Justin's Birthday on Leo Carrilo State Beach

A few weekends ago, I headed out on a camptastic adventure for my roommate Justin's 26th Birthday. We spent the weekend at Leo Carrilo State beach which is up near Mallibu, California. Along for the adventure was  Justin's girlfriend Emily, and our good buddy Matt. We got up there pretty late on Friday night, but the night still ended up being a blast as we had an awesome campfire and enjoyed some tasty beers. My favorite that we tasted that night was from Deschutes Brewery, and was called "The Stoic." Awesome Belgian style ale. After some drinking and carrying on around the camp fire we hit the hay in preparation for an awesome Saturday.

The next morning, Matt and I woke up early to set up a scavanger hunt for Justin's birthday. The hunt took place around the campgrounds, where he needed to find various items involved in the construction of a certain item... A Potato Cannon! More on that cannon later. After we finished hiding the items we headed to the beach on a photographic adventure.

We immediately were drawn to a man surfing out in the rocky water. After photographing the guy for a while we approached him and struck up a conversation. 

Turns out this guy Marc is starting a surfing label called "Born on the Beach." He had some pretty interesting surf stories to share with us. 

Marc gave us a tip that there was a pretty cool cave on the northern side of the beach which we could check out when the tide was out. We said goodbye to Marc and headed back to the campsite. Justin and Emily were just waking up as we got back from the beach. After some coffee, we started out on Justin's scavenger hunt! He seemed to have alot of fun looking for all the pieces and once the final piece was found he quickly threw everything together! 

After the cannon was put together we decided to postpone its inaugural firing till it was nighttime, so as not to scare anyone, and headed back out to the beach. It really was gorgeous out and the tide had receded enough to find the cave that Marc was speaking about earlier. 

After checking this out we headed over to some really cool tide pools and played with the sealife. Then continued our hike down the beach. We came across a really awesome sight, A heron hanging out and fishing right on the shoreline. What a graceful animal the heron is. We were even lucky enough to watch it catch a few fish. 

After hanging out with the heron and making a sandcastle, we headed back to the campsite so Matt could take off and our friends Lindsay and Dave could come meet us. As soon as they arrived we headed back out to the cliffs on the beach to chat and watch the sunset. 

As soon as the sun went down we headed back to the campsite and gathered around the fire... in wait for the first tater cannon firing! Around 11pm we headed down to the beach and got ready to launch some taters! It was not working very well at first but part of the fun for Justin and I was problem solving it. Finally, after some adjustments and tweaking our method... WHOOM! Flames shot out the end and the tater went flying! We headed back to the campsite victorious and ready for bed. The next morning I woke up early and headed to the beach to shoot a few more photos. I actually ended up shooting a shot which I edited to use as the album cover for my bands next release.

As soon as I got back and everyone had woken up, we packed up and headed back to orange county! What  a great weekend and a great adventure. 

Long Beach Bike Adventure

So I'm doing this a little backwards, while I originally intended to post an entry from our camping trip to Malibu beach last weekend, I decided to first post about an adventure to long beach today. The next entry should be about last weekends trip. In other words... I like to make things confusing for people. 

My good buddy Matt and I met up this afternoon with the intention of tooling around on our bikes and shooting photos in and around downtown Long Beach. We met up at his apartment, and decided that before heading out on our photo adventure we would grab some food. We ended up meeting with his girlfriend at this awesome Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurant called Zephyr. They just so happened to have one of my favorite root beers which I promptly ordered along with a fat vegan burrito. I must say overall that meal was incredibly delicious.

Maine Root - They make awesome bottled beverages, check them out! 

Following this awesome meal, Matt and I headed over to the beach, parked the car and headed out for adventure. After cruising around for a while we came across a bumpin ice cream truck. This thing was wacky, it was playing a swung version of the small small world song with random Kyle Brown-esque spring noises thrown in. After checking this out we went in search of some older, dilapidated buildings. Interesting textures were the name of the game in this photo hunt. After a little while we came across an alleyway with these fenced in windows. I was immediately drawn to their symmetry, but there was one in particular which was decorated in a very festive fashion which I had to snap.

After we took a few shots in the alley we hoped back on our bikes and headed back toward a building we had seen earlier in the day called "Acres of Books." The concept of a giant building filled with books sounded like a fistful of awesome... but it was closed. So we shot the outside of the building instead.

The building itself was actually really cool. The whole thing was covered in painted bricks and boarded up windows and doors. For a photo nerd who loves textures it was alot of fun.

This is Matt and his blue machine outside of "acres of books". That bike rides like a freaking dream. I don't know what he did to it to make it ride so smooth (my bet is he used walrus snot as lube and just wont admit it) but damn is it fun.

So after we finished up around here we headed back to the car and drove back to Matt's place. I dropped him off and started back home. The sun was just starting to set and there was an awesome amount of dark cloud cover in the eastern sky, something that doesn't happen often around here. About 5 minutes away from my house, i noticed that there was an abnormal amount of steam coming out of the front of my car. I pulled off onto a side street and figured out that i was leaking coolant. I wasnt far from home so I filled up my coolant tank with a jug of cold water i bought at a nearby gas station. Before heading home however I realized there was a bush of flowers just beyond my car and the sun was hitting them just right. So while I waited for my car to cool further I snapped a few more shots.

I'm Happy to say that my car stayed cool long enough with the water to get me back home. Now I'm gonna hit the hay. Thanks for reading!

P.S. Matt has a great blog himself called Lifeswake, check it out!

"Funtitled"

I have, on three separate occasions, attempted to start a blog on which I would record my adventures. On three separate occasions, I have failed to make it beyond one or two posts. but the curse shall be broken and I shall be recording my adventures on this blog! Well... at least I'm going to try and make it beyond two posts. Huzzah! (This counts as one post.)