Cruise Control, A Blessing...

I must say, whoever invented cruise is now on my "world's coolest people" list, as it made the journey across most of California and back much easier on the body and the brain this weekend.

The trip up was relatively uneventful, except me realizing how beautiful it can be just to be driving through the Central Valley, with mountain ranges far in the distance in both directions, and endless land all around you. I guess I've always lived near the mountains and the ocean, so being completely inland, seeing nothing but the greens and yellows of the land, is quite a new experience. I actually later saw a scene out my window that looked exactly like the default Windows XP background, with the beautiful green hill, the blue sky and clouds, the mountains in the background. By the time I grabbed a camera it was gone though. One of those fleeting moments that lasts only in memory. Rereading that it sounds pretty pathetic that a random hill would excite me that much.

So I eventually made it up to witness the California State Academic Decathlon in Modesto in which my alumnus was competing. That was a blast, I got to not only see some old faces I hadn't run into since high school including one of my teammates, but continue to cheer on and get to know this year's team, including one of the members who is probably attending UCSB next year. Always cool to find out people headed in my direction, enjoy showin the newbies the ropes. They ended up doing well in the competition, including the star of the team who took home multiple medals including a bronze for the 3rd highest score in the entire state. As usual she seemed like she was glad to do well but had visions and dreams of doing better. Striving for perfection, always. Sometimes people just have to take a look back and realize what they've accomplished, and be proud of it. Went out to lunch with the team after the awards banquet, I always have a blast at long tables with groups of a variety of personalities, and great comedians. Just saw a commercial that said "Here's to growing up, but still wanting to be at the kid's table." That's pretty appropriate, even though I've got four years on most of the decathletes this year, I still feel like we share a bond, and since they're much more mature than your typical 17 or 18 year olds, I tend to forget about the whole age thing when in a conversation.

Ended up not really having plans for where to spend Saturday night, and I figured out once up there that most of my friends going to school in the Bay Area were all at home for break... Luckily got a hold of a friend of mine so we hung out for a while, I got to meet her parents who seemed really great, and see her house, which was really cool. Ended up falling asleep on the couch after the really long day, and cleverly locking my car keys in her house when I left early the next morning when they were all asleep. Eventually got that figured out after a few hours and got back to Modesto in time for the awards ceremony. The trip back was pretty boring, as trips back tend to be, luckily I eventually caught up to the caravan of cars from my high school after getting gas and stuck with them the rest of the way, nothing like trying to keep multiple cars in a line on major freeways to keep one paying attention and awake. :)

I ended up surviving the driving though, which is testament than an eight hour shift between here and Texas should be tough, but not horribly impossible. :) More later, been an interesting day since then as well.