Stop To Smell The Roeses

Man has it really been over a month since I have posted.

"Life moves pretty fast.

If you don't stop and look around once in a while,

you could miss it."

This is a pretty famous quote I hope all of you know it. But in the last month it has been my life. Most of you that know me well know that I have had a pretty crazy start to a my new year. LIfe has been up in the air and sometimes out of control. But the dust is starting to settle and things are looking up.

The years started out great. I took a little extra vacation time after the holiday to enjoy some time by myself doing what I love with out the holiday crowds. Well I can't say totally away from the crowds. The first thing on the list for the new year was to check out the Rose Parade.

The Rose Parade played host to an estimated 900,000 people this year. I did really feel like camping out so I skipped go to the parade and chose to just go to the post parade to view the 43 floats up close and personal. I got lucky and just so happen to talk to the right old man standing in his driveway. He had free tickets to the event and offered them up to me, saving me $20 and having to wait in line to buy them.

Me and my friend Liza squeezed our way up to the front of the crowd waiting for the gates to open and once they did we made quick to get in and start seeing the floats before the place got to crowed. Here are some of my favorite floats.

Next on the calendar was to get some surf in down in Mexico. sadly I don't have any photos from this because I didn't want to risk leaving anything in the car or getting stolen so I only took my passport, some cash and my surfboard. Here is a photo I pulled of the net. The location is out in the ocean off this little island. It was super fun I have never surfed there before so it was kind of scary. Mainly because of all the wild life around it felt very sharky. Oh well it was still fun.

After my vacation was over and I had to go back to work I had to come back to some sad stuff. One of my co-workers was leaving Billabong to move back to Chicago to start a family and move on to bigger and better things in work. It was a very sad day Brad had been a good friend to me since I started at Billabong. He is the one who got me into Mopeds and a lot of the games I play on my iPhone. He was a fun guy and he will be missed. We did a little going away gift for him.

Over the next few weeks I did some little things.

Went to my cousins Eagle Court of Honor

Attended my friend Sean Collins Memorial Paddle Out

Went to Disneyland and almost got the high score record on Toy Story

And lastly um I took a little long weekend trip to the island of

PUERTO RICO

As I said in my last blog post this trip was already planned. So about a week ago I jumped on a plan after thinking I wasn't going to get on (stand by is very stressful when you on a schedule) and headed to the bahamas. I was gone for 4 days... 4 days of non stop fun. I did more then I ever though I would do in that short of time. I think I saw every street of Old San Juan where I was staying. Checked out the old fort there. Went swimming in a nice little bay in the rain. Saw part of a huge Music Festival that their local bank was putting on. Jumped off a bridge. Snuck into a hotel to go hot tubing then went to a better hot tub on the roof of an apartment building. Ate some yummy food (this was hard to do cause I'm on a diet and everything was fried).

But the best part of the trip was going to the Rainforest. Where I did cliff diving, played on a rope swing, and slid down some natural water slides. Here is a little video from that part of the trip.

We were the only people there because it is not a place the tourist go its a locals only place.

So yeah thats been my last month and a half. Sorry if I was MIA from any of you but as you can see it was crazy and this isn't even everything there is some stuff that can't be said :)