Hi, I'm Sumi

My bud has been on a training kick lately. Something about a big trek coming up that apparently requires him to haul a massive camera bag up mountains every weekend. I don’t ask too many questions. I just ride along.

Today’s plan was Griffith Peak at Mt. Charleston. Good elevation, decent trail, should’ve been a solid workout. Emphasis on should’ve been.

We got to the trailhead and the trail was closed. Just… closed. No explanation, no alternative, just a sign that basically said “nope.” So we pivoted to Lower Bristlecone instead. Fine. Flexible. Adaptable. That’s what training is about, right?

Except then about a mile in, Pokin’s stomach decided it also didn’t want to be on this hike. So we turned around.

Not exactly the epic mountain conquest we had in mind.

BUT — and this is the part Nicholas actually cared about — the gear test was a success. He’s lugging around 25 pounds of camera equipment in that Shimoda bag, and today was about seeing how it all felt on the trail. The bag itself is comfortable. The camera clips on and off the shoulder strap fast. The tripod stays put. The whole setup works.

The bear on top of the backpack? Also stays put. Not that anyone asked about my comfort.

He’s got the camera, the tripod, clips, poles, and somehow still found room for water. I’m tucked in between all of it like cargo. Which I suppose I am, technically. Premium cargo.

Short hike. Good intel. We’ll be back for the real thing next week at Brian Head for some altitude work. Assuming no one’s stomach vetoes the plan.

Onwards.

Nicholas’s mom was in town, and someone decided the best use of a perfectly good gaming Saturday was to drive two hours into the hottest place on Earth to look at flowers.

It’s February. It should not be hot. It was hot.

But fine. Death Valley is having a superbloom, and apparently that’s a big deal. When the desert gets enough rain — which happens maybe once every few years — the seeds that have been sitting dormant in the dirt suddenly decide to all wake up at once and turn the valley floor into something that looks like someone spilled a paint store. The last time it happened like this was… actually, the last time we went to see a superbloom. So I guess this is becoming a thing.

Nicholas’s mom was going on about the flower colors — the yellows are desert gold sunflowers, the purples are phacelia, and there are little white and pink ones mixed in that I didn’t catch the names of because I was being carried in a backpack and had limited interest in botany. The gist is: different minerals in the soil produce different colored flowers in different areas. Science.

Oh, and this trip had a special guest.

Chestnut. The horse. From Hong Kong. He would not stop talking about how amazing everything was. “The flowers are so beautiful!” “The mountains are so grand!” “What a wonderful day to be alive!”

Yes, Chestnut. It’s dirt and flowers. Calm down.

I’ll admit it though — the purple ones were something. Clusters of phacelia growing straight out of black volcanic rock, like the flowers didn’t get the memo that nothing is supposed to live here. The contrast was ridiculous. Dark hillside, bright purple, golden yellow. Looked fake.

We stopped at Artist’s Palette, which has nothing to do with flowers but everything to do with looking like a screensaver. The hills are painted in layers of green, pink, rust, and lavender from different mineral deposits. Nicholas’s mom loved it. I sat on a sign.

Then: Badwater Basin. The lowest point in North America. 282 feet below sea level. I have now been to the lowest point on the continent, which I feel should come with some kind of certificate or medal. It did not.

Also, both Nicholas AND Pokin forgot their park passes. So they had to buy yet another one. I think this is their third or fourth in less than a year. At least it’s supporting the parks. That’s what I told them. They did not seem comforted.

The salt flats had water in them, which almost never happens. The same rain that triggered the superbloom left shallow pools across the basin that turned into perfect mirrors.

We stuck around for sunset because of course we did. Pokin doesn’t let anyone leave a scenic location before golden hour. But this time I’ll give her credit — the light was doing something.

The reflections on the water turned the whole basin into a mirror. Lenticular clouds stacked up over the mountains like someone was showing off. Snow on the peaks. The whole thing.

Hot, dusty, too many flowers, not enough cocoa, and someone’s horse wouldn’t stop saying how great everything was.

But I guess it didn’t totally stink.

It’s Chinese New Year. Year of the Horse.

You can imagine how Chestnut took the news.

Chestnut has been with us for a while now, but this is his first Chinese New Year in the house, and wouldn’t you know it — it’s his year. He hasn’t shut up about it. The house is full of horse figurines. The couch is full of horse figurines. I’m not sure where they all came from but Chestnut seems to think they’re his entourage.

Apparently the Year of the Horse symbolizes energy, freedom, and enthusiasm. Which is just Chestnut’s normal personality turned up to eleven with cultural validation. Great.

We got Chinese New Year gifts. I got chocolates. Chestnut got apples. Seems appropriate — horses eat apples, bears eat chocolate. I’m not going to pretend the chocolates weren’t excellent.

Now, the main event. Pokin decided to go all out this year and bought a proper wok for the occasion. One problem: she didn’t realize you have to season a wok before you cook with it. It’s not like a regular pan. You have to heat it up, oil it, burn the oil off, repeat, build up the coating, the whole thing. She tried to cook with it raw and it went about as well as you’d expect.

So Nicholas stepped in, seasoned the wok properly, and then — this is the important part — wouldn’t let Pokin use it.

He seasoned it and claimed it. That’s the wok now. His wok. Pokin bought a wok for Chinese New Year and Nicholas got a new wok.

The actual dinner was ridiculous though. Pokin made an entire five-course menu with cultural notes explaining what each dish symbolized. Potstickers shaped like gold ingots for prosperity. Steamed seabass for surplus. Sesame balls because they expand when fried and that means your luck is expanding. Noodles for longevity. There was a whole printed menu card and everything.

I mostly cared about Course V: The Sweet Finish. Mango pudding, almond jello, sesame balls, mochi, AND cookies. Five desserts. In one meal. This is my kind of cultural celebration.

Chestnut says this was the best night of his life. I told him to settle down, it’s February.

But the chocolates were really good.

Pokin went to Panama with her forum. She brought me. Smart.

She also brought Chestnut. Unnecessary.

Nicholas wasn’t on this trip because he somehow felt his brotherly duty of building a bathroom for his sister was more important than quality time with me. Whatever. His loss.

The Canal

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This was Pokin’s second time at the Panama Canal, which apparently helps with the retention of useless engineering facts. She got an insider’s tour of the Miraflores Locks control tower, heard the whole history again, and came back full of opinions about lock chambers and water levels.

The original control console is still there. Brass gauges, GE dials, manual switches. They built the thing that connects two oceans and operated it with equipment that looks like it belongs in a submarine from a movie.

Engineering marvel. Genuinely impressive. I respect anything that was built over a hundred years ago and still works exactly as intended. More than I can say for most apps.

The Beans

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Then Pokin went down a rabbit hole. A literal bean rabbit hole.

Geisha beans. The most expensive coffee beans in the world that haven’t been pooped out by an animal. (Excuse me? There are coffee beans that get pooped out by an animal? I have follow-up questions, but I’m choosing not to ask them.)

Here’s the thing about Geisha beans: they’re originally from Gesha, Ethiopia. Named after a Japanese word. Grown on the hills of Panama. A bean from Africa named in Japanese grown in Central America and sold for absurd amounts of money. Globalization is weird.

Naturally, Pokin wanted to buy some for Nicholas.

And went a little overboard.

Multiple bags of Geisha beans. Altieri Typica. Specialty everything. And then, because we were in cacao country, a mountain of Panama chocolate. Mahogany Chocolate. I Love Panama Chocolate. Raspao. Something from Barú.

I want it on the record that I was there specifically for the chocolate procurement. The coffee was Pokin’s thing. The chocolate was bear business.

The Homecoming

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Nicholas eventually finished his bathroom project and came home. This is what was waiting for him.

A brand new coffee maker. Premium beans. A whole setup.

And someone had found it first.

Peep. On the coffee maker. Already claimed it.

Of course. OF COURSE. You leave fancy Geisha beans unattended for five minutes and the yellow menace materializes on the machine like he was summoned by the aroma. He doesn’t even have hands. How did he get up there? HOW?

Nobody is safe from Peep when coffee is involved. Nobody.

Day two of the Bruce visit. After Bryce (where I was cruelly left behind), we headed back to Zion. Our usual routine: bike the canyon, hike the Narrows, stay at the Cliffrose.

This time, I came along.

The Cliffrose is our spot in Springdale. It’s right at the entrance to Zion, the grounds back up to the canyon walls, and the views from the patio are the kind of thing that makes you briefly forget you’re paying lodge prices.

Chestnut came too. He was very excited. He’s always very excited.

Biking the Canyon

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First up: biking the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. Cars aren’t allowed past a certain point in the park, so it’s either the shuttle or a bike. We bike. It’s better.

The Narrows (Again)

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Then the main event. The Narrows. We were just here with Pokong a few weeks ago, but Zion’s like that. You come back.

Big milestone: this was the first time Nicholas bought his own water shoes instead of renting. Commitment.

Deeper in, the canyon walls close and the light gets interesting. Some of the side slots are barely wide enough for one person.

The Deer

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Back at the Cliffrose that evening, we had visitors.

The deer at the Cliffrose have zero fear. They walk right up to the rooms, graze on the lawn, bring their fawns. They’ve figured out that lodge guests are harmless and usually have cameras.

Dinner and Stars

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Dinner was in Springdale. Good food, better backdrop.

And then the sky did its thing. Perfect clear night, Milky Way fully visible. Nicholas, Bruce, and Pokin stayed up experimenting with phone cameras, wishing they’d brought the real ones.

Zion in August. Biking, hiking, deer on the lawn, stars over the canyon. Not a bad day in bear territory.

We’d barely recovered from Pokong’s visit when the next houseguest arrived. Bruce, one of Nicholas’s engineers from Colombia, came up to spend the summer working out of the home office. Nicholas figured if the team had a tight deadline, they might as well grind it out together. In person. In Las Vegas. In August.

And if you’re going to have a coworker from Colombia staying at your house, you take him to Bryce Canyon. You take Bruce to Bryce. It’s right there. You have to.

The crew was Nicholas, Pokin, Bruce, Po On, and Eric. They picked a quieter loop trail so they wouldn’t be fighting crowds the whole way. Smart.

I was not invited on this hike.

I’m choosing to believe this was for my own protection. The sun. The elevation. My delicate constitution. Definitely not an oversight.

The hoodoos at Bryce are those tall, skinny rock spires that look like someone stacked a city out of orange sandstone and forgot to add streets. Thousands of them, packed into an amphitheater, glowing different colors depending on where the sun hits.

They started on the Fairyland Trail, which despite the name has no fairies and no bears. Disappointing on both counts.

The trail drops down into the canyon and winds through the hoodoos. Hardly anyone else on it.

The scenery at Bryce just keeps going. Every direction, more hoodoos, more layers, more orange. It’s the kind of place where you stop taking photos because you realize every single one looks the same and also incredible.

There are some natural arches along the way that frame the canyon like windows.

And then there are the trees. The pines at Bryce hang on to the canyon rim with exposed roots gripping bare rock like they’re holding on for dear life. Which they are. The ground is literally eroding out from under them.

Once you’re down in the canyon among the hoodoos, the scale hits different. They tower over you. The colors shift from orange to pink to white depending on the layer. It looks like walking through a very old, very tall, very orange city that nobody built.

And of course, the jump photos. You can’t go to a national park without jump photos. It’s a rule.

Bryce Canyon. No crowds, no bears, no problems. Bruce got to see something that doesn’t exist in Colombia. Nicholas got to take Bruce to Bryce, which I suspect was the real reason for this entire trip.

Next time, they’re bringing me.

When we were last in Hong Kong, Nicholas asked Pokin’s brother Pokong why he’d never come to visit.

Then he told him to come.

Then he told him to come on the most American day possible.

Fourth of July.

So Pokong finally came to America. He had exactly two requests:

1. Drive a Cybertruck.
2. Shoot guns.

Simple enough. But Nicholas doesn’t do simple. Nicholas does “we have a week and I have a plan.”

The Narrows

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First stop: Zion National Park.

If you’re going to show someone America, you don’t start with strip malls and fast food. You start with a canyon so deep it makes you feel like a speck. PoOn and Eric came along too, because Pokin’s family travels in packs.

We stopped at Valley of Fire on the way out. Red rocks, blue sky, 110 degrees. Classic Nevada welcome. Then we drove to Springdale to set up camp near Zion.

Next morning, everyone geared up. Rented the canyoneering boots. Rented the walking sticks. The Narrows requires you to literally walk through a river inside a canyon, and the rental shop knows it.

And then we went in.

The Narrows is one of those hikes where the trail IS the river. You’re wading through the Virgin River with canyon walls towering on either side. It starts ankle deep. It does not stay ankle deep.

At first everyone hiked together. Then Nicholas and Eric took off, leaving the Yeung siblings to go at their own pace. As one does.

Deeper in, the canyon gets serious. The walls close in, the light gets weird, and you start to understand why people fly across the world to walk through a river.

We were not the only ones with this idea.

The group also went biking through the park, because apparently walking through a river for hours wasn’t enough exercise.

On the way out, we stopped at Checkerboard Mesa.

Ghost Town, Dinosaurs, and a Cave

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The next day, everyone was trying to figure out what to do. Nicholas didn’t like the plans. So Nicholas took over.

He found a ghost town. An actual abandoned pioneer settlement with a schoolhouse and log cabins and everything. Pokong seemed cautiously impressed, in the way that someone from Shenzhen looks at a 150-year-old wooden building and thinks “we’d have replaced this by now.”

Then we saw dinosaur tracks. Real ones. In the ground. Labeled and everything.

And then, because the day wasn’t full enough, Nicholas found a cave.

The desert out here does not mess around.

The American Experience

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Pokong did get his two requests. Nicholas took him shooting. From what I heard, the guns scared the absolute bejesus out of him. Nobody got hurt, which is apparently the bar for a successful shooting range visit.

The Cybertruck driving happened too. PoOn came out for that. There was a photoshoot. I’m told it was very cool. I wouldn’t know, because nobody brought me.

But the real American experience? That’s the food.

Pokong came to America for a Cybertruck and some guns. He got a canyon, a river, a ghost town, dinosaur bones, a cave, a bear, tacos, and the realization that Nicholas does not know how to plan a simple week.

I think that’s a win.

It started benign enough.

Sesame Street did a collaboration with Gotham Greens. They put Sesame Street characters on salad packaging. Salad. The healthy thing. Leaves. You know.

Pokin thought it was cute and picked up the Cookie Monster one. Good choice. Responsible. A woman training for Everest Base Camp, buying lettuce. Her friends would be proud.

The lettuce lived in the fridge for about a week.

And for about a week, every time she opened the fridge, Cookie Monster stared back at her. Cookie Monster. On lettuce. The irony of putting the cookie guy on salad is not lost on me, a bear who understands that dessert is the superior meal category.

After seven days of psychological warfare from a plastic container, Pokin cracked.

She did not buy more salad.

Four full-sized Crumbl cookies. Not small ones. Not the minis. The big ones.

She ate them for dinner.

That was dinner. The whole dinner. Four cookies from a pink box on the kitchen counter where the salad used to be. Cookie Monster won.

Her friend Davey called it rock bottom. Chestnut called it “concerning.” I call it the most relatable thing Pokin has done all year.

The salad, for what it’s worth, did eventually get eaten. But not that night. That night belonged to the cookies.

I love CES. I also don’t love CES. Because Pokin goes to CES, gets excited about things, and then those things show up at the house.

Two things showed up this week.

Thing One: The Robot

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The Roborock Saros Z70. A robot vacuum with a retractable arm. An actual mechanical arm that reaches out, grabs objects off the floor, and moves them. Pokin saw this at CES and had to have one.

Nicholas was less thrilled. “This thing is stupid,” he said, which is what he says about every gadget right before it permanently lives in the house.

The arm picks up socks, shoes, small objects. Anything under 300 grams. It relocates them out of its cleaning path with the confidence of something that has never once questioned whether it should be doing this.

Thing Two: The StairMaster

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The same week, a StairMaster arrived. A full commercial-grade stair climber. For EBC training.

The logistics were a nightmare. Multiple movers turned down the job. Someone finally agreed, and they wrestled it into the bedroom. It barely fits. It nearly touches the ceiling. It weighs roughly 600 pounds.

It’s never leaving that room.

The Incident

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The StairMaster was a little wobbly on the tile, so Nicholas temporarily stuck a rag under one of the legs to stabilize it.

You can probably see where this is going.

The Roborock found the rag.

It decided the rag needed to be moved. It extended its arm, grabbed the rag, and pulled. The StairMaster did not move. The Roborock did not care. It locked in. Lifted itself off the ground. Pulled harder. The arm was fully committed to removing this rag from under a 600-pound machine that was not going anywhere.

Nicholas had to physically pry the robot away. It did not want to let go.

This was not an isolated incident. The robot also decided to rearrange shoes into what I can only describe as a fairy ring. In the process, it kept jamming its own arm into furniture above it, because the arm extends upward and the robot has no concept of overhead clearance.

Pokin loves it. Nicholas wants to put it in a closet. I’m staying on the desk where it can’t reach me.

Sigh.

This started in Korea.

In Seoul, our friend’s wife wanted a Labubu. If you don’t know what a Labubu is, congratulations, you have a normal life. For the rest of us: it’s a fuzzy vinyl-faced monster made by Pop Mart, the blind box company that has taken over every mall in Asia. You buy a sealed box, you don’t know which character you’ll get, and apparently this is exciting enough to create lines around the block.

We hit Pop Mart stores in Seoul looking for one. Every single time: sold out. The shelves had plenty of other characters nobody wanted, but the Labubus? Gone. Always gone. The staff would just shrug. “Very popular.”

We gave up in Korea. The Labubus won that round.

Then we went to Hong Kong.

Pokin’s cousins in Hong Kong, bless them, had been hunting online. They managed to order a few through HKTVmall, the local e-commerce platform, where Labubus sell out within minutes of restocking. They secured some for our friend’s wife, plus extras.

And one for Nicholas.

Nicholas did not need a Labubu.

Three boxes showed up. “Exciting Macaron” series. The Monsters. Vinyl Face. BOOM. Every word on the box is trying harder than the last.

Nicholas opened his and pulled out a fuzzy grey monster with a vinyl face and dead eyes. He clipped it to his bag immediately. No hesitation. No shame.

So to recap: we spent two days in Korea hunting these things across multiple Pop Mart stores, failed completely, flew to Hong Kong, and Pokin’s cousins just ordered them online like normal people.

The friend got her Labubu. Nicholas got a Labubu he didn’t ask for. And somewhere in all of this, a bear and a freshly vended horse watched from the sidelines, wondering what happened to standards.