Kickball!!

That's right, today after the hike, we played kickball.  The schedule says "Gym Class," but we played kickball instead.  It was pretty cool except my team lost by one point.  Since the class is 45 minutes long, we played to 2 outs per side rather than 3.  In the second inning my team went 2 up and 2 down at the plate.  The other team had this big guy that kept kicking homeruns.  Seriously, later in the game we celebrated when we held him to a single.

We made a comeback though, and one of the guys on my team named Finley slid into home plate.  It was pretty cool because the other team threw the ball to get him out on his way home, and the slid enabled the ball to go past him.  I did pretty good myself.  I have noticed that my explosiveness has increased.

Remember that I am in the advanced van for the hikes.  Today's hike was called Switchback, which is in the mountains overlooking the ocean.  The start of Switchback is located in a parking lot and is shared with other trails like Ocean View and Zuma.  Actually, I found out today the official name is Zuma Ridge.

Switchback was tough because it goes up at a moderate rise, but it lasts for a long time.  It was doable, but still challenging.  We hiked to a creek and then hiked back.  We were told this would be a shorter hike, and once we made it back to the parking lot, we decided to go as far as we can on Zuma Ridge.

Zuma Ridge was definitely very tough as people have mentioned.  It has a steep incline and just goes on for a long time.  Today we didn't complete the whole hike because we were killing time until the end of the timed hike.  By the way, Zuma Ridge is about 4.5 miles long all the way up and has an elevation change of over 2,000 ft.  Ya, I'll probably get assigned that one sometime during my stay.

So, let's get to some pictures.  I mentioned earlier about a guy named Finley.  He is a great guy and was here for 2 weeks.  We both arrived at the same time and have been in the same group for the afternoon classes as well as the hikes this week.  I'm going to miss him next week and I hope someone as cool as Finley gets to be here next week.

Here is a group picture of today's hike at the creek.  It's not the best picture, but you can see Finley standing next to me.

I also took a couple of pictures of the creek without the group.  It was relaxing for a bit to just watch the water flow.

Then, when I was hiking up Zuma Ridge, I noticed that a blimp came across the sky.  That's right, I said a blimp.  I don't have any idea why a blimp was flying over Malibu on a Thursday morning about 10am.  However, it made for a great picture because you can see the airplane streak in the sky, the ocean, and some of the beautiful Malibu hills.  Take a look.

One of the afternoon classes today was treading.  Some people said that a lot of people across the nation do treading on Thursdays.  If it is the hot thing right now or not, I really don't care because we do it here on Thursdays.  This was my last class today and I was almost exhausted before the class began.  And to celebrate making it through, I'm going to watch part of a movie on my computer and go to bed.

Closing through for the day:  It has been said many times that the body can do more than what you think it can do.  This was proven today because I gave it 100% all day and made it through a tough hike, kickball (which was more of a workout than a game), and three afternoon classes including treading.  I'm going to bed early to be fully rested for Cardio Disco tomorrow.