Monday, May 05, 2003


Linda and I went on a nice hike yesterday. We hiked a 6 mile route at Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. The hike started at the base of the Santa Cruz mountain range (or maybe I should say the foothills). It followed a fire road and the entire hike was all uphill. It was very green all over because of all the rain we have had recently. There were many sticky monkey flowers and lots of healthy poison oak growing next to the road. It was a very drizzly misty day for the hike. We got sprinkled on several times but no heavy rain. It was very cool to see the clouds wandering in among the moutain tops and across the Silicon Valley. We saw a few patches of blue sky but they flew by quickly. We had one section of mud to skirt our way around. This fire road as very popular with mountain bikers. The muddy section was made worse by all the bikes making their way through the mud. We were amused with a group of bikers who got off their bikes and pushed them around the mud. We were inclined to think that part of mountain biking is getting muddy and the challenge of riding through the mud. We over heard them saying that they wanted to stay clean as they were heading to a coffee shop (Peets) after the ride. I guess that excuse will do.


Saturday was a very stormy rainy day around most of the bay area, but my little corner of the world in Mtn. View didn't get much rain. I spent a couple of hours outside weeding my garden and got rained on once just a little bit -- not enough to get me very wet. I went out on some errands and did not get rained on. However there were very impressive dark clouds over the mountains and down towards San Francisco. The rain clouds seemed to have skirted around Mtn. View all day long but down poured on other places. Linda told me it poured in San Jose. And the report from Wen was it was very rainy and windy in Santa Cruz. On the news they had pictures of funnel clouds in the sky seen from the East Bay.


I spent most of Saturday doing chores. I got out my home repair handbook to figure out how to repair the leak in my pop up stopper mechanism on the sink in my half bath. The book advised to put in a new washer and gasket. So off I went to the hardware store and I bought a washer and a gasket. I got home and popped the new stuff on and hurray, no more leaky sink! I spent a couple hours weeding my garden that afternoon. And finally I drove to the grocery store to get some milk and pick up a pizza I ordered from Round Table. I spent the rest of the day sleeping (I slept till 11ish) and watching TV. It was a very relaxing day.