Friday

With all the stress accrued from work and applying to bschool, it felt good to get away for a weekend. As luck would have it, things didn’t start off on the right foot.

Pismo was on the calendar for several months, but I never gave it much thought because of all the other things going on. About two weeks out, I started to think about all the logistical aspects of the trip and it gave me a headache. After pushing a lot of the planning out until the last couple of days, a lot of little fires were set on Friday that could have blown the trip into a raging inferno. The set backs included: Vik needing to get his bro’s green sticker, finding out we needed to get to the park before 11pm, having to buy all the food, being rushed by the pad thai lady from Singapore Express, and finding out that Ellis went back to his apartment after we told him to come to ours.

In the end, everything worked out fine. I let out a giant sigh of relief when we got to Pismo on time and in one piece. We tried to find the campsite using GPS coordinates, but ended up stumbling across the Pismo Jamboree guys at flag post 6. If we had followed the GPS, we might have ended up halfway to Catalina. It turns out that the “campsite” was just 100 yards north west of where we camped last year. In fact, Vik got stuck about 50 feet from where we camped last year. After setting up camp and downing beer and ramen, we all hit the sack, exhausted but relieved to have finally arrived.

Saturday

TL and I woke up around 830 to head out for the group picture. Ellis slept in my truck so he had no choice but to go along for the ride. There was probably 40-50 yota trucks lined up for the group picture. After a quick driver’s meeting, catching up with one of the organizers, and watching one of the guys almost tip his truck on a jump, I drove back to camp to cook breakfast (omelet, toast and fresh squeezed OJ). We headed into town afterwards to pick up some more gear and to rent a quad.

We ended up spending the rest of the day playing in the dunes. TL drove my truck while the rest of us rode our dirt toys. I ended up renting a 250cc semi-auto quad for six hours. The semi-auto meant that I had to shift gears with or without the use of the clutch. The quad was a bit underpowered and tame by comparison to Vik’s 400cc. I’ll have to upload the video of me and Vik climbing a dune that shows just how weak the 250cc is. That being said, 250cc is actually the right amount of power for someone to learn on.

I let TL drive my truck out on the dunes. That’s what we call a lot of trust, or maybe I’m just plain stupid. Pismo isn’t the easiest place to drive around. Although it looks easy, there are a lot of ways to get yourself in trouble out in the dunes. No matter what skill level you’re at, you’re bound to get stuck. TL did really well for the most part. She got stuck twice, both times going up a hill. The second time she got stuck, she didn’t see that there were two really deep bowls, one on the left, and one on the right, at the top of the hill. She ended up driving too close to the bowl on the right, got stuck, and was too afraid to back up because she might have fallen into the bowl. I ended up taking over. A Jeep came over to help “save” us. Ironically, I ended up falling into the bowl and didn’t tip (thank god), drove out of the bowl, and then saved the Jeep that was trying to save us but got stuck trying to do so.

Needless to say, TL was done driving for the rest of the trip. She’s more of a passenger rather than a driver out in Pismo anyways Bravo to her though for even driving out there! Next time, Competition Hill!

For dinner, we BBQ’d. Nothing spectacular, but given that we bought the food an hour before we left on Friday, I thought we had a respectable dinner, although not as respectable as a stinky tofu hot pot dinner.

And for the report that you’ve all been waiting for, the shoto tent was a smashing success. The tent is absolutely amazing. I’d guess that the average temperature at night was around ~50F, but when you’re inside the shoto tent, it felt like 70F. TL made good use of the porta potty; she no longer had to trek all the way to the nasty camp stalls or bare her ass in between the trucks. I took a #1, or is it #2, anyways, the “bigger” one, and it didn’t work out so well because my ass is too big and the bowl was too shallow.

Vik spent half the night trying to engineer a solution for his shower. His elaborate shower pump thing didn’t work, so he brought with him a cooler and a tofu container. He also bought a solar shower bag. The solar shower bag ended up being the lamest $8 he ever spent because the flow of water was just too weak. He ended up heating up water and pouring it into a cooler and scooping it out with the tofu container, just like the olden days back on the Mainland. Vik’s review was that the tent kept him warm enough to make the shower enjoyable. The only thing that was really missing was a chair.

That pretty much wraps up the trip. I think we all had a fantastic time. TL has already said that she wants to go out again. I’m kind of over Pismo, at least going there to drive my truck. ATVing on the other hand was so much fun. If bschool weren’t in the way, I’d go out and buy one right now! It was unfortunate that more people couldn’t have come out though, but there’s always next time. We saw several groups of fob ATV riders that were rolling at least 15-20 deep and having a ball.  I had one of those sad, longing moments, “why can’t that be us… sniff, sniff”. One day… one day

Pics to come.