My dad drove down on Friday night to sleep over and catch his plane on Saturday afternoon. I gave him my bed, moved Rece to sack out on the sofa, and I took Rece's bed. I think my dad had hoped that I'd drive him to LAX (about 45-60 minutes away, depending on traffic). I knew he was coming down at some point during the weekend, but he didn't provide me with any specific timeframes ahead of time. Assuming that he didn't need my help with anything, I went ahead and planned my weekend. I felt kind of bad telling him that he should take the shuttle to the airport, but my plans for the day took me all the way up to Pasadena - and the plans involved 2 other people besides me and Rece, so I wasn't going to break them. He didn't say anything about it, but I did tell him that in the future it would be a good idea to let me know specific things like flight times and such so I can lend a hand in the future. Aside from that, we had a good time hanging out. We drove down to Newport Beach, picked up some donuts, and then walked the pier, enjoying the evening.
The plans for Saturday were for Rece and I to join Christine and her daughter Sam for a trip up to Pasadena to check out the JPL-Nasa open house. This is when they open up their otherwise very closed campus to the public and have exibits about the various projects they work on. One of Sam's friends joined us, who turned out to be pretty cool. All the exibits were interesting, albeit nerdy (which I totally loved). We got to see the Mars rover (the one they practice with on Earth), learned about the search for planets around other stars, watched a film about the recent mission to study and capture comet material, and saw a pair of 700-pound gliding robots! If you're interested in space, or have children who are, I highly recommend checking this place out the next time they hold an open house.
On Sunday we started off the day with a hike with some friends (Christine, Sam, Rana, Niki, and a dog named Sierra). It wasn't too long of a hike, but it was enough to get some exercise and just to be outdoors. I introduced Niki to geocaching (the only one of the group who didn't know what it was yet), as I was also out there to check on the geocache that I have hidden in the area. The trip only lasted about 1.5 hours, but there was a decent incline to conquer on the way back. Rece played photographer, which I'll probably get around to uploading and posting on my site this evening. Maybe Rana will send me the pictures that she took as well. After the hike we went to PCH (Pacific Coast Hot Dogs - not the highway) and chowed down... cuz that's what you do after a healthy hike - munch on some very yummy hotdogs!
After lunch, Christine, Sam, Rece, and I went to pick up our swimming outfits and then headed on down to Wild Rivers for their season pass holder preview day. Being that Sunday was forecasted to expect rain and it was overcast and also preview day, this meant practically no lines and no overcrowding. We had so much fun running (ahem, briskly walking) to each of the water slides and taking them on with reckless abandon! Rece, being the weakest swimmer and somewhat of a chicken, didn't go on all the slides we did, but he enjoyed the ones that he did go on.
I'll admit that I am totally out of shape when swimming is concerned. I suspect that I had a few lifeguards' attention when I decided to swim across the wave pool in the deep end - I must have looked like I was ready to sink from exhaustion! A simple change of stroke and adjusting my energy to work with the swells allowed me to get to the other side safely to catch my breath. One of the slides we went on was akin to being flushed down a toilet. You slide into a bowl from this chute and skim around the sides until your momentum slows and allows you to drop through a hole in the center and into a pool. In theory this would seem to be a fun idea, but the speed you're going meant experiencing a slapping sensation on your back and the possibility of being dumped into the pool at an unusual and potentially disorienting angle (just my luck, I was dumped going backwards and upside-down on my shoulder - good thing my sense of direction is good). So yeah, that ride sucked - but the rest were great!
As I mentioned ealier, it was overcast, but it was also breezy so we'd get cold standing in line. The trick was to stay in water as much as possible. The "lazy river" (as we called it) was relaxing and we got out to go sit in the hot tub to relax even more. After about a minute I looked at Christine and asked, "does it worry you that this is the murkiest water in the place?" The expression on her face indicated that she understood what I was getting at, then Sam asked, "what do you mean?" I quietly stated, "lots of people, warm water, lots of kids, murky water..." to which Sam replied, "EW!" and promptly got out. Christine and I followed suit and we decided to go on a couple more water slides. Rece, being the boy that he is, didn't seem to care and was content with remaining in the bacteria bath.
As I type this, my muscles are tired, some are a bit sore. All in all, this was very fun weekend!
This entry got flushed down a toilet!
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