October 11, 2002. We drive to Vegas, pick up Jason’s sister, Jennifer (AKA chauffeur for the weekend) and drive to the North Rim of Las Vegas. We made it around 7:30pm and had dinner at the cafe near the North Rim Lodge. Having not reserved a campsite due to Jason’s poor trip planning, we decided to throw our tents down at an “empty” campsite at the North Rim Campground, though the tenants of the campground were just really late. At around 10:30pm, they arrived at their campsite and we had our mediator, Rebecca (AKA Jansen’s girlfriend) talk them into letting us stay. After some loud tent setting noises and dog barks, everyone got some nice quality sleep time.

October 12, 2002. Jason’s Birthday. We decided to get up at 5:30am some that we can make it to the trailhead by 6:30am (sunrise). Unbeknownst to me, Arizona’s time is actually the same as California during the summer (daylight savings). Now, I knew this to be true, but thought daylight savings was from Nov-Apr, which was very incorrect.

Nonetheless, we made it to the trailhead at 5:30am and wondered, “Where is the sun?” and decided to start hiking in the dark with our flashlights. We made very good time going downhill with me leading at a brisk pace and made it to Phantom Ranch, 14 miles from the North Rim, at a little pass 10am.

We had lunch there and met up with 2 older guys who are teachers from the Phoenix area. They had hiked down from the South Rim and were planning to hike back up the same trail. We chatted for a bit and it was there that we found out how early it was…thinking that it is 11am instead of 10am. That’s actually not that bad of a thing as we just earned ourselves an extra hour!

At that point, we were actually going to take the Bright Angel Trail up to the South Rim, but during the chat with the other two hikers, we were convinced to take the shorter, but steeper climb up the South Kaibab instead. We would then catch a bus or find some other means to reach Jennifer who drove around to the South Rim to pick us up.

Well, the climb up took much longer and even though we started about 30 minutes before the other two guys, they caught up to Jason and me (as Jason decided to take frequent scenic view stops) about 3 miles from the end. Jansen and Rebecca were quite ahead of us, but we all met up at a stopping point about 2 miles from the South Rim. From there Jansen and Rebecca took off ahead of us and Jason and I decided to hike up with the other 2 guys a bit later on. Of course, my left calf decided to cramp badly (5 seconds of shaking pain is not fun) and I had to stop, stretch, massage to shake that off. I didn’t have too much problems after that, but I decided to be more careful and try to avoid using that muscle too much.

Finally, we made it up to the South Rim, but Jansen and Rebecca were nowhere in sight. So Jason and I decided to take the bus and try to find Jennifer ourselves…figuring that’s what Jansen and Rebecca were trying to do as well. We actually beat them to our meeting point since we had since guidance as to how to get to the other trailhead from our hiking friends, but since Jansen had the walkie-talkie, he got a hold of Jennifer and got picked up while Jason and I waited for an hour.

In the end, it was a great trip, after some soreness and in particular my not being able to lift my right leg up without some aid from my hands, everyone is now feeling just fine and ready to go again next year.

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After such a long hiatus, you must be wondering, “What happened to that Kevin guy?” Fear not, he is back and he is going to ramble some more.

I have come to realize the getting into laziness is really easy and coming out of laziness is really hard. That and the fact the Blizzard keeps on making addictive games, does not help matters much either. I sense a “Warcraft III” section on this webpage very shortly. This would be very interesting.

Anyways, I am going to outline how to get out of laziness. Notice that this is not in the advisory section and it is because this will be a test stage…for me. I think getting out of laziness before my first full time job is a good thing.

1. Do the little tasks that need to be done. Build up non-laziness techniques slowly.
2. When in doubt between doing something constructive and doing something non-constructive. Never mind, you know which one you should do and you should do that one.
3. Set your mind to reward yourself after the tasks are done…not before.

Haha, I can now write a book on this and make millions and be lazy again. Stay tune next week for “How to waste your life away with Warcraft III”.

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Job Search

1. Try everything. The worse that they can do is reject you and then you are really no worse off than if you did not try in the first place.
2. Personality counts. When all things are equal, as in the case of the present job crunch market place, personality is really what stands out. You should just be yourself and not be nervous and the rest will take care of itself.
3. Find the right employer. It is often easier said then done, but part of the problem now is that people will jump at the first job that comes to them. This may very well be disappointing should your boss and you end up butting heads more often then not. If you are taking the first offer, think about it before jumping into it.

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