Eventually towards the end of the performance, they brought me up once again. But instead of a seemingly benign short dance routine like before, it seemed like they were doing something else with me..

In any case, Julie had the bright idea of having Tahia hand over the bag of potato chips to the homeless person. His reaction to Tahia’s gesture was priceless. He smiled widely, and called Tahia…

Tahia thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I knew that we were sharing one of those precious moments that I’m sure would stick in our minds for the rest of our lives. This was the kind of moment…

As we were just starting to head west on the road, we saw a cop going the other way. Just as we had passed each other, he had turned on his siren lights, which made me scared that perhaps I might…

As we were driving the road out of Monrovia Canyon Park, we had to wait for a ranger to move as his/her truck was blocking the road. It was at that time that we had noticed that they had half-closed..

..we pretty much spent the next few minutes arguing with this guy as he wouldn’t let the issue go. When we tried to explain to him that we had already done what he advocated that we do this instant…

Next, I continued onto the next hairy part of the scramble. This time, there was a bit of a longer and more involve wade through knee-deep tide pools and rocks. Again, since I was prepared to get…

…I drove up to the machine controlling the barricade, inserted the ticket to open the lever guard on our way out, and then suddenly when I pulled forward, we heard a brief crunch…

…we got back to the cafe by the car park after crossing over the bridge fronting the dam. This included a small break where Mohammed went to the reservoir to put water on his shoes to cool off…

Anyways, the road seemed busier than I would have expected for a weekday, and when we noticed that there were a ton of cars parked at a vista point, we were wondering what all the fuss was about…

I even overheard someone conversing amongst his own family saying something to the effect like “that’s why we come here; to get away from the craziness down there…” I couldn’t have said it better…

Julie was having doubts about stream scrambling, but given how dry the conditions were, I’m sure the stream scramble was now much easier than it would’ve been had we had to climb the waterfalls…

…the air was noticeably thinner up here. I guess we were just getting old now as such effects didn’t really bother us in the past (or at least I didn’t remember it)…

The force of the winds were becoming even more apparent as we were driving through the local streets along both Base Line and Etiwanda Ave. That was because we saw a handful of downed trees and…

As we were anxiously making our way up Santa Anita Ave, we ultimately got up to the twisty mountain road leading up to Chantry Flat. That was when we found ourselves following a caravan of…

And on the ridge we traversed to get up to the final climb, Frederick pointed out the fresh new rocks that had landed on the very ridge we were walking just this past Monday…

When Julie returned to the car, she dropped me some bad news as we learned that there was a NATO Summit going on at exactly the two full days that we would be spending in Cardiff…

The GPS made it seem like it wouldn’t take long to get there. However, when we ultimately got to the B869 road, we saw that the single-track road persisted and was more dangerous than we thought…

Outside, I could hear rain hitting the roof and the windows. The winds were also blowing pretty hard. The thought did cross my mind that I could very well do the 2.5-mile hike from the town of…

In any case, I definitely felt like I was coming down with something as my congestion was now stuffing my nose. Fortunately, I was so tired that I was ultimately able to sleep, and I knew that I…