Our Family
It’s just so difficult to get us all together for a photo these days!
2014 Fujimoto Family Portrait
Our Family
Category: Slice of Life
Our Family
Injury and Recovery
Just a quick note that my right knee has been hurting for a couple of weeks now. I was pushing off while skateboarding using my right leg, and it was angled a little crooked and I heard/felt a pop come from the knee area. That night it really swelled up and hurt, and the next day it was really difficult to walk. However, it has been getting better and today (two weeks after my injury) I went for a run. It was only about two miles, but felt great and the knee didn’t hurt too much. I really want to keep in some kind of shape while my knee heals fully, and I was going crazy not being able to run. I have, however continued to skate, but just practicing carving bowls and pumping – nothing where I might twist my knee.
And just if you are wondering, the reason I pushed crooked is because when growing up, I always skated “mongo”, which means I pushed with my front foot. This is not the preferred way to push, so I am switching to normal. In fact, when I am skating during my injury, I will push mongo as there isn’t much chance to injure my knee further.
In other skateboard news, I got some new wheels! They are very fast! Maybe I will post again about those new goodies.
Skateboarding
Last month when we visited my brother and nephew in Hawaii, they showed us some pictures from when they traveled to Japan. In some of the photos, they were skateboarding around the city and it looked so cool and fun! So, when we returned home to Texas, I decided that I wanted to get a new board and skate more. And… it would be cool to skate with my sons too! I bought each of them a new skateboard, and I upgraded my old setup with a new deck and wheels.
The setup that I was using was actually a strange combination of 7.75 inch wide deck, some Gullwing trucks and Vision wheels, circa 1995. The deck was given to us as a wedding gift from Mariko’s friend. So, that was a real frankenboard. I decided to first upgrade the wheels with softer and wider OJs (so smooth!), and then followed up with a 9 inch wide deck which I found at Fast Forward. I was surprised that that store had a deck in the size and shape I wanted (the tail is flat)! However, I had to get rid of the graphic on the bottom, so I took the orbital sander to it and smoothed it out to the wood. That layer of wood was actually stained a bright pink! Not my first choice of color, but I think it actually looks kind of cool especially with the translucent blue OJs. I am covering up the pink slowly with stickers though!
Bay Learning how to Ollie
The top of the deck was stained red, and I knew I wanted to customize the top and put clear tape on it. I think that it is such a great opportunity to customize your board, rather than just slapping black tape over the whole thing. I must be in the minoirty though, since only longboarders seem to care about the tops of their boards. Anyways, I went with a large seal design from a chop (hanko or stamp) I got in Hong Kong many years ago. And for fun, I put a small sticker up top that I found in Osaka. It’s very otaku.
I was so happy when Bay and Koa said they also wanted to customize their boards! Bay painted two white stripes on top, and “No. 1” since it is his first skateboard. Koa went with a hexagon pattern for his griptape. They both turned out great!
We are fortunate to live near a city-owned skatepark, and i’s really nice one! There is a street section, a small pool, and a large pool. Since the kids are pretty much total newbies, we started out practicing a lot at their school parking lots and basketball courts. But now we also like going to the skatepark and practicing going down the small ramps. We also go into the bowls and practice fakeys and pumping to keep up the speed. It’s so much fun! As for myself, I’ve been able to get over halfway up the side of the deep end of the pool. I still can’t drop in, but I am improving every time we skate, and so are the kids!
I’m really glad that the kids are enjoying it. I hope they continue for a long time! And inspired by Kevin and Taylor, we want to bring our skateboards when we travel!
Fusion Food
A nice thing has been happening at my office: Food Trucks! Once in a while we’ll have a food truck parked outside the building some of them have really interesting lunch selections. A few of the trucks have served what I’d call fusion food, which is a combination of two (or more) types of food. For instance, I had some bulgogi quesadillas (combining Korean and Mexican cuisines). It sounded like a great combination and I was excited to try. I expected it to be delicious!
At first, it did taste yummy, but about halfway through I kind of just wanted bulgogi with rice, or a regular quesadilla. This dish reminded me of some kind of concoction you’d make from leftovers. For instance, say I have some leftover bulgogi from a restaurant, but I don’t have any rice to go with it. However, I do find some frozen tortillas so I substitute that for the rice. In the case of the bulgogi quesadillas, I didn’t feel the combo was better than the original foods, which have been “perfected” over many years already. I did enjoy the quesadillas (the bulgogi was yummy!), but felt like it missed the mark a bit.
On the flipside, I tried the “Kimchi Fries Burrito” which was AMAZING! I think the ratio of flavor leaned towards the Korean side of things, with the fries reminding me of the potato you sometimes get as a side dish at Korean BBQ. The tortilla and cheese were probably only about 10% of the taste. I’m guessing I enjoyed the Kimchi Fries Burrito more than the quesadilla because of the fact that it was more true to one side of the combination rather than a 50-50 split.
So I guess what I realized is that with fusion food, as with all other things, you really need to try before you form an opinion. Also, the more I think about it, I tend to like the extremes of things and if you are going to do something, go all in.
Regarding the food in this post, the quesadilla and burrito were from Chilantro, and the nachos (which were super!) in the photo are from Guac n Roll.
Kindle
Amazon announced a new e-reader, the Kindle Voyage. It looks so great, and of course I want one. But for $199? That seems pretty steep… so as I look at the current Kindle lineup (the dedicated e-reader, not the Fire tablet), my choice would be the Paperwhite. Bay has one, and the backlight is so great and convenient. If you don’t know, I have a Kindle Keyboard – it’s the one that has keys on the bottom. I still love it because the battery lasts forever. And it has something the others don’t have: speakers and a headphone jack. It’s a really nice feature actually… I have a bunch of nice classical piano and guitar mp3s on the Kindle, and it’s great to have that play softly as I read.
In short, the new Kindles are cool, but my old Kindle is still chugging away, and shows no signs of slowing down. 🙂
