Old Friends

Recently I have been talking to a friend that I hadn't talked to in a while and it got me thinking how crazy it is how some friends come and go out of your life. My friends name is Lauren and I have known her since she was born. I am 5 months older then her, and our moms were best friends and still are really good friends. Her grandma was my babysitter and also hers and took on watching us together as babies... so its crazy to think that we were around eachother since before we can even remember anything! we were the best of friends as toddlers and little girls, and even went to the same pre shcool. Our parents put us in different schools when we got to kindergarden because she went to private catholic school and I went to public school. But that didnt stop us from being best friends and spending all of our time outside of school together. It had been like that all the way untill about a year and a half ago when she went to San Diego State Univ, and I came to Cal State San Bernardino. With our busy schedules and new college lifes we started slipping away from eachother and went months and months without talking. Recently I saw her because our families got together at a BBQ and we realized how much we had missed eachother. It makes me realize how sometimes friends will come and go from your life, but you will always love and cherish the times we had together.

My All Night Adventure.. Right Here Close to Home!!

In Southern California we get the opportunity to do so much. In the winter time we ski or snowboard, and go dirt bike riding and off roading in our deserts, and in the summer time we swim and go to the beach and lakes and rivers.. but why not mix it up??? For example, in the summer time it seems to hot to go riding on quads in the middle of the desert because you will burn up, so why not do what I did, (just a suggestion of course) and go in the middle of the night! sleep?? who needs it, we are young we will catch up on that another time. So after my day seemed complete and me and my friends were feeling tired and it was close to midnight, and well it seemed like we would fall into our usual routine of putting on a movie and watching untill we one by one slipt away into sleep. As we were laying there we discussed how we wanted to get out to the desert put on all our riding gear that we loved to wear so much, and hit the trails on dirtbikes and quads. But the weather still being hot we wished it would hurry and cool down so we could start heading up to the desert on the weekends. We then started throwing around the what seemed to be a crazy idea of just going at night, and everyone just ride quads, they have lights on them.. why not? well as i looked out my kitchen window to see if my neighbor (also my really close friend) was home, I quickly realized he wasn't. I immediatly got on the phone to find out where he was and what he was doing. And just as I expected he and a bunch of his buddies were sitting around a fire on the property he owned right off of the 15 freeway and Bear Valley Road. We unanimously decided if we left now, stopped at the gas station to fill up and bought a bunch of monster energy drinks, we could be there by 1am. It sounded good to us and sounded like an adventure. So i grabbed my gear bag, threw it in the back of my truck, as me and my girls piled in, and hit the road. We spent the whole night up there riding around on crazy rough trails, me driving a quad with my friend holding tightly around my waist right behind the dust of the guys on the quads ahead of us and the bouncing lights of the ones behind us with the dirt flying everywhere it was so exhilerating and adventurous. we did that till about 4 am, then sat around a fire and watched the sun come up. Then the girls and I put all of the helmets and gear back in my truck, jumped in, and drove back to my house. We walked in the door, fell straight to sleep only to be woken up a few short hours later by my parents.. and it was like the whole thing never happened!

The Great Outdoors. . . (kinda)

So a lot of people say that there is nothing to do in the inland empire. Well i think there is plenty to do. Recently a group of friends and I were sitting around and starting to think maybe there really isn't that much to do around here. Then someone came up with the great idea of maybe just doing something to just get out of the house. Do anything where we were outside because it was a beautiful sunny day. So after we decided that we were getting out... we then had to decide where to go and what we were going to do. With all the cities and housing tracts and shopping centers it is really easy to forget that there is some space out there that is just pure nature. So we all got in the car and headed over to Carnelian, a pretty known street off of the 210 freeway and not to far from my house in Upland. We then took a street called Saphire all the way to what seemed to be the foot of the mountains, and got out of the car... and decided this was it. We were going to go for a hike to the Cucamonga Falls. It was a hike a few had been on before but i had not so when i heard "falls" i was farely excited as i pictured a big waterfall. We hiked on a dirt road as it got smaller and smaller untill it turned into stepping on rocks as we followed a windy trail that crossed over a stream that got bigger and bigger as we went up. For a moment we thought either we were never going to get there... or maybe we were lost. Ruling out the lost part because we were very careful to follow the water, we soon realized it was a lot farther then we expected. Finally we could hear the water as it crashed over huge rocks.. and that was Cucamonga Falls. It was a cool little area where teenagers set up ropes to climb on so they can jump off of the large rocks into the surprisingly very very deep icy cold waters below. So for all you people with nothing to do on a sunny day, go for a hike up to the falls, its pretty cool and you will actually get the sense that there is some nature out there after a long week in the urban cities.