Dang! I never thought I’d do 1,000 of anything. One thousand nights of writing in bed every night. There were a handful of dummy posts, when I just posted a meme or animated gif when I missed a day. A majority of posts are just filler, nothing important, just writing because I had to. The most important posts were the ones where I posted pictures of drawings, or what I worked on that day, or upcoming events. Now that I’ve reached a thousand I might not continue this challenge of posting a new blog post everyday. We’ll see. And to whoever reads this shit… Cheers!

I had way too much fun today painting live with the TWC gang (Together We Create) at Viva Calle. I was glued to my mural for hours, getting organized, transferring my sketch, coloring and doing the line work. It turned out a bit wonky, especially the bottom half, but I didn’t mind. It was gonna get torn down and reclaimed after the event. It was exercise in painting quickly, and in a way that bystanders can see and understand what’s happening on the wall during the process. It was also my first time in years using spray paint on a mural and only second time live-painting and vending at the same time. Major learning experience!

Today, while I was hiking, I sketched out some important periods in my life in regards to art & drawing. My earliest memories of drawing rocket ships with my cousin when we were little. Being a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fanatic and learning how to draw them like the cartoon. Being bored in middle school classes and doodling on my class work. Taking my first art class, meeting other artists and acquiring my first sketchbook in high school. In junior college, still uninterested in class, my first job working in a clean room and going out and doing graffiti at night. I haven’t figured out which specific events I’d like illustrate to cover the last 20 years of my so called artsy-fartsy life.

I should have made this announcement sooner, but here it is. My exhibit at the Martin Luther King Library, originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic, is now back on! I'll have my work on display from early October till late November. I'm very excited and a little bit nervous. This exhibit will be almost ten years to the day since my last solo show. Wish me luck!

It never is but I’m walking away from this now. I would have liked to have washed it to get all the red chalk dust off of it, and to have spent more time cleaning up letters with the white paint as well. On Friday they’re having an Easter event, and I have a dentist appointment, so I had to wrap it up Thursday night.

This morning I paid off the remaining balance from my car loan from my phone while sitting the toilet with a bidet on it. Technology FTW!

I knocked out 10 miles of new trails Monday afternoon at Grant Park. That leaves me with approximately 5 miles of trails to hike before I can say I’ve hiked all of Joseph D. Grant County Park.

I went on a 7.59 mile hike today and I’m closing in on my goal of hiking every trail at Joseph D. Grant County Park. I still have about 15.5 miles of trails to cover, not including the distance to reach those trails. I’m hoping I can finish in the next 2-3 visits.

I hiked a few new trails at Joseph D. Grant County Park and took some pictures. I’m almost done hiking every trail there. It’ll probably take me 3-4 trips to cover the perimeter and a couple more to hike the trails I missed.

This is my 500th blog post! It'd be cool if I had some profound shit to write about. Instead I'm sharing the collection of maps I've printed, highlighted and carried with me on my hikes over the last couple months. I've thrown them away and fished them out of the trash at least twice now and I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with them.

The whole thing started after Covid struck and my gym was forced to close. I started going to Lake Cunningham Park to walk & run until that got boring so I started hiking the Eagle Rock Trail at Alum Rock Park. I kept hiking the same trail over & over till I decided to explore the rest of the park. In November I decided I was going to hike every trail at Alum Rock before the end of the year. I finished Alum Rock sooner than expected and moved on to the Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve and managed to hike all those trails before New Years. Now I'm working on completing Joseph D. Grant County Park and I'm about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way done. Since Grant Park is so big, and has tons of trails, I've been selecting my route and printing a portion of the map (middle pic) to carry in my pocket. When I get back home I highlight the trails I hiked that day on to the full map (bottom.) I'm hoping to finish Grant Park in February and starting someplace new. I'm thinking Ed R. Levin Park.

Wednesday morning I'm setting out to hike the last last, and longest, trail at Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve. I've hiked every other trail there but none are as difficult as the Lower Calaveras Fault. My alarm is set and I'm scheduled to arrive and start hiking at 9:00 AM. I don't know how long it's going to take, probably 5-6 hours, but I'm gonna give myself time to stop and rest and make it back before the preserve closes at 4:00 PM. I'll be wearing my newly acquired sock liners, underneath my regular socks, for the first time. They're supposed to prevent blisters so we'll see how that goes. I'm excited to finally check this trail off the list. In November I set out to hike every trail at Alum Rock Park before the end of the year and finished earlier than expected. I sure as hell didn't think I'd hike all of Sierra Vista before 2021 as well. Next on my hit list is Joseph D. Grant County Park since my buddy and I already carved out a 5.5 mile hike there a couple weeks ago.

I went on a 4.6 mile hike today and finished the last bit of the Upper Calaveras Fault Trail at the Sierra Vista Preserve. I also saw a bobcat on the trail. All I gotta do now is hike the Lower Calaveras Fault Trail and I’ll have done all the trails at Sierra Vista. My goal is to finish it before the end of the year, which is in three days.

For as long as I’ve been around, and before I was born, my dad’s side of the family always got together to celebrate on Christmas Eve. It’s always been a big deal for the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces & nephews. It’s a long running tradition that had to be canceled this year because of Covid. Yes, it’s a bummer but today wasn’t a bad day. I hiked a couple more trails at the Sierra Vista Preserve this afternoon and got a little bit closer to completing the whole space. I just need to do the Upper Calaveras Fault Trail, east of the Cutoff Trail, and the Lower Calaveras Fault Trail, which is a doozy. Just the Lower Calaveras Fault alone is almost 10 miles round trip and a 5-6 hour trek. I’m thinking of doing one hike to finish the Upper portion and coming back another day, nice & early, to knock out the Lower part. Depending on the weather the next few days, and how much it rains, I might be able to 100% complete the preserve before the new year.

I had a great Saturday evening full of love, warmth, care & respect, to say the least, and I’m very thankful for everyone & everything that made this evening possible!

🍄

Today I finally finished hiking every trail at Alum Rock Park, and as an added bonus, walked down a steep dilapidated old road that’s not on the map. Next on the agenda is to hike the Open Space Authority trails. (Green lines on the map below) I hiked a little bit of the Boccardo Loop Trail yesterday and fell in love with it.

About a month ago I set a goal to hike every open trail at Alum Rock Park before the end of the year. Today I thought I was going to finish but then realized I missed a couple short trails that both cross Penitencia Creek. (circled on the map below) There’s water running down the creek so I’m not going to cross it. Instead I’m going to walk both sets trails from each side of the creek and be done with it. Next I’ll finish hiking the Boccardo Loop Trail, part of the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority, which I hiked for the first time today and absolutely loved.

This afternoon I went over to Orange Moon Salon to hang my four drawings. They'll be on display there for a while. Go make an appointment to get your hair did and check out my art. Tonight I finished my last two drawings for Inktober 2020. The 30th is my face, all beat up, broken & undead. The 31st, which is Halloween night, I drew a trick or treating kid with tentacles wearing a ghost costume holding up 6 candy buckets. This was my fourth year doing Inktober.

365 posts! Most of them are shit but the daily exercise has helped me with my writing and it's encouraged me to continually work on other projects. The other benefit is if Instagram ever turns off the lights, or people move to other social media platforms, I'll still have all my content available here.

I'm getting ready to file my taxes so I went thru last years tax stuff and found I picture I drew of myself. It was my first year filing business income & expenses for 2018 and it took me a few weeks to go over all my records and file. It sucked while I was doing it but felt great once I finished. I think I did better job at keeping records for 2019 so it shouldn't take as long as last year.

I had nice streak going. There were a few cheater posts, where I couldn't think of anything so I'd just write a few words or post some drawings, just to say I posted something. I did 56 straight days in a row. I'm a little bummed out that I missed a day. I wanted to make it at least to 100. Oh well.

And in other womp-womp news, it doesn't look like that vending opportunity in downtown is gonna go thru. We'll see.

At the two events over the weekend I noticed I was out of Large t-shirts in all styles. Yesterday, when I did inventory, I saw that I was out of a few other sizes & styles too. It's time to reprint more shirts so today I went thru my sales history to see what sizes sell faster and which sizes sit in inventory longer. When I added up all my shirts that have gone out it's an even 200! I couldn't believe it. I thought it would take at least a couple years to reach that number but I did it in 15 months. I'm super stoked about this milestone but also about my short sales history that will help me make better decisions going forward.

​Thank You to everyone that wears my t-shirts!