The anniversary was a cool night with family and friends. Mara and Aiden were at the store in the beginning =). Cindy, Mark, Brook, Nelson, Lorelei, Felix, Donna, Kristine, Dan, Max, Kenny and Leslee were some of the early birds. I’d like to thank everyone who came out. Some flew in from NY and Japan. I’ve known some people for years. Some I just met. Glad finally got to meet some of my tweeps! Got to chill w/ the Fatlace fam while Ant-1, $ir Tipp, Philly, and Yusai held down the ones and two’s. Philly asked if I wanted to mix but I declined, since I haven’t mixed in years. Come to think of it, I should have! We all used to have skratch sessions when the WNKK were still kids at Eastmoor. Good times! The Wing Chun crew canceled practice to make it, now that’s love. Thanks y’all!

Thanks!
Ronnie

Last Friday I took a day off to go to Monterey with Mara and Aiden to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I love sea life and fishing, so this is one of my favorite places to visit. Last time we were here it was a spur of the moment trip and we had an hour to check everything out. Not enough time. You need at least three hours.

We started at the jelly fish area. Some of them remind me of the ones that bug Sponge Bob. The popular ones are the bright, lit orange ones. I brought a 50mm lens to capture all the action. Next stop was the Sea Horse exhibit. The magical music was hella annoying. Cool to see the sea horses though. Weird fish I gotta say. Checked out some sharks, tuna, anchovies and I finally saw an octopus moving quick! They’re smart, they are given jars and puzzles with food inside to keep them busy. The scuba dude was entertaining. He had a contract with the sharks that said “as long as you feed us, we won’t eat you”. I saw a lingcod face to face. One of these bad boys forced me to get a lifetime fishing license. Long story, I’ll get to that in another blog. Then we saw the sea otters. You otter go to Monterey!

When the sun is going down, it drops quick. If you look away, you might miss it. All I had was my iPhone and took a picture of this. There were a lot of people at the beach that day… probably because it was hot and some kind of bike event was happening.

The annual trip to FD is always fun. Having the bus at our booth made it feel comfortable to be at a race. Every year we close down the shop for race day. We bring Fatlace to the race though, so it’s all good. Our booth support team had things running like a well oiled machine. Big ups to Leslee! Team F/Stop was holding down the photos. José was running things on the track. Kenny, Andy, Mark and Felix all took awesome photos! Peep their blogs. It was my first time shooting on the island, and it was hella fun. I got some quick pointers from José that helped me get some cool shots. He also loaned me a 24mm-70mm lens while I was at the island. Thanks man! The only battle photos I have are of the controversial “one more time”. My opinion is that it should have happened the same day. The rest of the shots are practice runs for the top 16. That’s why the cars are so far apart. Next time, I’d like to shoot more heated battles.

Good to see some old and new friends. I ran into Sean from FLA who I met years ago. Last time I saw him was when my cousin was caught by a popo w/ a bad attitude doing a manji. At the booth was Jei “The Pho King”, Jay with the sick LS1 GS, Phil 360, Calvin, Tyler, Jose, John and Yu to name a few. It was nice to chill with a brewski at a sunny day like that.

On the way home I rode in the bus. That ride has a lot of character. It’s a panel bus shipped from Germany. You don’t see a lot of them around here. The sliding door with no side windows is hella rare. Inside you can see surf related stickers from around the world. That thing has history.

Not that much blur here, but I’ll take it!

The next shots fit my criteria for decent blur and crisp stickers.

Feeling a bit hungry, we ventured into the crowded restaurant filled streets of North Beach. It was sunny and this meant that tons of people were out. Restaurants were packed and it was tough to maneuver the stroller around some of the people eating outdoors. There was no room for a stroller in any of the restaurants on the main strip, so we decided to go to Bocce Cafe which is a few blocks from all the madness. Not many tourists go there. I ordered a Filet Mignon and Mara had Ravioli. The food there is always good! If you go there at night, they have live jazz playing. When it was dessert time, Aiden let us know he was ready to go home, haha. We ended up getting a pint of mint chip at Baskin Robbins on the way home.