Apple Picking-Swanton Apple Ranch

I planned for my friends and I to go apple picking today. Most of them said no or changed their minds the very last minute, but my very good friend Naziya and her husband joined us on our adventure.
The ranch I selected was in a town called Davenport, which is about twenty minutes north of Santa Cruz downtown. We drove on the beautiful, tree-lined freeway of 17 and then enjoyed the views of the ocean on 1-N. The ranch itself is reached after four or so miles of driving on the windy road after leaving 1-N, and had no cell phone service. We reached there finally after an hour worth of drive and Naziya and her husband joined us about thirty minutes later.
The whole ranch was brimming with life as many families were there to partake in the apple picking activity. There were rows and rows of apple trees of different varieties. I started picking them wildly without realizing that I didn't bring enough mullah to pay for them. Many of them were not in perfect shapes as one finds in Safeway or other grocery stores, but obviously, these were organic apples.
After we picked and paid for the apple, we drank tea and ate brownies in the parking lot while conversing about a variety of topics. We took pictures and jetted back to downtown Santa Cruz for lunch.
Yaseer found a Thai restaurant there and we settled ourselves in a booth. There was a really good lunch special-$6.50 for soup and an entree. We devoured the food and were done in 30 minutes with the food.
We thought about going to Santa Cruz boardwalk, but felt tired. We also had a dinner to go to in the evening so we opted out of that and drove back home. All in all it was a fun day!

Pics From My Adventures!

Discover Scuba

Paddle Boarding

Hang Gliding

Eid Mubarak!

This past Tuesday, on a perfect fall evening of October 15th, 2013, was Eid-ul-Adha. It was a workday so I had to work, but the night was reserved for festivities. One of my good friends, Farhana and I planned a dinner party at Shezan. We thought that since we are working during the day, we can celebrate this wonderful Muslim holiday at night.

Eid-ul-Adha is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims all over the world to honor the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim/Abraham to sacrifice his young, first-born son Ismail/Ishmael as an act of submission to Allah's command and his son's acceptance to being sacrificed before Allah intervened to provide Abraham with a lamb to sacrifice instead (Wikipedia).

We invited a few of our CalFriends families and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. The food was delicious and the company was even better. I had invited Hina, Hazem Bhai, and the girls along with mom to the event. Papa couldn't come due to an office dinner. Please enjoy the pictures!

My New Adventures

Hello All,
I must say I am lucky to have friends that not only allow me to push and improve myself, but to take challenges and partake in new experiences as well. Aliah, Jannah, and Sheeren are who I'd like to call my "adventurous friends". I have done so many activities with them these past years that it's difficult to remember all the good times we have shared. I have done archery, skiing, intro to scuba, intro to hang gliding, horseback riding, paddle boarding and so much more.

One of the activities I remember doing with them is archery. Aliah found this deal on Groupon or Living Social (I can't recall which) and we ended up going to Gilroy to learn how to do archery. I wasn't that bad and I hit close to the bull's eye a few times. The others were far better "archerers" than me and hit bull's eye with little to no effort. The instructor was really experienced and had good pointers on how we can improve our target practice. I saved the sheet of bull's eye that we practiced on as a keepsake.

Then we did an intro class to scuba. It was in a swimming pool of a local school. When people get scuba certified, they spend the first few classes in the swimming pool in order to learn the basics of equipment, breathing and what it feels like to be under water. I must say that was a bit disconcerting. Breathing under water is quite different than breathing air because I was breathing with my mouth the whole time and that is something I am not familiar with.  Once I became a little comfortable, it was actually fun. We hope to get certified soon as soon as we get a good deal somewhere.

Then last Sunday, we went to Half Moon Bay to do paddle boarding. It was through another Groupon deal. The weather was perfect, but the car ride to the place was not. There was a bit of a traffic jam on Highway 92 and what was a 40 minute drive, ended up being an hour and half hours long. Apparently, due to Halloween, there were many pumpkin-picking and other fall activities that were going on along the highway, thus the traffic jam. We finally made it to the place and got our paddle boards after a little training. Paddle boarding is a lot of fun. I was able to stand up quickly and stood up the whole time. Aliah did the same, but Jannah and Sheeren preferred sitting on their knees. I didn't go much further out into the ocean, because I was afraid of falling into the water and getting wet. Go figure! However, paddle boarding near the harbor was just as fun.

Then yesterday through the benefits of a Groupon membership, we got another deal for hang gliding. This time Sheeren didn't join us, but Mahin's sister, Mohua did. It was all the way in Tracy. We got lost on the way to the location thanks to all our GPS's going crazy and lost about half an hour of our lesson time.  We finally reached the place and put on the right equipment. Jannah and then Aliah were the first to go and it looked like so much fun. I went next and did pretty well. The hang glider was huge compared to what I have seen in movies. But, since we were novices, we got the wider-spanned hang gliders since it is much easier to operate them than smaller-spanned hang gliders. We didn't go up very high- about 4 to five feet, but it still was a lot of fun. You need to get certified in order to jump of cliffs. The air quality was really good so we got a little taste of the adventure. All in all, I can cross this off my bucket-list.

I still want to do kayaking, sky diving, among many other activities. I know these girls are up for that! Pictures coming soon!