Sandy to Moab, 8/27

8/27/15

We drove down from Sandy to Moab to spend the night camping and rent bikes to try our hand at mountain biking. The area was beautiful as we came into town. Moab seems like a fun place to visit, a Mecca of mountain biking and rock climbing. Not a place to live necessarily, but a fun playground. The landscape changed from desert scrub into striking rock formations. We were able to find a place to rent bikes for the evening and through the next day and after making arrangements we headed off to find our campsite.

After setting up our campsite it was time to get out of the sun. The direct sun and lack of tree or any other coverage left one sun exposed and it got hot fast. But we went to pick up our bikes and headed to Dead Horse Canyon. It gets its name from being a bluff with a narrow neck that cowboys would herd wild horses up onto and trap on the bluff. A corral was built and after running the horses onto the bluff they would be trapped with a 2,000-foot drop down to the Colorado River. However, when you forget to water your horses you go from horse trap canyon to dead horse canyon real fast. The view from the bluff looking over the valley was spectacular. It was time to try our hand at mountain biking to see what we would be able to tackle the next day. After a hesitant start, comfort on the bikes increased quickly.

We returned to the campsite supplies in hand and quickly realized that ants were everywhere. Not really swarming, but just walking over everything including your feet. But other than that it was a nice site and a long day. As we lay down in the tent to watch Condorman and sleep I heard a slight rustle in the grass outside the tent. It was hard to tell but it felt like it was slowing getting closer until I could hear the rustle again, expect this time it was the rustle of movement against nylon, not grass. Something was outside the tent. And from the sound, I was (and still am pretty sure it was a snake). Next thing I new I felt something leaning against me through the tent. Just sliding along outside the tent, really, really slow. It freaked me out. Snakes don’t really bother me, but I wasn’t sure if we were in rattlesnake country or not and didn’t want to find out. After a long pause I was sure it was gone and as I moved, it moved right there against the outside of the tent. It felt like hours, but probably 30 minutes later either it moved on or settled in and I was able to sleep. Marina wanted to investigate, but I felt that I would sleep better telling myself it was nothing and would be gone in the morning than learn it was something. The rest of the night was uneventful but brutally hot and stagnant. I’m not sure if she was braver or I was more prudent, but either way it was gone in the morning.

Tahoe to Sandy

8/25-8/26

Arrived in Sandy, UT. We spent the night in Tahoe camping by the lake. It was nice, although not quite used to the cold weather in the morning. After getting up nice and early, we went on a leisurely hike up the 5 lakes trail. A few minutes on the trail and we started seeing wildlife. A snake (something you never see in HI), chipmunks, all kinds of birds, and lots of things rustling in the bushes; it was nice to see something on the trail. However, after the hike with the water restrictions in the area the showers were closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So a little dusty and back on the road for the 8 or so hour drive to Utah.

The drive out was pretty uneventful. Nevada is pretty lacking in scenery, but plenty of casinos and $5 all you can eat spaghetti. Tried my hand at a $1 slot machine, didn’t really know what I was doing and lost that pretty quick.

Arrived in Salt Lake around 9 to a nice reception from Dave and Sylvia and Ryan before turning in for a solid nights sleep.

Up for breakfast and planning to check out a nearby BJJ school before laundry and a family dinner.

8.23.15, yesterday in SF

Now in San Francisco we have met up with James and Lisa, friends from Honolulu who now live in Portland. We have been able to explore the city and be tourists for a while.

Yesterday, we went to Dek Wat Muay Thai to train at our old Coach’s gym (even though he couldn’t be there). The workout was…challenging. Started out with the Muay Thai class. At first a little jump rope and then straight into 100 burpees to start the class finishing the boxing class with (an attempted) 1000 punches on the bag in 3 minutes. When we finished our burpees all of us started to get some water, but were quickly admonished that if we were already thirsty then we weren’t properly hydrated before class and there were not going to be any water breaks until the class was over. Class was solid and a really good workout after not boxing for a week or two. After Muay Thai there was a boxing class. We should have realized something when everyone from the first class left, but we stayed anyway… not sure my shoulders agree with that decision, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

After boxing we all headed down to mission district to get burritos. One giant wet burrito later and we were ready to explore the town. Down to fisherman’s wharf and little driving through the hills of SF. Which we learned are not meant for a manual transmission. Some hills, one stall, a ridiculous hunt for parking and we were able to hit the wharf, get some ice cream at Ghirardelli, and see some sea lions. Light dinner and beers at Telegraph Hill and that was enough for one day.

8.20.15

First day on the road. Things did not go exactly as planned. Apparently camping takes several months or at least days of advanced planning. The campsite that we arrived at said that we would have had to book months in advance to get a spot. We tried to hit a few other sites along the way, but they were either full in advance or booked out earlier in the day and we came up short.

The car at least is holding up well. Despite the fact that both of us have trouble with first gear and not burning the clutch a bit when starting out (not me) or when on a steep hill (me) it seems to be a good choice. However, driving in SF may not be the best idea if we want to keep the transmission in the car for a long period of time.

The change in scenery has been pretty dramatic. Going from desert scrub and severe drought to Pacific forest. On the road today we saw a herd of zebra’s and then a pack of elephants (seals). We were kind of surprised to see a zebra, let along a herd of them. Not really sure what they were doing or where they came from, but they were penned in along the side of the road, maybe a dozen or so. Then later on down the road there was an elephant seal rookery with about 2-3 dozen elephant seals lazing on the beach. Only one or two actually moved, but they were quite large and would be impressive to see in action, or at least moving.

Marina’s dictation: nothing to add.

South Pasadena, 8/17

It is time to re-start the blog and try to keep people up to date on our travel plans across the US. Marina and I purchased a silver 2004 Toyota Matrix XRS with a 6-speed manual. The car needs a little work and TLC, but should be a good ride to take us cross-country. Tomorrow we are going to be taking the car to a local repair shop and hoping they don't find anything to major in need of repair.

Tomorrow is going to be a day of hiking and an actual touristy day instead of rushing around trying to get things done.

Hopefully as I get into the blogging thing more I will be able to write more...

7/27/2014, Job update and other things

I have started my new job and things are moving along pretty well.  It is taking longer than anticipated to learn all the things that I need to know to be able to do the job and get started in the full swing of things.  I have enjoyed the extensive training, but it also feels like it could be done a little better at least for my way of learning.  They are training several people at once for several different positions and there is a lot of general policy and company stuff that everyone has to learn.  And then we do shadow stuff with the people in our various departments.

The company as a whole is a Residential Re-entry Center (RCC), there are so many acronyms it starts to get ridiculous, but even after 2 weeks I find myself starting to use them and not really thinking about it.  An RCC is a part of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP, see what I mean) that is the final stage for federal inmates before they are released from prison back to the community on probation.  These types of facilities can range from in the prison to the community, however as there is no federal prison in Hawaii, people sentenced to federal prison are all sent to the mainland and then when they are about to be released (last 6 months of their sentence or so) they are sent to TJ Mahoney (TJM) RRC.  The company overseas all inmates who are going to be released in Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, the pacific region in general.  For the end of their sentence they gain increasing privileges and time in the community.  In return for overnight passes and furloughs to be with family, the residents are expected to find a job, a place to live, start saving money, repay any restitution or fines, and maintain any requirements of their sentence (drug/alcohol rehab (DA/AA), mental health (MH), etc (again with the acronyms).  As they secure work and progress through the program they are allowed to spend more time out of the center, start to live at home, and what not.

So my job within this company is the "Community-based Case Manager" (CBCM).  I work mainly with the people who have moved to higher levels and are starting home detention or community placement, the later sounds nice, but are the same thing.  Basically, the people who are now living at home.  This means doing random home and work checks to make sure they are complying with the terms of their release (all residents are required to be accounted for 24 hrs a day, to ensure this it is my job to randomly swing by work and home once a week and make sure they are where they say they are going to be).  In addition I also continue the services that all residents receive.  Weekly case note updates, ensuring they are attending DA/AA services, paying subsistence (payments to the RCC for the cost of their stay, 25% of their pay once they start working), saving money, etc.

So thats a run down on my job.  Still in the training process.  The person that I am replacing left the company and there is a case manager assistant that has essentially stepped up to take the job.  However, he is in the USAF reserve and getting called up for August, and he is supposed to assist all the other case managers.  Loren (Assistant CM) is trying to get me trained to take his/my job before he goes, but not sure he is going to be able to finish before he goes.

That is job 1.  Job 2, Smart Karate (SK) is still going, but I am getting a little frustrated with them.  I was supposed to start learning how to do their billing procedures so that I could potentially take over for the woman currently doing it, but that was talked about in the start of July and still has yet to happen.  They have outlined the path that I can take to receive my black belt through them, taking a different path than most.  Partly a reward for working for them, partly a result of my demonstrated ability in the martial arts, part work reward because they can not pay higher salaries.  But it comes with the expectation that I would remain an active part of the organization for a while.  But I have concerned over their organizational setup and overall business model.  I dont think they are going out of business anytime soon.  However, I see a lot of annoyances coming from their attempt to teach mainly at after school programs.  It requires a lot of staff who can not get enough hours to really make SK a viable even part-time job.  Its 1-2 hours a day, 2-5 days a week, but requires pretty much the whole afternoon, 2:45-4 plus transit time which here can be quite a bit.  Makes working elsewhere hard.  But not enough hours available for more and each teacher can obviously only be at one school so if they expand schools as they want they need more staff to work 3 hours a week, and the staff need to be qualified black belt which can be hard to find, oh and they need reliable transportation and like working with 3-10 year olds... its get hard to maintain staff.  This all results in a situation like we are facing now with summer ending and the school year starting and shortage of teachers to cover all the program hours and no one in the pipeline to bring in and start training to take on hours.

I do like working for SK, all that withstanding.  Learning Karate has been interesting, getting paid to train is great, although paid more would be better.  Just keeping an eye on whether the frustration that comes with SK starts to outweigh its benefits or impact other areas.

What else, someone knocked over my motorcycle a couple weeks ago.  The damage estimate is looking like more than the value of the vehicle.  And with my new job requiring me to drive all over the island I think I am going to sell my bike and get something a little newer and without all the electrical issues the current one has.  But right now the insurance is moving slow and I dont know if they are going to issue a check for the damage estimate or salvage the bike.  But while all thats going on, a new electrical problem has surfaced that may or may not be related to the accident causing the main fuse to blow all the time, making the bike unrideable.  If they are going to salvage the bike, there is no point in getting it fixed. If not then I need it running to sell cheap after the settlement.  But there is a huge backlog at all the bike shops and it has sat for 4 days at the shop I go to waiting for someone to have time to take look and get me an estimate on the cost to get it running.  Now its a race to see if the insurance or the repair shop moves slower.  Fortunately Marina has a car and bike (and bicycles to work) so I can coordinate with her to use what she is not.  And there is a car at work I can use if I want.  But I just want to be done with the current bike and get something good on gas mileage (I get $.55 a mile and can make $12-$16 a gallon with a decent bike at 30 mpg) for doing all my house and work checks.  But need to know how much I have to spend before getting a new bike.  I am going to a used bike dealer today to look at their stock and get an idea of what I can afford once I hear from the insurance company.

There is a grappling tournament I am entered in on the 9th.  Should be fun.  And I am hoping that once work goes from training to regular I can find a normal work schedule that will allow me to put together a regular training schedule to try and get another MMA match.  I would need to find a coach that I like, and have some people in mind, but want to make sure that I have time to put in the hours that I feel I would need to be ready for a match.  And will have to wear my headgear when sparring to not break my nose before the match.  At least the new job comes with full health care, dental and I think vision.  So that nice.

Thats about all I got.   

Life updates, 7/13/14

I thought I would respond to the email from Phil in my blog so that everyone can read it and I wanted to try and start writing again since I havent posted in a while.

So what has been going on.  Yesterday was the triple crown grappling tournament.  I think it will be the last one of that organization that I will do.  They just seem pretty unorganized.  People have been less interested in them because of that and as a result the brackets are smaller.  My Gi division only had 3 people.  Instead of doing a round robin style, one person by luck of the draw got a bye into the final round.  I matched up in the first round with a good grappler.  We went the full 6 minutes and the overtime 2 min without any points being scored.  At first the ref raised my hand as the victor, not really sure why because although it was a technical draw, at that point the winner should be the person who was attacking more and that wasnt me.  After a quick coaches discussion, the other guy was determined to be the winner, still only three people... I got third place.

In the No Gi division I did much better.  There were 5 competitors and I took 2nd.  I won my first match pretty easily, I think 10 or 12 - 0.  Lost the final match for second, 7-0.  I think.  The other guy was good.  But I get to hold on to my yet to be submitted streak and only having lost in a grappling match by points.

Moving on to what is probably the bigger news, I am starting a new job next week.  I had been waiting to say anything because a lot of things have come up and several rounds of interviews to have nothing actually materialize.  But I have made it through the rounds and next week start the orientation training for TJ Mahoney Hale.  I will be case managing Federal prisoners through their re-entry on release from prison.  I still have a lot to learn about the position and how it works, but basically I will be ensuring they find work, a stable living environment, meet court conditions for release and try to keep them from being the 70% the re-offend.  It doesnt pay amazing, starting salary is $18/hour, but it does come with benefits, still have to see exactly what that entails and should be fairly flexible with the hours.  It is also right across the street from an MMA gym that I have wanted to train at but is hard to make at rush hour, now I could easily walk there.  Wednesday and Friday are the orientation.  So I should now a lot more about the job after that.  I think there is also a short test, so hopefully that goes well.  And I am still waiting on the results of my federal background check.  So I guess the job is not finalized as I have not signed anything yet or been paid, but I think this one is going to stick.

Of course as soon as one gets offered another comes along as well.  In this case I think I should be able to do both.  The people at TJM know that I have been working at Smart Karate and said that I should be able to make my schedule in a way that I can do both.  I am going to step down a few teaching hours, but keep working a couple days a week for them.  But SK has also offered me the chance to take over all their student billing duties.  Something that has been being done piecemeal by two people and not very well overall.  While I was supposed to start training two weeks ago and am still waiting (also was told that I am in line for another raise) it is there and I am confident that it will happen, but they are slow and not the best organized.  So I am happy to keep getting paid by them, but not a company that I would want to devote myself to entirely.

However, through SK I meant another Brian who is something like the director of a youth community outreach/recreation center.  Mostly targeting juveniles who are going through the justice system.  It appears they are in the process of redesigning an old facility to turn it into a rec center and looking for programs to offer for juveniles who have community service or pro-social hour requirements to complete for the terms of their court decisions.  I have been talking with Brian about organizing a course in traditional martial arts (TMA) for them to offer at the new rec center.  I have been taking advantage of still having access to Ebsco through the Chicago School library and pulling a lot of articles on TMA and the positive effects it has on violence reduction, aggression, stress, etc and writing a proposal to get funding to teach to the little delinquents (not sure that is the right term).  So that would be a 3rd albeit part-time gig.  I think the idea would be 2-3 days a week.  And would have to go through several approvals before we could move forward to actually planning the course.  However, to make that work it would be much better if I actually had a black belt in something (the whole idea is the use of TMA over modern or sport martial arts which is where most of my training lies) and SK could help with that.  I have been talking with SK about getting my black belt through them but everyone is busy and it hasnt been a priority... until now.

On top of that I am trying to keep meeting with my Chinese teacher once a week and keep the language up.

Oh and my motorcycle was knocked over twice in a week by people backing out of parallel parking spaces and not looking behind them.  The first time the mirror on the handle bars cracked, $20.  The second time the rear passenger peg was cracked, the rear fairing cracked and the sub-frame got bent, estimate for parts and labor $1950.  And I think I should replace my helmet as well since the bike kind of fell on it.  Thankfully when I came out of the restaurant the guy who hit me was trying to pick my bike back up and I was able to get his information.  When I texted him the next day at first he denied it was him, but then after getting the police involved he starting being a bit more cooperative.  I am trying to arrange a time to meet with him later today to discuss whether he wants to go through his insurance or pay out of pocket.  I offered him to pay half and I would deal with it myself, probably sell the bike cheap and buy something new because the repair cost is most likely greater than the value of the bike and the damage does not impact ride-ability, just dont want to have a passenger putting weight on the peg.

So yea, its been a pretty eventful and busy couple weeks. Hopefully by next month money will be coming in because it seems that I have a lot of costs coming up.  I also learned recently that my original student loans do not get a 6 month delay on repayment from graduation, only the new ones get the delay, so that was nice to get a notice telling me I was two months behind because the account that it was linked to was closed back when I relocated from China to the US.

But things are going well, jobs are finally (albeit slowly) lining themselves up and after almost two years (quit Wuhan ISP in August 2012, although was paid through the month till September) of no real full-time work, I'm back.  I am thinking a hard year working through these three jobs and then trying to make a real push to get to the mainland for a good 4 to 6-month vacation.  Been talking with Marina about trying to ride motorcycles south from the US as far to/through South America as possible in a couple months and then swinging back up.  I mean after a year of full-time work I think another 6-month sabbatical is important to keep the might fresh and rejuvenated.