BDay #23

Celebrating my birthday without stress and not losing the social image (if there ever was one) always was one of the most difficult tasks in my life. I hate doing almost anything that involves more than 1 person (= myself), while spending one's birthday at home = being a sore loser.

Let's see how I tackled the issue of June 9 this time.

To summarize: it was a road trip with Misha around LA that included a 5K run, going to a beach, eating out, going to a campus, a couple of exhibits, and seeing a movie.

Wheels

Getting a car is essential. It's Zipcar again, and this time it's a Honda Insight 2011.

A rental deal this time:
- 24 hours.
- ~$70.
- 180 free miles, with $0.45 per each additional mile. We used about 140.
- I pay $750 per incident at most.

The car was a hybrid: its battery charged from gas energy, and it was used in background. Sometimes the engine just turned off completely during driving. This technology, if used correctly, can reduce vehicle's gas consumption by 2 (!) times. This car ran ~37 miles per gallon instead of the traditional 20-25.

5K

Mike and I registered for the Downtown Anaheim 5K Run (photos), which started at 8am on June 9. Anaheim is some 40 miles from Pasadena, so the run was preceded by a fast drive. 

The finish arch.

This 5K course is very flat and, therefore, fast. It's all pavement, no grass or trail. That's why even after setting my personal best in number of consecutive running days (21!), I was able to improve my best time on 5K by about a minute, which is a huge lot.

The whole 5K looks like this.

At the start, there was an obstacle of 585 (pounds?).
I have no idea how and why she made it to the front line.
We couldn't help giggling.

5Ks work for me like this: BANG!! (5 min) -> what the hell is going on? (10-15 min) -> the end (1 min). At least, if compared to anything longer than a half-marathon.

Me and a red cap/hat/riding hood (on the left) at the final stretch.

I ran a 16:57 5K, ending up #16 overall (out of 1000+ runners) and #5 in my age division -- 18-24. Mike ran 19:11, #53 overall and #12 in the division. It was a neat time for him because he never ran an interval workout since he left Moscow State.

Mike celebrating the event.
He didn't remember that he'd run 4 times as much as this 5K on June 30.

According to the race's rules, a runner can be counted towards several divisions, so figuring scores out was a bit of a mess.

Me shortly after.

No awards this time: scoring high in well-known 5Ks needs 5K-driven training and tapering; I had neither of them. We got loads of free goodies from the finish-line tents to compensate.

We also identified a very useful place for many women -- they could get strengthened there. Except #585 -- I believe she's already "strong" enough.

The last thing to note about this run is its excessively patriotic last 150 meters. Can you tell how many flags depictions are there?

I'd say, around 20 flags.

If President Obama ever ran a 5K, it should be that one. But he won't -- his race is sufficiently represented among runners. Hey Putin, wanna race?

Beach

"We run hard, we relax hard", as I paraphrase one CMU organization. We drove to the Huntington beach to refresh a bit and take a shower.

It's often cloudy in mornings.
Then clouds always go away.

The water was cold. And the wind was strong.

Not enjoying the cold water.

To replenish our energies, we went to an Italian place and even watched a soccer game between Germany and Portugal. 

A decent local eatery looks like this.

The Portuguese go nude after they lose.
Note to self: never win over male Portuguese.
Also, this TV looks very patriotic.

California State University, Long Beach

We stumbled into the campus of CSULB on our way. Why not walk there?

An obligatory name stone.

At the campus, they had a special Olympics fair, for those with limited abilities of all sorts. You know, when you make handicapped people do normal things (also happens in many parliaments and governments).

A weird-game tournament. Never saw that before.

 Since CSULB's track is quite crappy (compared to other schools in the area; compared to MSU's one, it's godlike), I say, "go ahead, let cripples run on it; save other places for me."

Eewwww.

The architecture is boring: red brick + glossy modern influence.

Copy CMU's Hunt Library; make boring; paste.

Nevertheless, there was one thing at the campus that caught our attention with a deadly grip - an absolutely insane, enormous, self-mocking, transcending this reality, and ostentatious BLUE PYRAMID.

Can you imagine that in the weirdest of your erotic nightmares? A freaking pyramid, out of nowhere!

No surprise it's becoming a place of worship, camping, and eating popcorn and burgers (the latter a.k.a. the religion of the atheist Americans).

Mike was gradually mentally subjugated by the Pyramid.

I was wearing a protective t-shirt. Blue energies don't go really well with the communist red.

As it eventually (I had to reset Mike) turned out, the Pyramid is devoted to basketball, which is adored by Obama's friends. It has two basketball courts inside.

There are tribunes that can be lowered down to leave only two courts open.

I know at least one person who would appreciate such a pyramid. Overall, I admire the bravery of the CSULB administration to put this blue freaky thing on campus.

Queen Mary and the Aquarium

And then we drove to the port are.

We saw a big ship Queen Mary, but were not allowed inside because of some freaks having a BDSM festival. I'd say it was the biggest ship ever existed, but this is not remotely true. The mankind is good at building big things (usefulness aside).

RMS Queen Mary

There was the longest suspension bridge in LA in our way. Mike insisted it was a must-see thing, I was like whatever.

Vincent Thomas Bridge.

The return of the King Gull!

A local aquarium at Long Beach enjoyed our visit. Two notable things:

1) A gigantic lobster that dominated over another lobster and a crab by just walking on them (no fight/resistance involved).

Ew.

2) A rolling pack of jellyfish. I let myself post a video of this shit -- any pics won't just cut it.

Men in Black

Fast forward to Downtown, LA.

Downtown, noun. A bunch of tasteless disparate glass skyscrapers.

We went to see the MiB 3 movie. Apart from oldschool jokes and a tragic storyline (that add pleasant variety to the series), the time travel interpretation was interesting. Following cause-effect cycles was an intelligent sort of fun. A worthy movie, overall.

Ride back

The final challenge of the day was getting the car back in time. I was told that the system automatically tracked the car's position and status and applied late fees when needed. So we needed to get it back at 10pm sharp.

The whole ride from Downtown to Pasadena was planned well beforehand: we measured time to walk to the car, got estimates for the driving time (~20 min), and moved the car closer to the parking exit. We had to leave the movie theater a minute or two before credits.

That was easily the fastest drive I ever had! Since we got stuck in traffic half-way to Pasadena, the rest of the way I was crushing the accelerator pedal into the floor, and Mike was fighting his GPS to re-route us away from more traffic. I guess that during these 10-15 minutes the car got as much tear and wear as for the whole day before. Violent stops at signs, fast starts, sharp turns, and all other action movie stuff except maybe drifting.

The last left turn at Catalina & California was especially "successful". As you might see from the street view, there is a dip used as a speed hump there. Not having noticed it in the dark, I hit the car's bottom unusually hard (I did that before in hilly Pittsburgh). Thankfully, the Honda wasn't visibly damaged. We were late by 5 minutes, but no late fees ensued. Happy end!

June 9, 2012 was a really long day for me, and I enjoyed it a lot.

P.S. Another way to define a birthday: it's a day when you get to talk to people who you talk to very infrequently. I'm too lazy to write this formally, but I'm sure for 90% of people it's a sound definition.