. . . though I’m sure the asshole in the Audi missed that. My new bike arrived two days ago and I’ve been in love ever since. I ended up getting Santa Cruz Mountain Bike’s Superlight and let me tell you it is a hell of a ride. Weighing in around 25 lbs, it is probably lighter than my old hardtail collecting dust back in Michigan (no that was not an open invitation to use it - FYI). Now that my disc breaks are broken in I can easily toss myself over the handle bars without even hitting anything! Back to the Audi prick . . . I was biking the ~7 mile ride from JPL to Caltech today and while riding in the street some bastard started going ballistic at me. I could potentially understand if I was moving way slower than the surrounding cars or didn’t have pants on or something, but I was keeping up perfectly with traffic which is not hard to do in LA at 5pm. Maybe he was jealous of my tan? Anyway, eventually there was enough space for him to cut over into the now empty left lane (yet still half in mine) and try to stare me down while laying on the horn. Not being a retard I simply kept looking straight ahead for crap in the road and flipped him the bird. Guess who really blew a gasket then? He slowed down like he was going to stop and get me or something so I pulled out my 9mm and emptied a clip into his gas tank. The car erupted into a fantastic fireball and crashed into a manure truck Back to the Future style. OR maybe I just took the first side street I could find. Allow me to again say: LA drivers hate you if you’re not in a car for you are not suffering like they are therefore you must die. (To be fair 99% of the people here are really not that bad, but the other 1% are god damn Nazi’s)

Life at JPL has been good to me over the last 5 weeks which constitutes the half-way point. My new clean(er) living life style is going quite well. Don’t get me wrong I mean I don’t rock out with soy milk and granola but I’ve kicked a lot of bad habits. Hitting the gym every morning possible is beginning to yield tangible results and I certainly got to bed every evening physically exhausted. My work is interesting and actually quite relaxing if that makes any sense. My goal for the summer is very clearly defined so I’m basically just plowing through a schedule checking things off as I go. I’m learning a lot about different things just by osmosis from just being in Engineering Disneyland.

But alas, the Seattle / Portland trip story will have to wait for it is time to go out with the other interns and celebrate another successful week.