Last Friday/Suicidal

Finally! We had a beautiful day on Friday! When I look back on my time in Cali, Friday was my favorite day. :) Caroline had been talking about this mountain that she hiked up the weekend before, and on Friday we finally got to hike it! It really was a mountain, too (part of the San Gabriel mountains)! We were working as we climbed to 1,950 feet. :) The hike up the mountain had the same terrain as the male, adolescent mountains previously mentioned but without the houses (this mountain had clear skin). We were hiking on a dirt trail without much tree cover, so it wasn't like hiking at Devil's Den or anything. The only time there was a good canopy of trees is when we made it to First Water (our destination). There it was beautiful; it was like going to another country!

After our descent, we found a cute restaurant with outdoor seating in the base town of Sierra Madre. "SM" had a really cute downtown (I guess) section. Almost all of the restaurants had outdoor seating, the streets were wide, and the everything was green. There weren't any stoplights (as confirmed by Wikipedia), and it seemed very much like a family town. We thought about enjoying afternoon tea (it was noon) at the Tea Room, but we were afraid that we were too smelly and too hungry. So we settled on The Only Place In Town (yes, that's really the name), b/c they served breakfast all day. The waitress had the strange habit of not looking either of us in the eye, and it took forever to get our food, but once we did, it was very good. :) One omelet and one "California" later, Caroline and I were full, happy, and headed back to Pasadena.

As a little background for this next section, I must talk about Chicago. Last April, Caroline, Pink, and I went to Chicago for vacation/school investigation. While we were there, we fell in love with a coffee shop named Intelligentsia ("in-tell-ah-JENT-see-ah"). We loved the coffee, we loved the staff, we loved the location--everything. Caroline and I went there twice and have forevermore dreamed about going back someday. Well, to Caroline's great surprise, they just opened an Intelligentsia in LA this year!!! Woo hoo! One year from our first Intelligentsia experience, on Friday, April the 4th, Caroline and I parked in the lot (free!) and walked in and fell in love with it again. This building had more of a modern, simple feel than the cozy building in Chicago. It wasn't a huge space, but it was tall. Long lights hanging from the ceiling accentuated the height of the place. The coffee station was in the middle of the room like an island. You could stand anywhere and watch them make the coffee. (In fact, you can see a picture here: http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/about/press/01-11-2008. (the tile wasn't that overwhelming in person))We both ordered an Iced Angelino (capp w/ milk and agave nectar)--plug #1: if you haven't tried Agave nectar yet, you should! It's a natural sugar, and much better for you than that processed junk! http://www.shakeoffthesugar.net/article1042.html plug #2: the Greenhouse Grille offers Agave nectar (it's the first place I learned about the stuff)!

Okay, so with our wonderful coffees (nutty not bitter), we once again took advantage of the outdoor seating. It was an absolutely amazing, sunny day. The outside area was full of locals with their dogs (the dogs even accompanied their owners inside during ordering (apparently, it's not a health code violation to allow dogs inside?)), lots of people with Macs, friends laughing, and people by themselves reading the paper and sipping their coffee. :) I got a little taste for what it would be like to live there and get to enjoy all of this on a regular basis. Caroline and I grabbed a LA Free Weekly, let the sun shine down on us, and watched people. Absolutely, hands-down my favorite part of the whole trip. I would have stayed there all day...but we had to get to the horse stables.

Sunset Ranch are stables in Griffith Park, and they offer sunset horseback rides. The guides were great and the other riders were fun, but 3 hours on a horse proved to be a little much. Ha! My horse's name was Mouse, and he was considered by the guides to be a couch in horse form. It was a lot of work to try to get that horse to keep up with the rest of the pack. An hour and a half later, we arrived at the Mexican restaurant (I was not hungry). I got off of Mouse and realized that my legs were permanently stuck in the saddle position! Ha ha. I finally understood all those scenes from the movies! (I am going to enjoy them much more now.) (Oh, and it was cold, did I mention that? Like, in the 50s. I did not pack for the 50s...stupid weather forecasters.) I ordered some taquitos, took a picture, and received the comment that taking pictures of my food is weird. Whatever. That guy was drinking a 42oz beer anyway.

The ride back was really long and cold, but I was excited b/c I finally got more comfortable on Mouse!! Not physically comfortable, mind you, but emotionally comfortable. It didn't scare me when he started trotting (which he did more willingly on the way home); IN FACT, I wanted him to trot! I was excited when he started trotting! :) Yay! (So, now, I want to take some riding lessons.) The one scary thing was that this horse loved the edge of the trail...and the edge of the trail was on the edge of the mountain. The guides warned us that the horses liked the edge and that we shouldn't be scared, but I was scared anyway. The guides said that the horses were really sure-footed, yada yada yada, but that didn't help. Plus, we're riding in the pitch black, and I ask how good a horse's eyesight is. The response was that it's just like a human's! What? I can hardly see the trail! How can the stupid horse? So, I'm a little tense. Then, I begin realizing that my horse is really the only one THAT close to the edge! Everyone else is about a foot and a half from the edge, and then there's me: 3 inches? Maybe! Stupid horse. So, I make a comment about how I have the lone, suicidal horse. My guide tries the reassuring thing (don't worry, the horse knows what he's doing, blah blah blah) but then adds, "Maybe you should pull him over, b/c part of the edge is washed out up ahead." Jeez. Well, I try to, but that stupid, suicidal horse doesn't want to follow the pack. After a wrestling match and a few times where I could swear that Mouse's back feet were slipping off the edge, he moved over! Not for long. But he did move. The rest of the trip had me leaning away from the edge (like that would help). And did I mention that it was freezing?

Finally, we made it back to camp, put our horses away, got in the car, drove to Pasadena, and crashed (not the car, on our beds).