Spring Break - Day 6 (Death Valley)

Devil's Golf Course in Death Valley

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Wanting to get started on our longest hike earlier in the morning before the desert sun got too hot, we got up at 7:30.  After packing up the car and doing some last minute shopping at the Ranch General Store, we drove to the Golden Canyon trailhead. The first part of the hike was an easy, one mile trek through a canyon (a golden one, at that).  At the end of the trail it led to the Gower Gulch Loop trail, which I had read was much more interesting, although it would add another 3+ miles to our hike which were more strenuous than the first.  We had gotten through the Golden Canyon trail pretty quickly, so we decided to keep going.  The next trail was indeed a lot more interesting, with a steep climb up "Manly Beacon" which had great views of the area, lots of different colored canyon and mountain walls, and finally some rock scrambling near the end.  We finished everything up in around 2.5 hours, and besides the Manly Beacon climb, it really wasn't too strenuous.  It also helped that the weather was great in the morning, with a perfect hiking temperature and consistent refreshing breeze. 

Relaxing in between hikes on our patio at the Furnace Creek Ranch

We headed back to the Ranch for grub at around 11, but found out that the restaurants were done serving breakfast and wouldn't open until 11:30 for lunch.  Even though we were already checked out of our hotel room, we headed back to the porch behind what used to be our room, and played a game of backgammon (always a Schaaf-favorite).  By the time we had finished our game, the 49er Cafe was open so we headed there.  I found the one egg dish they had on the lunch menu and promptly ordered the omelet, unconcerned with what ingredients they had selected for it.  Service was a bit slow, but food was decent.  Probably better than anything we would have cooked up at our campsite, if our lodging plans hadn't gone astray last night.

Badwater Basin: There is no sand in this picture - everything is pure salt

After lunch we had a list of nearby attractions that we wanted to explore, which could all be reached by doing a loop of the nearby Badwater Road.  Devil's Golf Course was a 200 mile area of salt rocks.  Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America (282 feet below sea level), and is a seemingly endless field of pure table salt.  Natural Bridge was  pretty much what it sounded like -  a bridge-like structure naturally formed from the mountains.  Having been to Arches and some other national parks, Death Valley's version was a little underwhelming.  Finally, Artist Drive was a scenic drive through an area of multicolored mountains.

After one final quick stop at the Ranch we headed to Dante's View, which would be our last stop in Death Valley.  It was about 25 miles to the east, a small detour from the exit.  This spot is known for having the best and most ranging views of Death Valley.  Another fun fact: from this spot you can simultaneously view both the lowest (Badwater Basin) and the highest (Mt. Whitney) points in the United States.  We hung out here for a bit, but eventually it was time to make the last drive of our trip - back to LA.  The drive back went relatively smoothly, and we made it back to West LA around 9:30 pm.

Dante's View, overlooking Badwater Basin and the rest of the park.

At the onset of the trip, I wasn't really sure what to expect.  I had done almost all of the planning myself, but much of that had come in the last couple days before we left and a lot was still left unplanned when the trip started.  But overall, everything really exceeded my expectations and it was a really great vacation.  The only major problem we had was that our campsite was overbooked, but I think the upgraded lodging ended up making for a more pleasant experience.  We ate a lot of good food, stayed in some nice places, spent lots of time outdoors, got plenty of exercise, developed skiing skills, and really got to explore some great California spots.  PCH, Tahoe, and Death Valley had all been on my "California Bucket List" of places I wanted to experience before leaving the west coast, so I was happy I got to cross three off on this one trip.  [As a sidenote, I also crossed a 4th item off my list this spring break, by attending a live taping of Conan O'Brien show the very next day, which was very exciting for me].  Not to take away anything from my usual dude-only trips, but it was also memorable being me and Stephanie's first real vacation together.  If comparing it to past vacations, it might not have been the most unique trip I've ever been on (last year's spring break in Ghana may never be beat in that area), nor the most extravagant or wild, but it is definitely up there as one of the most overly enjoyable.

*** More complete photo gallery of the trip:  Spring Break 2012 ***

Spring Break - Day 5 (Leaving Lake Tahoe)

View of Lake Tahoe from the private beach behind our hotel

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Although today was mostly going to be a travel day, we wanted to keep a more strict schedule than we had earlier in the trip.  Our plan was to camp at Death Valley National Park this evening (almost a 7 hour drive away), but the problem was that none of their campsites took reservations.  Although I figured that a weekday wouldn't necessarily sellout, the earlier we got there the better, plus we wanted to be able to set up camp before the sun went down.

So we got up at 8:30 and spent some time packing and cleaning the townhouse.  Then we snapped some pictures of Lake Tahoe from the beach behind the resort before heading to breakfast.  Sprouts Cafe was the location of choice based on a recommendation from one of Steph's friends.  It was pretty tasty, somewhat healthy, brunch spot.  We made another stop for some more Lake Tahoe pictures from a higher elevation, before hitting the highway for our long trek to Death Valley.

My very own bakery in Bishop, CA

Around halfway through our drive we passed through the town of Bishop.  It logically seemed like a stopping point for lunch, but this became mandatory when I saw a billboard for Erick Schat's Bakkery.  Yes, I realize that there are quite a few spelling mistakes there, but that's the closest I've ever seen a restaurant named after me, so I found this very exciting and made it our lunch stop.  Erick Schat seemed to have trouble deciding what he wanted to sell, as the restaurant was a combo of a deli, a bakery, and a general store.  We each got ourselves a sandwich and a pastry, which were pretty good, so overall we thought it lived up to the strong name of Erick Schat.

The rest of the drive to Death Valley was pretty uneventful except for one key mistake with gas management.  With a little under half a tank left, I didn't fill up in the last town we passed through before getting to the park.  I realized later though that we weren't going to make it to the campsite  with what we had, and our GPS showed no stations before we got deep into the park.  Because of this I decided to backtrack almost 20  miles to go to the nearest gas station, which caused a 45 minute delay in total.  It's a good thing we got it when we did, though, because Death Valley is much larger than I anticipated.  It was around 100 miles of driving from the park entrance to the campsite, and when we got there, the gas station had the highest gas prices I had ever seen, at $5.90 a gallon for unleaded.

The poor gas decision notwithstanding, I had been thinking earlier in the day how everything had been going pretty perfectly throughout the trip.  No real mishaps or major curveballs.  Well that changed when I passed the sign that said that the campground we wanted to stay at was full.  This caused quite a scare because it was already getting late, and we had no idea where else we could stay.  There were some hotels in the park, but we made a couple calls and they were booked.  There were some other campgrounds, but we wouldn't know if they were full unless we drove to them, and they could be an hour or so away from our current location and from the attractions we wanted to see the next day.  This had the potential of derailing our Death Valley plans, and we started to wonder if we should just drive the five hours back to LA tonight.

Furnace Creek Ranch, our oasis in the desert

Even though the Furnace Creek Ranch (a hotel resort within the park, right near the campsite we were trying to stay at) had no vacancies for tonight when I was looking into lodging for the trip a week ago, we still gave them a call as a last resort.  And as luck would have it, they had a cancellation and now had one room available, for a fairly reasonable rate.  We booked it immediately, and were relieved that our Death Valley plans could be salvaged.  We had to spend a little more money than planned, and wouldn't have the camping experience we were looking for, but the Ranch was actually a pretty nice mini resort.  Several restaurants on site, a heated pool, outdoor games, and several other amenities which we didn't use.

Semi-sunset picture at Zabriskie Point

Before getting settled in the new room, we quickly headed to Zabriskie Point,which was a nearby lookout point known for having great views of sunrises and sunsets.  We ended up missing the sunset by several minutes, but it was still a cool view.  We finished off the night with dinner at the Corkscrew Saloon, and a few games in the room. 

Spring Break - Day 4 (Tougher Ski Runs)

Another beautiful day on the slopes

Monday, March 26, 2012

We woke up a bit earlier today, but didn't make it to breakfast until about 10:30.  The location of choice this morning was Jazz Kat Cafe.  This was a pretty chill, small place, with jazz music and interesting art on the walls. There were only two other patrons in the restaurant the entire time we were there, and both were happily surfing away on their laptops using the free Wifi.  Besides enjoying the ambiance, the food was good too.  I got a Meat Lovers Scramble and Steph got an Eggs Benedict, both portions were quite large and relatively inexpensive for the area.  The service was nice too, with a very pleasant waitress who kept our coffee mugs full at all times.  No, I'm not practicing for a career in Yelping, but if I did happen to be a Yelp reviewer, I'd give this place five stars.

Action shot, sorta

Along with our leisurely paced breakfast, the overnight snowstorm and early morning flurries made the drive back to Sierra at Tahoe a bit slower.  We ended up on our first ski lift at 12:15 pm, which left us about 4 hours until the park closed.  So we decided to use that time as effectively as possible - meaning four straight hours of skiing with no breaks.  The cafeteria and bathrooms could wait, we wanted to pack in as much skiing as possible.  During that time we expanded to a much bigger part of the mountain than yesterday, mostly utilizing the Grandview Express ski lift that goes to the very top of the mountain and the 2.5 mile run that goes back to the bottom.  We did runs on pretty much every green slope in the mountain, and I also mixed in a few blues (intermediate level runs) along the way to spice things up a bit.  The whole day was a blast and we could feel proud about the noticeable improvement in our skiing skills over the course of two days.  Steph looked like a completely different skier from yesterday morning, and I felt that I had solidified a lot of the skills I had been trying to develop my last several ski trips.  When we finished our final run at about 4:15, it was probably for the best that the lifts were closed; the snow was coming down very heavily and the winds had really picked up.  The temperatures were in the low 30s when we started the day, but was feeling considerably colder by the time we left.

We returned our ski gear to the rental shop on the way home, and then after showering and changing into normal people clothes again, we headed to dinner.  Our first choice was closed, so we ended up at Rojo's Bar and Restaurant.  Having skipped lunch and burned a ton of energy throughout the day, we had no trouble putting down full rack of baby back ribs, a burger, mozzarella sticks, fries, and bread before we left.  I doubt it was the best food we had on the trip, but it might have been the most satisfying.

Evening entertainment included playing pool in the hotel game room, and then a short trip to a nearby state park for some stargazing.  According to this random website, South Lake Tahoe is a Top 5 location to look at stars.  So how could we pass that up?

Spring Break - Day 3 (Bunny Slopes)

One of the slopes at Sierra-At-Tahoe

Sunday, March 25, 2012

We started our day by stopping by the hotel continental breakfast at around 10 am, which was basically just pastries and yogurt.  When we walked in, one of the staff members was in the dining area (actually  just the game room where the pastries were) and was in the middle of listing the best nearby ski resorts for beginner skiers.  Since we were wondering the same thing, we listened intently and decided to make Sierra-At-Tahoe Ski Resort our day's destination.  It was only about 25 minutes away, and our resort was able to give us both discount lift tickets and discount rental coupons.  To really pack on the savings we signed up for a two-day lift pass at Sierra, hoping that we wouldn't be so sore from today's activities that we wouldn't want to go back tomorrow.

We stopped at the rental shop across the street from our hotel, and then made the drive to Sierra at Tahoe, arriving a little after noon.  It was nice driving around the mountain for a bit in the daylight so we could see all the sights that we missed in last night's near pitch black drive.

Hanging out on the bunny slopes

Steph had only been skiing once before (almost a year ago), and I always need reminders on how to ski, so we started out using the shortest lift (aptly named Easy Rider Express) and making runs on the basic slope.  We did variations of that several times before breaking for lunch.  In our second session we decided to use a different lift (the only slightly more manly named Rock Garden), which went up a little higher than the one we had used earlier.  The main path from Rock Garden led into the easier slopes we had done earlier in the day, so we did that connecting run a few times.  I mixed in a few steeper, more difficult runs from that lift as well and only had a problem when I accidentally found myself skiing off a jump, became airborne, and was unable to stick the landing.  A little painful, but it wouldn't be a day on the slopes without a few good falls. At 4 pm the lifts stopped running for the day, so we headed out.  We really only used a tiny fraction of the mountain today, but it was a good training day with some great weather, and a whole lot of fun.  We're aiming to get an earlier start tomorrow, and expand to some longer and more difficult runs as the day goes on.
 
When we got back to our hotel, some soreness was already setting in so we decided to hit up the outdoor hot tub.  It was a little bit further of a walk in 35 degree weather than we would have liked, but the tub felt great once we got there.  The hot tub area is right before the edge of the hotel property where it meets Lake Tahoe itself, so there was some really great views of the lake and of the snow capped mountains surrounding it.  Evening was pretty chill with dinner at a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant cleverly named Los Mexicanos.

Spring Break - Day 2 (Monetery Aquarium)

Lots of fishies at the Monterey Aquarium

Saturday, March 24, 2012

We checked out of the motel around 10 am and went searching for breakfast. We first tried the highly rated Breakfast Club, but the line was out the door so we went to Denny's instead. Three pancakes, two eggs, two sausages, a pile of hash browns, and about three cups of coffee later, I was satisfied with our choice.

The Monterey Aquarium is regarded as one of the best in the world, and was our next activity for the trip. We arrived around noon and spent about 2.5 hours exploring. There were a lot of cool stuff to see but the highlights were the jelly fish exhibits and the gigantic tank which had thousands of fish, a giant sea turtle, and several other sharks including a hammerhead.  The $30 student entry fee was a little steep I thought, but I'd still recommend it for the jelly fish and big tank alone.  There also a lot of animal feeding and instructional talks (we watched the otter and albatross feedings) and video presentations.  Either way it was definitely a good stopping point and way to spend a few hours while in town.

We left the aquarium around 2:30 and were unfortunately hit with a $35 parking ticket a couple minutes earlier for illegally parking in a nearby supermarket parking lot.  There was a rain storm for most of the day, but luckily we were either indoors or in the car almost all of this time.  Our next quick stop was in San Jose for a very late lunch around 4 pm. We went to Togo's, which is a local sandwich shop that was tasty, but not really worth mentioning any more about.  This was followed a little while later with a mini ski gear shopping spree at Any Mountain, which we hope ends up being cheaper than the stores in South Lake Tahoe.

It was a long drive through twisty, dimly lit roads in the mountains to get to Lake Tahoe.  We had been afraid of weather forecasts predicting snow, but luckily the night was as clear and precipitation-free as could be.  It was around 10 pm when we arrived in South Lake Tahoe, and we picked up some Italian food since we hadn't eaten dinner yet, and then checked in for our stay at the Lake Tahoe Beach and Ski Club.

Our living room and kitchen at the Tahoe Beach and Ski Club

We had gotten a really good deal on the accommodations through a LivingSocial online deal ($225 total for 3 nights in a 1 bedroom townhouse).  We figured that was a pretty reasonable deal for a non-motel in Lake Tahoe on a weekend during ski season for three nights, so didn't know what to expect with how nice the room would be or the resort space, but were very pleasantly surprised.  Our room had been recently renovated and had a large master bedroom, a good size living room, full kitchen with a center island, two full bathrooms including a jacuzzi, a balcony/outdoor patio, two HD TVs and DVD players, and was fully stocked with kitchen and dining equipment.  Since we got in so late we didn't have a chance to check the premises yet, but we were told that there are two hot tubs, an outdoor heated pool, a gym, a game room with pool table, plus a lot of outdoor sports areas that would be nice if it wasn't 40 degrees out.  The plan for tomorrow is to spend the day skiing, but now am also looking forward to plenty of relaxation time at the resort.

Spring Break - Day 1 (PCH Drive)

One of the many fantastic views along the PCH drive

Friday, March 23, 2012

I was debating for awhile what I wanted to do for my spring break this year, the last spring break of my life, and the last guaranteed vacation I have until I have a job to have a vacation from.  Having not been on a road trip since my cross-country adventure almost 20 months ago, and with a more exotic international trip not in the budget, this break seemed like a good time to hit the road again and explore California at greater length.  About a month ago, Stephanie and I had booked a three night stay at a hotel in Lake Tahoe with the idea of hanging out and skiing, but it wasn't until the day before the trip that the rest of the itinerary was mostly finalized.  The basic plan for our 5-day, 6-night trip was: Santa Barbara, a scenic drive up the coast via the famous Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) through Big Sur, three nights in Lake Tahoe, and one night camping in Death Valley National Park.

Featured car of the Spring Break 2012 Road Trip

Luckily the Civic (which is still going strong, by the way, at least when on flat terrain) wasn't going to be our vehicle of choice for this trip, being replaced by a newer, more structurally sound Nissan Sentra.  However, to prepare for the potentially treacherous snow conditions I had to research what snow chains are, purchase them, and then learn how to install them in the past two days.   Packing also required some thought, as it included a mix of warm weather clothes, cold weather clothes, skiing gear, and camping/hiking gear.

With the prep behind us, we hit the road at 10 am Friday morning, arriving in Santa Barbara around noon. We went to a restaurant called Andersen's Restaurant & Bakery for lunch (even on spring break, we can't escape Anderson). Initially I was disappointed because they told me that they no longer served breakfast, but they also happened to have omelets on their lunch menu so I had one of those. Steph had a crab salad Napoleon thingie with mango sauce and avocado and split pea soup. All the food was fantastic, definitely recommend this place. We walked around Santa Barbara for around an hour after brunch. I had never been there before, but it's a really nice, clean town with some interesting shops.

Danish architecture abounds in Solvang

Our next stop, about 50 minutes away, was a Danish style town called Solvang. This place was really interesting with Danish architecture, windmills, horse and buggies on the street, and delicious Danish pastries. We only intended it to be a short stop but ended up walking around for about 1.5 hours, enjoying the unique atmosphere and progressively improving weather.

The next stop on our itinerary was about 115 miles away at Hearst Castle. Since we took longer at our first two stops than anticipated, we didn't get to the castle parking lot until 6 pm.  We realized once we got there that we'd have to purchase a ticket tour to take the tram ride up to the actual castle (still a distance away).  Since we really wanted to be able to enjoy the PCH drive during as much daylight as possible, we decided to skip the castle tour and use the visitor center as a potty break and a chance to switch drivers before returning to the road.

This was a fairly typical view for about 200 miles

We still had 100 miles left until we arrived at our hotel, but this portion of PCH was supposed to be amongst the nicest drives in the country and I think it lived up to its reputation. Miles of coastline and mountain ranges greeted us as we drove around winding mountain roads. We made one stop for some great photographic opportunities as the sun was close to setting and then drove the rest of the way in darkness, eventually arriving in Monterey around 9:30 pm.  We were craving some BBQ and after our first choice was closed, we settled on Henry's BBQ which really hit the spot. We checked in to the luxurious El Castell Motel around 10:30 and relaxed after a long day of travel.

Miles Traveled Today: 330

Winter Quarter Recap

BMP couples dinner in March

I did a much better job this quarter of keeping up on the blog, so I don't think there is a lot new here, but I feel like I have to add a "recap" post each quarter.... so here it is.

The beginning of the quarter was a lot of fun with my January trips to Vegas, Sundance, and DC, and then my February Omaha trip to meet Warren Buffet was definitely one of the most unique experiences that I've had at Anderson.  After the trips were done though, it was time to get back to reality, and realize I had a lot of work to do.

Classes were decent.  The VBA/Excel-based class was my favorite, and I'd like to continue to educate myself in VBA in the future.  I'm glad that I took the Venture Capital/Private Equity class because I think I learned a lot, but it was so stressful with the heavy workload and cold calling nature of the professor that I couldn't actually enjoy the experience as it was going on.  The Investment Management class which I hated in the first half of the quarter, I actually liked a lot in the second half as it moved from heavily theoretical to more practical topics.  I ended up dropping my Mandarin class seven weeks into the quarter.  The Thursday night schedule conflicted with a lot of my trips (first Sundance, and then the SIF trips to Omaha and San Francisco) so I had to miss three classes and I felt that I was really falling behind.  It was only a two credit class anyway, so dropping it didn't effect my graduation requirements.  On top of the classes, though, the big time commitments were SIF speaker events, the stock pitch competition that I mentioned in the last post, and the AMR consulting project. 

My job search continues with little progress.  During the quarter I had four rounds of interviews with one company, so I thought that I was getting very close to getting an offer, but they've given me the silent treatment for almost a month now.  I haven't been eliminated outright yet, but I certainly get the feeling that I'm not their first choice and am not very optimistic.  Unlike a lot of other career verticals, most asset management positions don't open up until late in the school year because the firms are smaller and only do just-in-time hiring.  I guess it was wishful thinking that I would be able to land a position earlier in the year and be able to relax more as the year goes on.  There is a very clear divide between the difference in lifestyle and attitude of students who already have jobs lined up and those that are still recruiting.  I've already seen more opportunities pop up in the past week in my industry than in the entire quarter before that, though, so I'm hopeful that things will still get sorted out before graduation. 

I've already written about most of the random fun activities which happened earlier in the quarter such as Casino Night and Joshua Tree.  Jay's visit to LA two weeks ago was a highlight of the last few weeks.  Also, two cool celebrity sightings in the past two weeks: Darryl from The Office was playing pool at the table next to me, and we were sitting at a bar last night with Cutty from The Wire. 

Not as good as in Asia, but we still found some tasty Taiwanese restaurants in LA

So now with the quarter over, I am on spring break until April 1.  With the post-grad job situation uncertain, this is also the last guaranteed vacation I have on the horizon.  Two days removed from my last final I'm already feeling so much more relaxed, and have been productive, catching up on exercise, cleaning, and cover letter updates.  Last night we had our quarterly Man Dinner with some of the guys from school.  It should continue to get more fun though.  Although the details still aren't finalized, I'm planning a mini California road trip over the break with stops at Big Sur, Lake Tahoe and Death Valley National Park.  I'll be sure to blog about its progress. 

First Annual Anderson Stock Pitch Competition

Aside from my six month AMR consulting project that I've mentioned a couple times, the other big outside-of-class time sapper this quarter has been helping organize a stock pitch competition.  Last spring when we formed the Anderson Investment Association (AIA) we listed a few grandiose ideas of new events that would help improve the investment management career vertical at Anderson.  These included the New York recruiting trip in December, and the highly successful UCLA Anderson Inaugural Investing Conference last month.  Another big initiative was to create a stock pitch competition that would be hosted on Anderson's campus, have industry professionals as judges, and MBA students from across the country as participants.  And I was in charge of putting it all together.

(Sidenote: I recently read an article that said that wannabe bloggers like myself should frequently link to previous posts to improve their blog.  So I'm being a little link happy today. This kinda reminds me of a time that I tried to book a stay in the Dakota Inn.  Well not really, I just wanted another link.)

The really good news that made this competition a realistic idea initially was that last spring one of the SIF fellows (let's call him Ben, because that's his name) who graduated last year told us that he had secured $10k from an alumni to fund prize money for the competition.  This was huge news naturally because no one is going to travel for a competition without prize money, and this meant we didn't have to do additional fundraising on our own. 

Even with funding secured, there was a lot of logistical work to be done to plan the competition.  Throughout the past two quarters important tasks have included picking dates, reaching out to other MBA programs, finding judges, creating rules and a competition structure, booking rooms, organizing catering and the award reception, and setting up/hosting a preliminary UCLA-only competition to see who got to represent Anderson in the actual competition.  Luckily I had three helpful first years and another second year helping out on the project.  Unluckily, things did not go as smoothly as we hoped.

The first main issue was that we scheduled it poorly.  March 9th seemed like a great date.  It worked well with the Anderson schedule, and we figured east coast schools would love to come to LA in the winter.  Unfortunately we didn't realize it coincided with a lot of spring breaks and finals weeks for other schools, so interest in the competition was very low.  We originally wanted 10-15 teams, but ended up with only 6.  This included 2 from UCLA and 2 from USC, plus NYU and Columbia.  We had commitments from Harvard and Michigan but they each dropped out during the last week.   

The biggest curveball during planning, however, came two weeks before the competition when I emailed the alumni asking how and when he was planning on sending his $10k, and he replied that he had no idea what I was talking about.  He was under the impression that he would be making a significantly smaller gift, as part of a larger group of alumni, and that all donations would be going to charity rather than winning MBA teams.  Long story slightly shorter: there had been some major miscommunication dating back almost a year between all parties.  Ben had certainly given us incorrect information.  But I, and a couple other 2nd years who had been speaking with this alumni over the past year, never properly confirmed it with him either.  Each of us had on multiple occasions thanked him for being the event sponsor, but never mentioned a dollar amount (b/c we thought it was already agreed upon, and thought it was somewhat tacky or inappropriate to bring up the exact amount).  And the alumni never questioned why we kept referring to him as the only sponsor for our competition.

So finding out this news led to two extremely stressful days.  Without funding, we were extremely close to cancelling the whole competition, which would have been very embarrassing to Anderson, would have set AIA back significantly for future projects, and we'd have to eat the cost of schools who had already made travel arrangements.  Fortunately though, we got really lucky because after meeting with the executive director of the Fink Center (a campus finance research center endowed by Larry Fink, Anderson alum and CEO of Blackrock) and presenting our dilemma to them, they agreed to sponsor the event in its entirety.  This was largely possible because they were so impressed with the Investing Conference (which they co-sponsored) that they were happy to help AIA out again.  All we had to do was change the name of the competition to the Fink Center AIA Stock Pitch Competition, and $10,000 was ours.  

We ordered giant checks and everything!

The actual event itself went very smoothly.  A few hiccups along the way and we wish we had more than six teams, but it turned out to be a success (plus UCLA's team won - it wasn't rigged, I promise).  The whole missing funding ordeal might have actually been a blessing in disguise because the Fink Center will sponsor the competition every year now.  They have  extremely deep pockets and an even deeper network of contacts, so getting their support on an annual basis will really increase the chances of this event being a regular, highly successful event in the future.  The event took a lot of work and caused a lot of stress over the past several months, but of any activity that I've been involved in at my time at Anderson, this has the highest chance of having a lasting impression on a wide range of people for a long time.  Who knows how long this event will go, but I think it'd be really cool if one day I can read about how Anderson is hosting its 20th Annual Stock Pitch Competition, and I can remember that I was a major part of getting it all started.