50 Restaurants in 50 Days in Long Beach, California

A few years ago when we moved to Newport Beach, I challenged myself to see how long I could go without eating at the same restaurant twice.  At the time, I was working a day job, so that really only left dinner and weekends to try new places.  But I ended up trying 3 months worth of new places before I finally succumbed to my second go around at El Pollo Loco for a Chicken Tostada (of Forbes infamy).

It was a fun experience though and it really made me try a lot of restaurants that I would have not considered otherwise.  I do have a soft spot for El Pollo Loco but almost every other place I tried was not a nationwide chain.

When we moved to Long Beach a few months ago, I wanted to do the same thing but on a bigger scale.  So I decided to challenge myself to try 100 restaurants in 100 days.  So far, I’m off to a good start and I’m on pace to hit my goal, but it’s definitely going to take some hard work to get there.

Update (12/1/15): Didn’t quite make it to 100 but I think this review should suffice 🙂

I’ve already discovered a ton of great new places from Thai Pizza to Short Rib Poutine and I thought it’d be fun to share what I’ve accomplished so far.  For each restaurant, you’ll find a link to their Yelp profile (if you don’t trust my review), category of food, my rating, what I ordered, a short review and a one-liner.

If you’d like to filter through all 50 of these restaurants, by category, rating, etc, please go here to use my 50 Restaurants in 50 Days LBC Spreadsheet. (more…)

2 Weeks In Peru And A 5 Day Trek To Machu Picchu

I started planning for this trip about 4-5 months in advance and since we were traveling off-peak, I figured that there were going to be some good deals for the taking. We’d both actually never been to South America but what better way to test the waters, than with a pilgrimage to Machu Picchu – one of the new seven wonders of the world.

The Most Complicated Points Redemption Ever

I was able to find a ton of award availability from LAX to Lima (LIM) on American Airlines and a RT flight was 70,000 points plus about $70 in fees (so 140k points + $140 for the two of us).

AA points are very easy to come by and this redemption would have been a no-brainer but the AA flight made a stop in Dallas and the total travel time was 12 hours. Obviously that’s a best case scenario too and with the possibility of delays, missed connections, etc – that was a flight I wanted to avoid if at all possible.

After some extensive research, I actually discovered that LAN Peru (One World partner with AA) had two flights a day from LAX to Lima.  There was a TON of availability for revenue seats but nothing in the way of award travel though. (more…)

August Information Round-Up

august move

Spent most of August Moving 🙂

I spent most of my August getting ready for our move, moving and then settling in.  It was a lot of work but we have a great new place in Belmont Heights in Long Beach now that is just a few blocks from the beach and close to a ton of restaurants, shops and cafes.  I’ve challenged myself to eat at 100 restaurants in 100 days so stay tuned for the results.

Here’s a list of everything I’ve watched, read and listened to over the past month.  I tend to go through phases when it comes to reading and I actually just got a bunch of good book recommendations from one of Tim Ferriss’ podcasts and checked them out from the local e-libraries for Kindle so I should have lots of good book recommendations over the next few months. (more…)

March-July Information Round-up

This is the first of what I hope to be a monthly series where I round-up all of the top information I’ve consumed over the past month.  Information is comes in all forms, mediums and sizes and like any good millennial, I’m a big fan of videos, podcasts and articles so that’s what I plan on sharing.

Now this month’s round-up dates all the way back to March because that’s when I first got the idea for this site, but I had nowhere to publish it all.  So excuse the stuff from March but most of it is evergreen anyways.

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Quantity vs. Quality: The Growing Blogger's Dilemma

Quantity vs. Quality: The Growing Blogger’s Dilemma

In July, the number of unique viewers on The Rideshare Guy went from 105,000 to 150,000.  The former was already a massively impressive number and to see nearly 50% growth in just one month is equally surprising and astonishing.

I wish I could say there was something specific that I did to make that increase happen, but at this point it’s really just a combination of massive growth in the rideshare industry itself, lack of competition and a nice snowball effect.

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