One of the California’s Largest Water Parks is located in San Dimas, a mere 15 minutes drive from my house. The close proximity and scorching temps makes Raging Waters an awesome Saturday get away. This place was packed.. maybe it was MC hammer and Tyrese or maybe it was just the hot hot day. Either way it was filled with long lines and long waits, but worth the half day of water splashing fun. Hiroko and I had a blast. Visit foxybingo.com, go shopping, hit the movies-- there is so much to do in southern california, but when the sun is out nothing beats the water park. If you have the energy, it is the place to be.


On my Knees


On my Back


Here we go! Hiroko Otsuka Hsieh


Hiroko Otsuka Hsieh


Hiroko Otsuka Hsieh


Me and Hiroko working our way up the stairs to the dragon ride.

These last two weeks has been a blessing. We adopted a dog into our family. His name is Teddy. We first saw him on the 9th of July J walking and stopping traffic on Halliburton. Melissa jumped out of the car to catch him but gave up after a block of chasing. I even tried chasing him, but gave up. He didn’t want us near him. The next day Hiroko saw him and stopped her car. Teddy trotted over and we took him home. We found out that one of the family near were we found him has been feeding him and posting posters to find his owner. We listed posting on craigslist. Went and checked for Microchip tag at the shelter. No claims for him. Nearly two weeks later, and $500+ on vets and supplies, Teddy is now officially ours. We gave him the name Teddy because he looked like a Teddy Bear. His Japanese name is Kuma which means Bear.


Teddy and Hiroko


Teddy and Hiroko Otsuka Hsieh


Teddy Kuma Hsieh


Teddy Kuma Hsieh


Teddy Kuma Hsieh


Teddy Kuma Hsieh

Thanks to our beloved Independence Day me and Hiroko got friday off. We headed towards Sequoia to climb Moro Rock’s South Face. Little did we know that this little trip will turn into the most epic experience in our lives. Our ascent day started at about 6 am. We didn’t have a good night sleep so we decided to just get started early. Moro Rock is this..


The parking lot is on the North side of the rock. The right side of the picture above. We got to the parking lot at 7 am and started our descent to the south side (right side of the picture). What I thought was going to be a quick approached turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour nightmare. Bushwacking, motionless air, hot weather, bugs, loose gravel, rocks and pine needles made it a horrible approach. Once we got to the bottom of the south face we still had to find the beginning to the first pitch. The poor description from summit Post described a 3rd class ascent up a gully. Well there were more than one. I roped up scrabbled sketchy loose terrain and ended needing to come back down cause it was the wrong gully. We finally climbed up the wright one and our Journey becomes epic.

I thought that 3 liters of water would be enough for the both of us however, due to the sweaty grunt down and the high altitude we were running low on water before we even started the climb.

Pitch 1: This was a fairly fun pitch that started at a small tree in a crack. The climb follows the crack the tree is in, then moves up a flake. Then some 5.8+ cracks that are fairly shallow. Everything went smoothly.

Pitch 2: Fun dihedral to runout slab climbing. When I got to the top I realized I forgot to bring up the Mad Lock Belay device. Luckily I remembered how to use the Munter Histch. Which worked quite well. We started to get very very low on water...

Pitch 3: Not worth mentioning other than I used a hip belay.

Pitch 4: up a few ledges and slab. Our limps and tongue are drying out.

Pitch 5: Long exposed pitch protected by knobs. Fun climbing, but a lot of rope drag. Things are getting very serious, we are down to two sips of water. Our lips are dry, our mouths are dry, our throats are drying out. I am started to get very worried.

Pitch 6: Easy climbing, leads to two bolt belay ledge. We open the camelbak to any available drop. We are not sweating much anymore. Dehydration is getting very bad.

Pitch 7: 140 feet of 5.7-5.8 climbing protected by 1 mediocre nut and 1 very crappy crappy slinged knob. Though it was run out I was never wigged, probably because I was in survival mode. I told Hiroko to just leave the nut because it took too much time to take out and we are running out of time.

Pitch 8: Some more climbing

Then 600 feet of death march scramble. This was probably the most of scary parts. No rope and the scrambling is very expose, not to mention that we are tired and extremely dehydrated. When we finally got to the top we were greeted by two lovely ladies that gave us water. That was God’s blessing. Here is our picture at the top.


The hike down was both a feeling of victory and relief. We were greeted by many people curious about our adventure. I must say, Me and Hiroko are very thankful that God was watching over us. I was so proud of my Hiroko during and after the climb. She climb so well. I wished I had pictures of the climb to show, however we were busy surviving. She not only the pain and dehydration, but she never complained. My Hiroko is the best.

After this epic adventure we decided that camping will not be an option. We headed down to fresno and stayed at the La Quinta. Next day Me and Hiroko headed to home, but stopped at differnt places. Solvang, Pismo Beach, SLO, Ostrich Farm etc etc.


Solvang


Ostrich feet looks like dinosaur feet.


Ostrich

Hiroko feeding Ostrich. Look she is smaller than the bird.


Hiroko Otsuka Hsieh with Ostrich and Emus.


Emu

When we got back my oldest friend (Eric Meza) is having a large 4th of July party. We had our own illegal fireworks.


Roman Candles


Those are our own fireworks.


Then the cops came.


Bad Boy Bad Boy Whatcha Gonna do Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?


Some Random Picture at Josh’s