I had the spiciest meal of my life today! This beat the Sichuan style meal I had in Beijing and the time I had a Thai restaurant not hold back. I went to smoke eaters with some coworkers today. The restaurant serves buffalo wings with 7 levels of spice. Most of us find their highest level quite spicy, but still easily edible. The restaurant also has the hell fire challenge where they make extra spicy wings and you have to eat 12 in 10 minutes with no drink or napkins. None of us wanted to do that, but we wanted to try the higher level of spice and figured we'd have a few of those and the rest of the meal would be level 7 wings. The hell fire challenge wings were covered in a thick brown sauce which was basically habanero paste. The others had less than one wing, I had two. After that the level 7 wings tasted mild.
What I learned: If you start to hiccup on your first bite of spicy food then stop. If you continue and a few tears run down your face then stop. If you still continue and for a moment your mouth seems to cool down, don't think that means you can handle more. Even if there's some guy at the next table actually doing the challenge and looking like it doesn't even phase him, still stop.
Wow, I ended up with a lot of time to play sudoku on my iphone (how's that for a euphamism?). Well I found my spice limit, and have no need to repeat that experience.
Luckily my stomach calmed just in time for Julie and Saeed to feed me dinner. Thank you Julie and Saeed!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Google Wave
Someone is starting a rumor that google wave is a firefly reference. Which I'm believing because they use Shiny! in a message and the error message really is "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal".
Thursday, May 28, 2009
KC and Naples Part 2
It's been pointed out that I kind of sped through the posts on KC and Naples. Didn't mean anything by it. I think I just had the backpacking trip on my mind and rushed through the others. Here's attempt #2.
In KC we went on a great bike ride. I was very happy that the bike seat hurt my butt a lot less than it had in the past. A lot of the time in KC was spent talking to my family which was great, but makes for some boring blogging. For my Grandma's 75th birthday we had dinner at my parent's house. For mother's day we headed to the plaza for brunch and then did a short walk to Starbucks where we discussed Bringing Down the House and gambling strategies, which is a bit odd since I don't think anyone in my family goes to a casino with more than $100. While it was nice to meet my friends' babies, I'm not really at a point where babies hold a lot of appeal (all me, nothing to do with their babies). I did head out to a bar with Ben to play pool which was great, especially since I was playing fairly well. It really highlights how much moving I've done that it wasn't just that I didn't know if I had told people about where I live now, but wasn't sure if they knew about the move before that.
I headed to Naples on a Saturday and got there Saturday night. My flight happened to show up at almost the exact same time at the gate directly next to Steve's flight. We grabbed a surprisingly cheap rental car (thanks to whoever it was that set us up with that) and headed to the Inn on Fifth which is a cute hotel on a cute street in Naples. Downtown Naples actually felt a lot like Santa Barbara, except the people were older. We met up with what we decided were for the most part the male college friends on the bride's side, which oddly includes Laura. Had some good sushi then bought some booze at CVS and headed to the hot tub at the hotel - again brought back some memories of SoCal life. Next morning we headed to the wedding. It was a tad hot outside, but there was ice water that was very helpful. It was cool to be one of the friends and know most of the people in the wedding party. And the bride looked so happy - awwww. There was quite the MIT crowd so I spent a lot of the wedding party catching up with them. A crowd also headed outside for a bit to marvel at Florida's sudden down pours. After the wedding a few of us met up at the bar next to the hotel. Then off to the out of towner dinner. I spent a lot of this time describing to Laura the "plans" for Mike's bachelor party. The dinner was nice especially because the bride and groom had more time to talk. Next morning some of us met up with the bride and groom at the bar next to the hotel for breakfast. Then off to some thai food, Edison house, and airport.
MIT crowd at the wedding:
In KC we went on a great bike ride. I was very happy that the bike seat hurt my butt a lot less than it had in the past. A lot of the time in KC was spent talking to my family which was great, but makes for some boring blogging. For my Grandma's 75th birthday we had dinner at my parent's house. For mother's day we headed to the plaza for brunch and then did a short walk to Starbucks where we discussed Bringing Down the House and gambling strategies, which is a bit odd since I don't think anyone in my family goes to a casino with more than $100. While it was nice to meet my friends' babies, I'm not really at a point where babies hold a lot of appeal (all me, nothing to do with their babies). I did head out to a bar with Ben to play pool which was great, especially since I was playing fairly well. It really highlights how much moving I've done that it wasn't just that I didn't know if I had told people about where I live now, but wasn't sure if they knew about the move before that.
I headed to Naples on a Saturday and got there Saturday night. My flight happened to show up at almost the exact same time at the gate directly next to Steve's flight. We grabbed a surprisingly cheap rental car (thanks to whoever it was that set us up with that) and headed to the Inn on Fifth which is a cute hotel on a cute street in Naples. Downtown Naples actually felt a lot like Santa Barbara, except the people were older. We met up with what we decided were for the most part the male college friends on the bride's side, which oddly includes Laura. Had some good sushi then bought some booze at CVS and headed to the hot tub at the hotel - again brought back some memories of SoCal life. Next morning we headed to the wedding. It was a tad hot outside, but there was ice water that was very helpful. It was cool to be one of the friends and know most of the people in the wedding party. And the bride looked so happy - awwww. There was quite the MIT crowd so I spent a lot of the wedding party catching up with them. A crowd also headed outside for a bit to marvel at Florida's sudden down pours. After the wedding a few of us met up at the bar next to the hotel. Then off to the out of towner dinner. I spent a lot of this time describing to Laura the "plans" for Mike's bachelor party. The dinner was nice especially because the bride and groom had more time to talk. Next morning some of us met up with the bride and groom at the bar next to the hotel for breakfast. Then off to some thai food, Edison house, and airport.
MIT crowd at the wedding:
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Lost Coast
Last weekend I headed to the Lost Coast with a portion of the usual hiking crowd. We drove up on Friday night. Put down some tarps on the beach and slept in our sleeping bags looking up at the stars. Saturday morning we drove to the start of the trail. We did the 24 miles from Mattole to Blacksands Beach over the course of Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Hiking 24 miles with basically no elevation over 3 days was sounding pretty easy so we had planned out some extra hikes we could do. Well, we didn't have to hike on the sand for very long to realize this wasn't the cake walk we expected. Then we hit the segments where the sand was replaced by piles of rocks and we started wishing for the sand. The creek crossings threw in another bit of unexpected challenge, especially with backpacks and heavy wind - I wish I had spent more time practicing balancing on the Wii Fit. While the creeks weren't that deep, none of us wanted to hike with wet feet. The trip did have some time pressure because there were sections that became impassible during high tide. The added challenge was cool, but my knees did not appreciate the constant tilt of the path due to walking in one direction next to the ocean, they weren't too thrilled about me slipping in one of the creeks either.
It was a cool adventure. We were next to the ocean the whole time and got fairly close to some seals and birds. Also there was a bunch of drift wood and people had built some amazing shelters out of them (according to the ranger a lot of the building was done by boy scouts), unfortunately they were all claimed by time we got to them. Another cool thing is this area is owned by the bureau of land management. Unlike most parks where you can't have fires and have to register for labeled campsites, the BLM is fine with fires and you just camp anywhere on the trail you feel like (although there are some obvious spots where people tend to cluster). So we did get to make use of some of the drift wood and had fires going Saturday and Sunday nights. An added bit of adventure is there are some bears in the area so we had to keep all the food in hard plastic bear boxes and place them a good distance from camp. That way even if the bears find the food all they can do is knock the boxes around. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any bears, fortunately we didn't have any bear encounters and the boxes didn't get moved at night.
The driving itself was a bit of an adventure, especially between the ends of the trail. Luckily only the other car took the dirt road with small creeks running through it. I'm pretty sure if a prius was bottoming out, the mustang would have just been stuck. It was also quite a shock to see the 101 become a 35 mph main street through small towns.
Jeremy was the offical photographer of the trip and all his pictures along with captions are up here.
I think the full set of pictures is worth checking out, but here's a smaller selection:
It was a cool adventure. We were next to the ocean the whole time and got fairly close to some seals and birds. Also there was a bunch of drift wood and people had built some amazing shelters out of them (according to the ranger a lot of the building was done by boy scouts), unfortunately they were all claimed by time we got to them. Another cool thing is this area is owned by the bureau of land management. Unlike most parks where you can't have fires and have to register for labeled campsites, the BLM is fine with fires and you just camp anywhere on the trail you feel like (although there are some obvious spots where people tend to cluster). So we did get to make use of some of the drift wood and had fires going Saturday and Sunday nights. An added bit of adventure is there are some bears in the area so we had to keep all the food in hard plastic bear boxes and place them a good distance from camp. That way even if the bears find the food all they can do is knock the boxes around. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any bears, fortunately we didn't have any bear encounters and the boxes didn't get moved at night.
The driving itself was a bit of an adventure, especially between the ends of the trail. Luckily only the other car took the dirt road with small creeks running through it. I'm pretty sure if a prius was bottoming out, the mustang would have just been stuck. It was also quite a shock to see the 101 become a 35 mph main street through small towns.
Jeremy was the offical photographer of the trip and all his pictures along with captions are up here.
I think the full set of pictures is worth checking out, but here's a smaller selection:
Naples
Two weekends ago I headed to Naples for Julie and Saeed's wedding (congratulations!). The wedding was very nice. It was great to see some of my MIT friends. Somehow I went the whole time without getting to the beach. But I did get to see Edison's Fort Myers home.
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