CPTBadAss and Dorkvader Roadtrip Across the USA [Writeup+Pics Completed]

[Input Nirvana]

Frankly, I just see a couple chumps that didn't make it to Nor Cal. Didn't call, didn't write,

Sounds like it was fun and your lives are better for it.

Don't mind me, I'm just very, very bitter

cptbadass is a chump. I don't have your number or I would have called for sure.......

You woulda called? Really? U has fon? Don't lie 2 me. Did u get intertoobz again? Rn't u intertoobz challenged? Virginia haz intertoobz? Virginia has fon?

Post more pics.

Chumps.

[demik]

Where's demik! And the Fiat 500.

demik took the pic of ming, cpt, dork and sherry

and here is the almighty fiat

[HoffmanMyster]

Loving all pictures, CPT!  Looks like a really fun time. 

[Melvang]

Where's demik! And the Fiat 500.

demik took the pic of ming, cpt, dork and sherry

and here is the almighty fiat

Show Image

STEP ON THE BIG BUG!! Oh never mind thats just a car.

[CPTBadAss]

Ok the picture are finally all uploaded. I took a lot...a lot. If you wanna see them raw (i.e no context) you can check them out on my Flickr.

I will post the other really important part of my trip though: The food porn. Yes, I'm a huge foodie.

So the first day (Monday 10/14), we had thai food and In N Out. Day two (Tuesday 10/15)? We step up the eating game. I try sangak for brunch, Blockheads Ice cream for afternon snack, and home style Japanese food for dinner! And? Sheraton snipes the dinner bill with the most baller of moves. Apparently he's got an Originative business credit card? Yeah, truly #legitballin. Check this out:


This incredible oven makes...

This Iranian flat bread called sangak! It's like naan but way chewier and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Me and Ming ate SO MUCH of it.

If you know me, you know I love ice cream. Ming takes me to this place called Blockheads where they do snowcream. So its like shaved Hawaiian ice but instead of ice, they freeze blocks of ice cream. It had this crazy creamy but light texture and the ice cream flavors were so Asian.


My black sesame sundae with Oreos, condensed milk, and rice cakes

My eaten sundae next to Kawa's green tea ice cream sundae that had red beands, condensed milk, and rice cakes

Dinner time!


Lotus root, tastes like a meaty potato

Japanese style fried chicken

Miso soup

Fresh tofu

My soba with a duck and scallion dipping soup

Ming got soba with tempura

Sherry and demik got Oyakodon, which is a rice dish with soft scrambled eggs and chicken and soy sauce

And mother****in' boba! I got matcha green milk tea with boba.


Wednesday (10/16), I find myself alone for a few hours as Ming drives dorkvader from the airport to the car. That's ok! I find real ramen to eat . It also had the best condiment dispenser I've ever seen:


LOL. It sprinkled sesame seeds

But dinner was...KOREAN BARBEQUE. I'm a bit tired so the names of the dishes are eluding me at the moment but here we go:


BANCHAN. That spread kid.

The grill. And in the corner, was the salad that Demik couldn't get enough of.

Beef brisket!

Beef short rib and shrimp!

Omelette with leeks and seafood

Sweet potato noodles stir fried with veggies

Spicy tofu soup with rice

Thursday morning we went to a cafe in LA before we start driving. Ming got a cheese pastry and this raspberry pastry thing. I got an apple strudel and a ham on baguette sandwich. Dorkvader got this amazing quiche.


Raspberry pastry

Ham sammich

Next time we eat well was Friday. Jdcarpe took us to this Tex-Mex place and I got Beef Tongue tacos. Holy **** those were good. And we had hibachi for dinner. I had steak and so did tjcaustin. Dorkvader got scallops. Good food, ****ty service.

Last meal we had that was amazing was Saturday (no counting Chick Fil A, my favorite fast food) when we had this feast at mashby's:


I saw fire and ran outside!

This insane pork chop that had loin, pork belly, and rib on it. Roasted asparagus and potato on the side. Vanilla and butterscotch sundaes for dessert.

Guys seriously, we *always* eat this good at meetups. Come for the keyboards, stay for the food.

[HoffmanMyster]

Wow CPT, that food....    Looks so good.

Now I need to go eat some ice cream...

[Patchwrks]

late reply but your trip looked like so much fun!  if I wasn't so busy when you took it I could have come to blacksburg as I live in Richmond, 2.5 hours away

[CPTBadAss]

Not late at all, I still havent finished my write up for the trip haha. And we might meet up again in Blacksburg so keep an eye out for a post .

[noisyturtle]

Mmmmmm, looks so yummy

[CPTBadAss]

Part One

To preface this whole thing, I like to eat a lot and already uploaded my food pictures. They’re unorganized in my flickr album and explained here.

So we know about my Sunday (10/13/13) and Monday (10/14/13). If you don’t check out these posts from Sunday:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six

And then on Monday, I did this.

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More Epsilon lubing photos!

Tuesday (10/15/13) we got up and played with mkawa’s  3D printer again. A little summary of my day can be found here. I had a blast designing and printing stuff. Mkawa and I were working on a soldering spool to hold about three ounces of solder:

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Modeling that soldering spool

Smallfry the Makerbot Replicator 2


The spool!


Spool put into Edsyn TH107 tool
 

Had some breakfast after that and Ming introduced me to sangak! Talk about it a bit here and headed over to a camera store so I could score some goodies for my new camera.  Kinda messed around after and ended up at the local Japanese grocery store. They had a few green tea KitKats:

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The mountain

Mkawa takes his snacks seriously

Then I had some amazing ice cream:

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Dinner and food pictures shown here. We introduced demik to homestyle Japanese food! We hung out at mkawa’s after and Mkawa’s ladyfriend said the funniest thing. We’re (Sherryton,  demik, myself, and mkawa) all piled into kawa’s room, playing with keyboards…

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The SSKR!!

One of mkawa’s many SSKs

Seriously, dude has a lot of SSK parts

KMAC and KMAC2





Some mediocre pictures of GMK’s colors

Parts 2-4 on the next page

[CPTBadAss]

Part Two

…and she comes to check out what’s going on and says, “I’ve never seen this many people in this room. Awww, Mkawa has friends!” And the only reason I tell this story is to get back at Ming for introducing us to the Edsyn people as his “nerd cadre from his nerd army”.

So at this point I’ve hung out with demik and Sherryton for a while and they’re cool dudes. Everyone is super chill and fun to chat with. Plus I’m always really into anyone who can feed me good food haha. Demik and I were bonding hard over Wu Tang and hip hop. Sherry and I were bonding over food and just cracking jokes all the time. He’s so dead pan and delivered all his jokes with a straight face.  Good times. And Ming? Ming is just the same way he is on the forums that he is in real life. He’s super energetic, pours out information all the time, and gets really excited over things (Which is awesome!).  Plus he drives the most absurd Fiat 500 ever. It’s seriously louder than a Harley and Ming’s driving is insane. He flutters the gas pedal and since his turbo is crazy, you can hear the PSSHHTT all the time. It goes 0-60 MPH in 4.5 seconds and Ming drives so crazy, we joked we wanted disposable pants and shirts that say “I survived the Fiat 500”. Ladyfriend straight up told me that she refused to drive anywhere with him.

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The Mingsane Fiat 500

JUST AS ARTSY WHEEL PICTURE

Super cool Abarth logo shot

Anyways, Wednesday morning, Dorkvader comes into town. But since the little Abarth can’t fit everyone, Ming drops me off and I wander the neighborhood he lives near in West Los Angeles. Of course it being me, I wind up eating some amazing tsukemen style ramen. I was *very* happy that morning  . After I just did my own thing for a while until I got picked up a couple hours later.  My own thing meant walking off a food coma, looking at plushies, and buying drinks/snacks at the market. #YOLO

Eventually Sir Kawa picks me up again and we head over to where the car is. I then meet Dorkvader for the first time in person. And of course we get cracking on fixing up our ride for the next few days:

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My home for the next three days

I’m all about these super cool shots

SUPER ARTSY ENGINE BAY SHOT

Acura RSX Type S

Am I typing on an SSK while watching Dorkvader practice driving? Damn right

Dorkvader brought my SSK back to me!

Got my hands dirty helping to fix up the RSX: helped with an oil change, swapped in a new timing belt, and helped torque some bolts. I was semi-useful and didn’t get in the way. I call that mission accomplished!

I had a good time hanging out with Dorkvader and mkawa that day. We just worked on some cars, shot the ****, and relearned how to drive a manual. Mkawa gave Dorkvader some pointers and Dork just went forward and back in the little parking lot for a few hours. And then Dorkvader sat me down and we drove around this mental health ward parking lot and mkawa’s driveway. I’m sure the employees were wondering if we belonged inside instead of doing laps at 5 mph outside. Also I was pro at stalling the car. Just saying that I think I have a special talent at stalling a vehicle.

We met up with the rest of the LA crew around 4 pm and Dorkvader got to meet Sherry and demik. And of course, there were a couple more keyboards. Sherryton brought a G80-5000 and HHKB to keep my SSK company!

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IBM PN 6019273

Sherryton’s G80-5000!

We hung out for a little while and we headed out to get some Korean barbeque. On the way, we bumped Wu Tang and Snoop Dogg when I found out we were going to drive near Slauson Ave. I’m so cool . And mkawa told us an amazing story where he drove into South Central LA to try and get “bean cakes” from a member of the Nation of Islam. Apparently he had gone into the hood to try and get snacks and was snubbed since he’s Asian hahaha.

If you wanna see the Korean BBQ pictures, check out the pictures here. The crew was kind enough to let me be super Asian and take pictures of all the food before devouring it. Restaurant was Chosun Galbi and was *super efficient*. I just remember the waitresses bringing out all the banchan, filling the table with food, and demik just going WTF, WHAT’S GOING ON. We were all like dude, shut up and eat . I think it was DorkVader’s first time eating KBBQ as well and I think he was really enjoying it. I know I ate a metric ton of food that night. And then demik kidnapped us to go to Blockheads for more ice cream .

We hung out for a few hours and then I bid a tearful goodbye to the LA crew:

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Mkawa, Dorkvader, Myself, Sheraton, Demik taking the picture

Demik reppin’ the Wu

Thursday morning, Mkawa, DV, and I have a final breakfast. Then we started our epic fourty three hour ish journey. First day was pretty boring. We literally drove for eleven hours I think? From L.A. to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Some pictures of our journey:

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>

Coolest things to happen that day? We found a museum dedicated to tanks and General Patton:

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Tanks![/ i]

M63 Tank

Dorkvader killin’ it in Kendama, tank style

[CPTBadAss]

Part Three

I taught Dorkvader how to play kendama. And I freaked out as I learned how to drive a manual in Phoenix rush hour traffic. Trial by fire baby. Me freaking out for 45 minutes, revving the engine while wondering why I couldn’t be in first gear while going 30 MPH. It was probably the worst 45 minutes of the trip and I made DorkVader feel a bit awkward. Sorry dude, thanks for sticking it out with me as I lost my calm for a little while.

I think we were just totally wiped that day. We traded driving and ate some food…for a long time. I don’t know about Dorkvader, but I was really excited just to get to Friday since we were going to stop at jdcarpe’s home and see tjcaustin. That being said, DorkVader and I had some good conversations and he’s a fun guy to chill with.

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Arizona state line!

Arizona roads


Arizona cactus!

Friday is more of the same, we drive a lot But Friday is way cooler because actually stop to see jdcarpe in Odessa and tjcaustin in Dallas. Coolest part about west Texas though? There’s the most ridiculous speed limit I’ve ever seen! 80 MPH. So DV was cruising at like 90 MPH with no worries  . For lunch, we stop at a restaurant close to JD’s homestead. It was Tex Mex and I had these AMAZING beef tongue tacos. JD is everything I thought he would be, just a super friendly dude who likes keyboards and GeekHack. He even showed up in his GeekHack shirt! I got to give him a birthday present too yay! We head back to his home to check out his keyboards…and it’s just absurd. We’re in his garage, looking at his “junk stuff”:

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Best speed limit sign ever

Never actually seen oil rigs XD

Oh you know, 40%s and a tub of switches from Cherry. No big deal.

Some of JD's keycap sets and Filcos.

Including this SICK Italian Red Filco case.

You know what’s #legitballin’? A case of MX Blacks from Cherry.

He then introduced Dorkvader and I to one of the craziest keyboard collections I’ve ever seen. Enter the insanity here. I’m especially fond of these pictures:

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Jdcarpe’s spread[size]

Little JD’s kidboard!! 1800 Alps

Half way through the visit, as jdcarpe just kept pulling out random boards from a closet, a desk, a dresser, his garage, another room….his son wakes up and hangs out with us. His favorite toy? A soldapult LOL. After playing with jd’s collection we take couple last pictures and head over to Dallas

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Me, Dorkvader, jdcarpe

jdcarpe’s dogs!

Another pleasant four hour jaunt brought us into Dallas where we met up with tjcaustin in the parking lot of the hotel! Really great timing. Oh and I got stuck on a hill….so I put the car into second gear and just rev the car like mad to get off it. Sorry mkawa and dorkvader!  Tj, myself, and Dorkvader had a pleasant hibachi dinner and then we played headphones hehe.

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It’s like having CanJam in a hotel room!

If you want my opinion on the headphones just let me know later and I can talk about them. Anyways, it was a bromantic evening filled with joking, headphones, grumbling about electronics, and laughing about our bad waitress <3. We stayed up FAR later than planned but it was worth it. I fell in love with Mad Dogs that night…

[CPTBadAss]

Part Four

At this point we’re pretty wiped. This was a haul but Saturday was the day of truth. We were to start in Dallas and end up in Cincinnati OH/Blacksburg VA. We start driving, get lunch at Chick Fil A somewhere in Arkansas and just watched the odometer roll by. We had good tunes, good talks, and plenty of snacks so the drive wasn’t unbearable, just getting old. Mashby’s house was definitely a good thing to look forward too. Too bad I’m bad at directions and made mashby panic since I can’t read road signs and tell him where we’re at . We show up the mashby’s house and he’s just scrambling to get dinner ready haha. Mashby and Hashby greet us at the door and welcome us into their home. Mashby had the spread ready to meet us:

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Mashby’s ridiculous collection[size]

Artsy shot of a Nixdorf PCB[size]

Bad shot of the Hammer case, it’s so sexy[size]

Their incredible dog![size]

Ain’t nobody got swagger like us![size]

He cooked this amazing dinner which you can see here and of course, mashby and hashby told us amazing stories. These are great people to just spend an evening with. Super nice, hilarious, and they fed me ice cream! <3 They even offered to house us for the night but we were determined to head to Cincinnati. Think we rolled in around 3 AM EST on Sunday 10/20/13. We were so beat and Dorkvader is crazy. We chilled for an hour, I passed out, then DV drove to work and arrived around 11 AM.


This trip was very whirlwind but I’m so happy I got to do it. I got to meet a lot of amazing GeekHackers and online friends, eat tons of good food, play keyboards, and just go on what might be a once in a lifetime adventure. Plus dorkvader is a really cool dude. Everyone should talk to him more hehe.

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More proof mkawa is crazy [size]

Something seems missing…[size]

Dorkvader driving like a boss[size]

Vroom vroom, I driving[size]

[CPTBadAss]

Sorry for the spam and all, the pictures were annihilating the posts so I had to reserve four posts so I could fit the whole writeup. Please enjoy and let me know what you guys think!

[Puddsy]

Wow! Looks like a ton of fun. I have no idea why I thought JD was a 17 year old boy though. He's obviously not.

I'm looking forward to the pending NYC meet.

[CPTBadAss]

Hehe, it's always fun to see how people in real life match up to your perception of them ^__^.

I may be in NYC around Christmas time. Maybe we could do a mini-meet. Just get food somewhere.

[Puddsy]

Hehe, it's always fun to see how people in real life match up to your perception of them ^__^.

I may be in NYC around Christmas time. Maybe we could do a mini-meet. Just get food somewhere.

I just wanna show off my keyboards to people who actually understand why I spend so much money on them

:|

[sherryton]

Hehe, it's always fun to see how people in real life match up to your perception of them ^__^.

I may be in NYC around Christmas time. Maybe we could do a mini-meet. Just get food somewhere.

I just wanna show off my keyboards to people who actually understand why I spend so much money on them

:|

dat feel...

[Puddsy]

Hehe, it's always fun to see how people in real life match up to your perception of them ^__^.

I may be in NYC around Christmas time. Maybe we could do a mini-meet. Just get food somewhere.

I just wanna show off my keyboards to people who actually understand why I spend so much money on them

:|

dat feel...

I don't like that feel

[CPTBadAss]

Hehe, it's always fun to see how people in real life match up to your perception of them ^__^.

I may be in NYC around Christmas time. Maybe we could do a mini-meet. Just get food somewhere.

I just wanna show off my keyboards to people who actually understand why I spend so much money on them

:|

Haha, it'll be ok man. Someday soon

[sherryton]

Hear me out!

I got an e-mail from a customer 2 days ago.  He wanted to purchase some items, and he wanted to pick up locally.  I typed up a response, and I was about to hit reply.  I looked at the person's e-mail, and I saw that his name sounded real familiar.  I looked him up, and I realized I went to middle school with this guy.  He is 2 years older than me.  I told my friend, and he contacted his brother (same class as each other).  The guy adds me on facebook, and I educate him on KEYBOARD 1 (Keyboard 101 being for noobs).

It was satisfying teaching someone I knew about keyboards!  None of my friends like mechanical keyboards

[CPTBadAss]

Hear me out!

I got an e-mail from a customer 2 days ago.  He wanted to purchase some items, and he wanted to pick up locally.  I typed up a response, and I was about to hit reply.  I looked at the person's e-mail, and I saw that his name sounded real familiar.  I looked him up, and I realized I went to middle school with this guy.  He is 2 years older than me.  I told my friend, and he contacted his brother (same class as each other).  The guy adds me on facebook, and I educate him on KEYBOARD 1 (Keyboard 101 being for noobs).

It was satisfying teaching someone I knew about keyboards!

Hehe, what a coincidence!

None of my friends like mechanical keyboards

So we're not friends anymore Sherry?

[sherryton]

Hear me out!

I got an e-mail from a customer 2 days ago.  He wanted to purchase some items, and he wanted to pick up locally.  I typed up a response, and I was about to hit reply.  I looked at the person's e-mail, and I saw that his name sounded real familiar.  I looked him up, and I realized I went to middle school with this guy.  He is 2 years older than me.  I told my friend, and he contacted his brother (same class as each other).  The guy adds me on facebook, and I educate him on KEYBOARD 1 (Keyboard 101 being for noobs).

It was satisfying teaching someone I knew about keyboards!

Hehe, what a coincidence!

None of my friends like mechanical keyboards

So we're not friends anymore Sherry?

I separate best friends and "friends" from different categories.

[Puddsy]

Hear me out!

I got an e-mail from a customer 2 days ago.  He wanted to purchase some items, and he wanted to pick up locally.  I typed up a response, and I was about to hit reply.  I looked at the person's e-mail, and I saw that his name sounded real familiar.  I looked him up, and I realized I went to middle school with this guy.  He is 2 years older than me.  I told my friend, and he contacted his brother (same class as each other).  The guy adds me on facebook, and I educate him on KEYBOARD 1 (Keyboard 101 being for noobs).

It was satisfying teaching someone I knew about keyboards!

Hehe, what a coincidence!

None of my friends like mechanical keyboards

So we're not friends anymore Sherry?

I separate best friends and "friends" from different categories.

Friends v "invisible" friends.

[CPTBadAss]

So we're not friends anymore Sherry?

I separate best friends and "friends" from different categories.

D'awww.

[sherryton]

Hear me out!

I got an e-mail from a customer 2 days ago.  He wanted to purchase some items, and he wanted to pick up locally.  I typed up a response, and I was about to hit reply.  I looked at the person's e-mail, and I saw that his name sounded real familiar.  I looked him up, and I realized I went to middle school with this guy.  He is 2 years older than me.  I told my friend, and he contacted his brother (same class as each other).  The guy adds me on facebook, and I educate him on KEYBOARD 1 (Keyboard 101 being for noobs).

It was satisfying teaching someone I knew about keyboards!

Hehe, what a coincidence!

None of my friends like mechanical keyboards

So we're not friends anymore Sherry?

I separate best friends and "friends" from different categories.

Friends v "invisible" friends.

Invisible friends?  I helped BadAss with all the food pictures!

[metalliqaz]

I'm pretty sure you mixed up a shot of the Acura's engine bay with Ming's Abarth

[CPTBadAss]

I did but now I'm realizing something else weird is going on, some of my post is just missing....

Edit: stupid bbcode errors, fixed now.

[Shadovved]

Hear me out!

I got an e-mail from a customer 2 days ago.  He wanted to purchase some items, and he wanted to pick up locally.  I typed up a response, and I was about to hit reply.  I looked at the person's e-mail, and I saw that his name sounded real familiar.  I looked him up, and I realized I went to middle school with this guy.  He is 2 years older than me.  I told my friend, and he contacted his brother (same class as each other).  The guy adds me on facebook, and I educate him on KEYBOARD 1 (Keyboard 101 being for noobs).

It was satisfying teaching someone I knew about keyboards!

Hehe, what a coincidence!

None of my friends like mechanical keyboards

So we're not friends anymore Sherry?

I separate best friends and "friends" from different categories.

Friends v "invisible" friends.

Invisible friends?  I helped BadAss with all the food pictures!

Food pictures? Or food? 

[CPTBadAss]

Invisible friends?  I helped BadAss with all the food pictures!

Food pictures? Or food? 

Yes!

[demik]

Wu tang is for the children

[tipo33]

Those headphones look interesting   Looks like you guys had fun!

[CPTBadAss]

Headphone review coming very soon tibro!

[tipo33]

Headphone review coming very soon tibro!

YAY!!  I have been researching the Fostex T50RP mods recently.  Very interesting stuff...

[CPTBadAss]

Yeah pretty much insta-bought the Mad Dogs man. Just the Fostex's were meh but modded they're incredible. I was going to mod them myself but you know what happens when a deal comes along...

[Glissant]

That was an excellent write up with a lot of really great pictures.
I am filled with great envy and a lot of hunger now. I'll just have to eat my sorrows I guess =p.

Well done, and hope I get to do something similar one day

[tjcaustin]

That was an excellent write up with a lot of really great pictures.
I am filled with great envy and a lot of hunger now. I'll just have to eat my sorrows I guess =p.

Well done, and hope I get to do something similar one day

It is glissant <3

[CPTBadAss]

When I'm back on the East Coast, we shall feast Glissbro <3

[damorgue]

Epic journey. I wish I could travel the states. Well actually, pretty much all the A's; America, Australia and Asia.