. The cliffs overlooking the shore were covered in a blend of red and green foliage.

The water was really cold but we jumped in because the ocean was our shower. We washed our clothes in the water to get rid of the smell & all the dirt. After drying out in the sun we explored the empty beach until the sun set. We slept up in the hills on the coast that night. I woke up sometime before sunset & got out the tent to adjust my eyes in the dark. I sat on the hill overlooking the road and the water. It felt great, completely disconnected from everything, just the sound of the ocean crashing against the cliffs. I sat for probably an hour, maybe more & then passed out back in the tent. We woke up earlier that morning so I slept for half the car ride. We finally got to Portland, the first thing we did was hit up Voodoo Donuts. The line was brutal though, 30 minute wait for a bundle of donuts wasn’t that worth it. Those donuts lasted for a couple of days though since they were so sugary you could only take one bite. We explored Portland for the rest of the day & stayed at a hotel that night since it’s hard to find camping in the city. The next morning We traversed Oregon & went to a Japanese garden on our way back. The whole place had an enchanting aura around it. Beautiful blends of green all around, we stayed there for almost the whole day. Now began our trip back which was roughly the same thing. Stopping by beaches & hills to eat, take photos, relax, sleep. When we got home I slept for 15 hours, I hope I have the chance to take more of these adventures in the future.

China Peak

Posted on by maxserov

China peak is located in the mountains above Fresno & going with a couple of friends up there to snowboard was so much fun. It took about 5-6 hours to get there & another 2 so we could get everything down. It was too late to go up the mountain since the lifts were closed & we needed something to do. There wasn’t any wifi, well, there was, but it was so bad it could barely load anything, maybe like a snapchat every hour. So we found a mini mountain near the cabin that we climbed. Once we got up we had snowball fights and made ramps to jump off of into powder. It was sick until a load of snow got in me & my friend’s shoes and when we got back I couldn’t even feel my feet. We woke up the next morning pumped, got our gear, & hit the slopes. The morning was filled with freshly groomed tracks and temperature at low, for the first couple hours till lunch the conditions were prime.

Cup of noodles warmed up our appetite to get back up the mountain. Now it’s the second part of the day, the sun decided to show up & the whole mountain slushed up. This obviously sucked so for the rest of the day we stayed on the east side where the sun was blocked by trees. The first night we ate dinner at the mountain which was way over priced & not worth it. We stayed at the fireplace to heat up & talk with some of the locals about how it is living and working there. The next day was nice and went by smooth, the clouds covered the sun so that there was minimal heat.

The rest of the day went like this until dinner when we drove up to the only other place to eat without driving an hour out. We ate dinner & spent all the time on our phones since that was the only place with data. We started driving off and as we are backing up we get stuck in slush. so we tried all these things that did nothing for 15 minutes. Then this couple came out to help us, probably took one good minute of pushing from the other side & we drove off. The worst part was after all that we figured out that the only reason we got stuck was because the emergency brake was on. It was really cold that night since the heater didn’t work & all our clothes were wet. Now its the last day of our trip, I woke up feeling sick & exhausted. I still went out though since im not gonna give up a day of snowboarding.

I did my first run & started to feel better & warmed up. About an hour later I cruised the park and everyone hit the bigger jump so I sped up to do it. Right as I got off I slightly turned my board and launched off the ramp. I got a hefty amount of air & landed flat on my knees back down into the ramp. I slid down for 10ft & got out the way to lay down for a while. It felt like my knees just shut off for a little until I got up & out the course. I know that doesn’t really make any sense but we still had like, an hour or two of snowboarding left so I didn’t wanna go back down. I met up with my friends & we took this hidden route off the main path. A minute in I swerve the wrong way and hit a tree so I go down and wait for everyone else to show up. We were about to do one more run & call it a day but my friend lost my go pro in that tree run. Obviously I needed them to find it because I had no clue where they went, so we cruised down and found it. It was right on the side of the main track in plain sight, I was just stoked no one took it. After that we gave up our equipment & hit the road to get back before school. Traffic was heavy going down, it took about 7 or 8 hours coming back to SB. But we passed by a really gorgeous area near Paso Robles, it was a village with red poppy seed flowers everywhere. It was astounding to see how cool the place was & I wish we could have just pulled over & hiked up some of the hills.

After I got back I had two tests the next morning that I totally wasn’t prepared for. Luckily my dad caught on to me being sick & let me stay home for the next few days. The trip was so worth it though & I can’t way to go snowboarding again.

Monday’s Aren’t Always Bad

Posted on by maxserov

86 Degrees in February definitely sucks so as soon as the bell rung me and my friends went to grab some boards & drove down to the hope ranch beach.

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As soon as we got out the car it instantly dropped a solid 10 degrees and it felt great, the water on the other hand was really cold. It was low tide & pretty rocky but there were still some waves so we swam out, we should have brought wet suits because the winter water was up to my chest and I could feel my body getting numb. Honestly I haven’t surfed in a while so I sucked but a good 10 minutes were in the water before I started to freeze up & they wanted to head back so we returned to the warm sand. After we found some cool looking rocks & sea glass there was still plenty of day left and the sun was warm, so we dried off and went back to August’s house to order some food. while we waited we grabbed some cruiser boards and went back to his half pipe while we figured out what to do after.

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Probably because I was too lazy to put on shoes or whatever the reason was I skated it barefoot, it was a bad call. After a couple runs I slid into the top of the wood half pipe with my right foot and got a good 10-15 splinters. Most weren’t that bad put there was one that was about 3 inches long & sharp as a knife wedged deep in my toe. After some hydrogen peroxide this one took around 40 minutes to get out with a nail & tweezers. When I finally got the splinter out and a big cut was left in my toe we went to the nearby neighborhood & found some trees to climb.

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 (This one wasn’t that good but my phone died and it made for a photo to use). As we got to the top of this tree ants began to crawl everywhere, getting all over & almost making us fall off, we climbed down to find an old man yelling at us telling us it was his property. He clearly wanted us out so we left back to the house, there we ate some pizza and went to the nearby court so we could play a game of basketball to end off the day.