March 31-April 15, 2012 - California

This is a mix of various trips/activities in the Los Angeles area.  For my birthday, my friends Jessica and David went with me to Santa Barbara for the weekend of March 31st, 2012.  We drove up on Saturday and enjoyed some wine tastings.  Lincourt was my favorite of the day, and of course I decided to join their wine club.

The following day on our drive back to LA, we stopped in Malibu to go hiking.  What an amazing view of the ocean from the top!  After our hike we treated ourselves with a great lunch at Malibu Seafood.

On April 11th, 2012 - still part of my extended birthday activities - Jessica and David surprised me and took me to Griffith Observatory after work.  I had wanted to go there for a while - so that was a fun night.  The lights of the city from up there are just amazing.

Finally there is the mud run on April 15th, 2012.  My project decided to get a big group of people together to run in the 5k Mud Run.  I really enjoyed getting muddy, but I did not enjoy the insanely steep hill we had to run (barely crawl) up during the first mile.  However running down the hill…awesome!  Then after finishing the race probably the worst thing of the day was the beyond ice cold water we had to rinse off in afterwards.  That might have been more traumatizing than the 5k!   But despite that, it was still a really great day.      

Check our some more of my photos here - Santa Barbara & Malibu Photos  and Mud Run Photos