The Chronicles of John Trammell

     When Jane and I were hanging out on Monday, we had a moment when we were wishing we were away from the IE.  Somewhere awesome.  Somewhere far away.  A place were we can just hang out and enjoy the world.  We realized that we could have possibly done a camping trip that day.  We kept thinking about it, and I began thinking of whats were I could go camping this week.  We realized we could go for a overnight trip on Wednesday night.  Where should be go?  We wanted to get far away from the IE.  We questioned going on the trip due to money, but we in the end said fuck it!  This became a fuck it, lets go kind of trip.  We did not care how short it would be.  Anything was better than nothing.  I figured the beach would be the perfect place.  I used my phone and we found campsites open, but only in campgrounds up on the central coast.  The closest beach that had openings, and did not cost us an arm and a leg was Pismo State Beach, in San Luis Obispo County.  We again questioned going, but

Drive Through the San Jacinto Mountains: March 24      The day after I returned from the camping conference, I spend the day hanging out with Jane.  We did not really want to stay in the IE, so we decided to go on an adventure.  I had decided that we can go off and explore the San Jacinto Mountains.  Since I have only gone up there for TIC, it would be nice to go up there to check things out.  We drove up the 243, which is one of my most favorite mountain roads in SoCal because of how curvy the road gets.  Jane had seem to have some back issues, and was in some pain, so her mood was not exactly one to go hiking and exploring.  We stopped at Lake Fulmor.  We walked around the lake.  I thought it was a nice small lake.  Jane was not that impressed, especially with the lake water looking more brown than others.  I thought it was nice, and if we were there a little later in the year, we would see some green.  There seemed to be plenty of birds around.  We saw a few ducks swimming around.

     Every other year, 4-H Summer Camp program staff from all over California meet for a conference that is geared around camp programs.  The conference is designed to give us new ideas to bring to our camps from fun activities, how to make the campers environment the safest it can be, and to meet new people.  This was the only state wide conference I had not been to.  I was lucky enough to go this year.  The LA/SB 4-H Summer Camp Committee decided to pay the way for up to 12 staff to go to the conference.  I was one of the adults allowed to go.  I was excited.  Closer to the conference, I ended up becoming a tech team member at the conference.  Due to this, the conference waved my registration fee.  The conference was Friday March 21 to 23.  I was super excited because this was the beginning of Spring Break.        The conference was help at YMCA Camp Campbell in Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I was able to car pool with Dennis and Sallie DeYoung from Northridge.  I r

     On March 7th, I traveled with a few 4-H Technology Leadership Team members to Redwood City in the bay area.  We have been given the chance to visit the DreamWorks Animation Studies facilities of Redwood City.  An adult volunteer on the team happened to know a past high school friend who worked there, and gave us this change.  She was going to take the interested members, but a month before the trip, she got a job offer in Denver.  I took her place in being the adult in charge of getting the team members there.  I was excited.        The day started off with a team member, Amanda, and I flying up to San Jose.  Once we got to San Jose, two other team members from Santa Cruz were going to meet up with us at the airport to catch a ride with me.  First, I had to get the rental car.  This would become the stressful time of the trip.  I used Enterprise.  It seems that they did not accept debit cards at the kiosk.  All of my money, of course, was on the debit card and my credit card was