Roger Hsu's Blog

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jun 25, 2005. Road biking is pretty popular up here and one of the cool things that the city/county does is to close off La Canada Road every Sunday for bikers. Even though the road is paved, it would be a good way for us to get some good miles in. We decided to check it out. We ended up going on a Saturday since Judy had a business trip to Colorado on Sunday. Even though the road was open to cars, it really wasn’t a problem because the shoulder is nice and big. We rode from our house to La Canada road and at the end of it all, logged around 24.5 miles. La Canada road itself is fairly flat, but we got plenty of climbing while getting there. 24.5 miles is a record for us – I don’t think we’ve ever ridden that much before. We were tired at the end, but not overly so. The worst part was that our butts were really sore! It’ll likely take a few more rides to get our butts conditioned properly.

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jun 24, 2005. Latte received a new toy today. It’s a rubber cube that has some slots in which you can smear peanut butter (or some other food that will stir the olfactory senses). The dog can sniff the food, but has a hard time getting to it. So the idea is that the dog’s owner gets some fun entertainment at the dog’s expense. :-) After spreading some peanut butter in the inside of the cube, Latte took quite a liking to her new toy. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t stay still so many of the shots are kind of blurry. Here are the pics.

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jun 19, 2005. Today, we rode the Gazos Creek trail at Big Basin State Park. According to our book, you can ride it as a 12.9-mile round trip loop with an optional 8.8-mile out-and-back for a total of 21.7 miles. Our plan was to see how we felt when we got to the out-and-back trail and then decide at that point whether or not we wanted to extend the ride. The first portion of the ride was pretty challenging from an aerobic/endurance standpoint. The trail was not technical at all, but there were some pretty steep and extended climbs. We had to dismount and walk up a few of them. After all these hills, we were thinking that we would probably just do the loop and not add the 8.8-mile out-and-back. Things didn’t quite go as planned, however, as we ended up getting a bit lost. We followed the book’s instructions, but the book wasn’t very clear regarding one of the turnoffs. We actually ended up heading towards the beach in the wrong direction! Fort...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jun 5, 2005. My iMac arrived today! How exciting! Being the Mac geek that I am, I documented the unveiling process. It’s like opening a Christmas present. I can’t really explain it, but there’s just something special about getting a new Mac, opening the box, taking it out and setting everything up. PC users are unlikely to understand, but I’m sure the Mac afficionados out there know what I’m talking about. There’s no denying it. The iMac is a true work of art. It is extremely elegant to have a single power cable from the wall to the computer. In my case, I’ve also got a cable connecting my keyboard and mouse, but since my iMac has Bluetooth built-in, I could opt for a wireless keyboard and mouse. If I decide to do that, there would be only one cable for the entire setup! The set up process is a great example of what makes Apple, Apple. When you turn on the Mac for the first time, the Apple Transfer Assistant asks whether you want to transfer ...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jun 5, 2005. Our goal is to ride at least once a week, and since we didnt’ have a whole lot of time this weekend, we decided to check out one of the local trails. Water Dog Lake Park is a wooded area near our house that’s close enough that we could ride to. Our book gave only a brief description of this trail, although it did mention that many of the trails in this park were technically challenging. It didn’t sound like the best trail for training, but we decided to check it out anyway. After riding a few miles on the street, we reached the park’s entrance where we had to climb a dirt road for about 2 miles. That part was good training, but the rest of our ride really wasn’t. The trail system from there contained a number of fairly steep hills which were nice little heart pumping workouts, but then we entered a wooded section with some pretty steep descents that were pretty overgrown with bushes. Judy didn’t like it much and ended up walking down many...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jun 3, 2005. A few weeks ago, Judy finally decided that it was time to quit her job. She gave her company a very generous two months notice to give them ample time to find a replacement and to get that person up to speed. Her last day will be July 15, and she wants to take the opportunity to do some traveling during the interim between jobs. One of the destinations she’s been eyeing is Nepal and she found this really cool, 22-day trek of the Annapurna circuit. This was something that I wanted to do as well, but unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of vacation days accumulated yet since I just started my job in January. I talked it over with my boss and he was OK with it. When the time comes, we’ll figure out what best to do (such as me going negative on my vacation balance). So the trip is a go! We’ve already reserved our spots for the trip and are currently planning on being gone from Thu Oct 27 to Sun Nov 21. Weather-wise, this is probably the opti...