Pete Dudchenko

I went surfing again last night after work. That’s coming along well, I’m finally just starting to learn how to turn the board. Anyway I was out there last night and saw about 4-5 dolphins swimming around with us. Its the first time that I’ve seen dolphins in the wild that close before. They were probably 10 feet from my board at one point. It was very cool but at the same time a little weird to see something that big swimming around under the water near you.

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I was at the Padres game Tuesday night and had probably the two best seats in the stadium. The first was in a suite that was owned by the President of the Padres organization. The second was in his field seats which are in-between the two dugouts, right behind the catcher. My seat was Section 0, Row 1, Seat 1. I was 44 feet from the batter which is closer than the pitcher is (60′6″). We were those guys that you see on TV that are right behind home plate.

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I got rear-ended on Saturday. I’ve had the truck about a year and already its been tagged in the back twice. The first time was minor and only resulted in a small scratch to my hitch. Last Saturday was a bigger deal. I was at a stop light and looked in my rear-view mirror and saw a gray Celica coming up on me fast. The driver was looking somewhere else and didn’t realize how fast he was coming up until it was too late. He slammed on the brakes and swerved to the right but ended up hitting my back end. I could see the whole thing coming through my mirror which made it tough because I knew I was going to be hit but I had nowhere to go. I was surprised that he didn’t push me into the car in front of me.

We pulled into a plaza and I looked at my car to see the back passenger side bumper was all dinged up. Other than that though there wasn’t too much damage. His car was a different story. The front corner of his car was smashed up pretty bad. He couldn’t open his driver’s side door and it looked like part of the car was wedged into the wheel. He ended up having to get the car towed.

We swapped insurance and I went to a collision center today to get an estimate. The preliminary cost is around $1400 and I should be without the truck for about a week. I won’t have to pay anything which is good since it wasn’t my fault but what a pain. No one was hurt either which is always a good thing.

Now I’ve got to get in touch with his insurance and work out the cost for a rental car and see if they need to inspect the car before I get it fixed.

Every year around the 4th of July, I meet up with family on my mom’s side in Hilton Head, South Carolina for a mini family reunion. We usually rent two houses right on the beach, and spend the time either on the beach, on a golf course, or just recently, on my Aunt and Uncle’s boat.

This year we golfed at Hilton Head National and another course off of the Indigo Plantation. In addition we spent a lot of time on the boat water-skiing, tubing, wake-boarding and killing all the horse flies that seem to like hanging around.

Its also become a tradition between Drew, myself and all the kids to catch some crabs when the tide is going out and then making a meal out of them. This year we made a crab bisque which was pretty good.

We even got some surfing in which I didn’t think was possible there (with the smaller waves) but with our immense surfing skills we were able to pull it off. Actually the smaller waves probably made it easier. I’ll try to post some pics on my website in the near future.

So I experienced my first earthquake today. It happened about 3:30 PST. I was walking in the office and heard a tremble move through the building, although I barely felt anything. I wouldn’t have even realized it had it not been for everyone talking about it immediately afterwards. Below is a small press release:

SAN DIEGO (AP) – A 5.1-magnitude earthquake centered in Baja California shook downtown San Diego on Tuesday afternoon, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injury.

The temblor struck abut 3:28 p.m. and was centered about 60 miles west of Tijuana, Mexico, said Deborah Hedges, a spokeswoman for seismologists at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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