Graduation

After 4 years of studying Electrical Engineering I have finally finished.  Sarah's parent's came out to help us move back to Encinitas and see my graduation.  They got here on the Thursday before and helped us pack and load up the Uhaul.

From Graduation / Road Trippin'

We took them to New Orleans on Saturday to eat some beignets at Cafe Du Monde and check out Bourbon Street.  They didn't seem to like the city that much with the exception of the architecture.  

From Graduation / Road Trippin'

Sunday was my graduation and at this point the Uhaul was completely packed with the exception of a few bikes that I had to ship.  It was kinda of bittersweet to graduate as I had made a lot of good friends in Louisiana and good ties to the local bike shops.  The last 4 years were probably the best of my life, even though money was tight, we always seemed to be able to still do plenty of things.

From Graduation / Road Trippin'

From Graduation / Road Trippin'

The road trip was pretty uneventful except for the stop in Austin where we stayed at the Hotel San Jose which was a quirky little hotel in the SoCo district.  We walked down to a tex-mex place just down the street (Guero's) that was quite good.  The next day I headed down early to check out Mellow Johnny's which was fairly impressive with all the Lance memorabilia and quite a nice selection of bikes.

From Graduation / Road Trippin'

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful with us stopping at Ft. Stockton, TX and Tucson, AZ for the next two nights.  It was good to finally make it back to Encinitas except for the unpacking.

Bike Camping in Alexandria

From Camping in Alexandria

Since I had the week off of school before graduation, myself and 5 of my buddies decided to head to Alexandria to do some camping biking in the Kisatchie national forest.  One of the guys had just bought a BOB trailer so he was itching to try it out.  The plan was two head out from Evangeline camp ride the bikes for a mile or so to a nice campsite by the creek and get up the next morning for a ride.

From Camping in Alexandria

We setup camp and the weather called for some light rain that night.  Two of the guys didnt have any sort of rain protection so they built a lean to out of some downed trees and branches.  After starting a fire and sitting around we all got pretty bored so we decided to get on our bikes and go buy a couple of cases of beer to pass the time.  Unbelievably I could fit a whole case in my Osprey talon pack.  

From Camping in Alexandria

I ended up not taking my sleeping bag on this trip as the low was going to be in the 70's but that night I found out that I should of brought something such as a blanket.  In the morning we all woke up to bike over to Lake Valentine for a swim as the day was quickly heating up.  We made it over there and the water/campground was closed which was a bummer as we were all hoping to fill up once we got there.  The swimming wasn't too good there so we decided to head over to the west boat ramp of Lake Kincaid.  We all jumped in a cooled off and a few of the guys were spent so I headed back to the truck and picked them up and drove back to the trailhead.

From Camping in Alexandria

We were all pretty tired at this point so we all just lounged around and cooked dinner.  The next morning we went down to the east boat ramp of Lake Kincaid and setup our ramp at the end of the dock.  We all took turns launching off the ramp into the lake on a dumpster diver bike that one of the guys had gotten just for this purpose.

From Camping in Alexandria

From Camping in Alexandria