29 March 1999: Weekend Exercise

Monday, 29 March 1999:

Weekend Exercise

Saturday, John and I drove up to Point Reyes National Seashore, which is on the northern peninsula of the San Francisco Bay. Going through the city and all, that works out to about a 2-1/2 hour drive. Especially since we got lost briefly, and then drove to the trail at the northernmost end of the park - Point Tomales (as opposed to Point Reyes itself, which is the westernmost end).

Other than being long, the drive up was quite lovely, taking us over the Marin county hills and past Stinson Beach, with great views of the ocean. We missed our turn-off and ended up getting a map at Point Reyes station. John provided the quote of the day as we drove through Dogtown: "I love towns whose elevation is greater than their population." (Dogtown: Pop 30., Elev. 180.) The drive to the Point involved passing Historic H Ranch and Historic I Ranch - whatever that means. It also involved seeing a lot of cows.

The hike from the parking lot to the Point itself is just about ten miles, with a number of rolling hills in between. The hills are mostly covered with grass and scrubs - only a handful of trees - and we got plenty of nice ocean and Tomales Bay views, too. Plus: It was windy - at one point we got hit with a blast which John figured was about 50 MPH.

It was a two-hour hike each way. Getting to the tip was nice, though; we got all the way up to the outermost cluster of rocks, and looked down a 50-foot (or so) drop to the tidepools and ocean below, and some pretty large waves rushing by the tip. It was bright and sunny all day (which helped offset the wind).

We were just about the last people out there; we only passed a few on the way back. John and I have identical hiking boots (other than the fact that John has huge feet [not that you needed to know that]) and although they're pretty handy in many ways, they're not the most comfortable. I chafed a few of my toes by the end of the walk, and the ball of John's right foot had something happen to it and he was in quite a bit of pain the last few miles, and I ended up driving most of the way home (including navigating the twisty Marin roads around twilight).

On the drive back, we also saw a pretty solid T-bone collision of two cars in the city, when one of them boneheadedly tried to make a U-turn just as the other direction had gotten a green light. U-turns and right-on-reds seem to be the two biggest traffic hazards around here; you really need to be careful when executing either one of them!

We stopped at City Pub in Redwood City and got burgers for dinner - neither of us had eaten much more than PowerBars that day - and then I dropped John off and he went to bed. I drove home and went to bed myself. I was exhausted!

It was worth it, though. Lovely area. Must go back sometime. Seeing as I live here now and everything.

By the way, my solution to the question of where to put John's keys after using his car on Friday turned out to be the correct one - and a good thing, too, since it turned out that John hadn't told me where to leave them. When I talked to him Saturday morning before the trip, he said, "Oh, and thank you for having a brain last night." Heh!

Sunday I continued unpacking - I rearranged things in closets and made some more storage space for the Random Crap Boxes. I also set up the computer printer and wrote some COA letters to magazines, as well as printing out phone number lists to keep near my phone. Everything seems to be working fine, thankfully!

In the afternoon my big project was to go out looking for shelving. What I'd like to buy is some modular metal shelving to put in my closet - the sort you might put clothes on, only I want to use it for other stuff. The catch, though, is that I want it to be free-standing, not screwed into the wall. And that's a big catch: Home Depot had exactly what I want, except it screws into the wall. There are plenty of free-standing shelf units out there, but they're not modular or adjustable, which is key for me since I have a quirky space I want to put them in. So, after driving around for a few hours to Home Depot and Office Depot and OfficeMax, I came home empty-handed.

I'm not entirely sure how to proceed from here; I looked up 'shelving' in the yellow pages, but those businesses mostly seem geared towards commercial and industrial shelving (though conceivably commercial shelving - say, for offices - would work for me; hard to say).

I also need to figure out what the good contemporary furniture stores are around here. I'm just not a traditional kinda guy.

And, after getting home, I hauled out my bike and went for a three- or four-mile ride down to Los Gatos Creek and then along the bike path along the creek, which is rather nice. (It's obviously a running path, too, since it has exercise 'stations' along the way.) Unfortunately, I learned in the process that my bike is about ready to give up the ghost; one of the pedals is in bad shape, and it feels like the whole pedal mechanism is also a bit messed up. The bike is 8 years old, so at this point I'm thinking of just buying a whole new bike; nothing too fancy, but something lighter might be nice.

Of course, the ride merely ensured that I'd be really tired when I got home, so I did a little more laundry, and went to bed.

Today I went in for my second week of training class on my application. Today was really not much more than review of some stuff we did the first week, back a month ago, although I did learn a few details I didn't know before. Hopefully the rest of the week will be more enlightening.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)