On Sunday M and I went for a hike in Monte Bello Open Space Preserve. Although it's in the same general area as Russian Ridge, I'd never been there before, but I really liked it. The terrain is varied and we saw a marshy area and a few small creeks as well as some open hillside. The view from the trail just below the parking lot goes south to Loma Prieta and beyond. Looking at how far Loma Prieta is from San Francisco, it's hard to believe that an earthquake starting there could cause so much damage in the city. The park is also the source for Stevens Creek, which I ride over top of on my way to work. It was cloudy and chilly when we started out, but the views were nice anyway. Down in the creek area it was very damp and quiet, and we watched a little red salamander or lizard of some kind skitter across the leaves. When he stayed still we could hardly see him because he was pretty much the same color as the darker leaves.

We did a short loop, about 4 miles, consisting of the Stevens Creek Nature Trail, Canyon Trail, and White Oak Trail. At the end of White Oak Trail, the trail opens out and climbs the hillside to the level of the parking lot (the top of the hill) before actually arriving back at the lot. The clouds had mostly cleared away by then (they were still partly overhead, but both the valley and the crests of the hills were clear) and it was hot work climbing up, so for a shortish loop it's still a pretty good workout. At the top, we suddenly got a view of the valley below and the Dumbarton bridge. On a hillside on the other side of the lot we saw a few deer. I was lamenting how far away the deer were when we went around a corner and saw two deer right in front of us, probably no more than ten yards away. It's the closest I've ever been to a deer and it was neat to see them walk and jump and nibble the grass. They didn't seem frightened by us, but they were certainly wary and uninterested in having us get any closer to them. M tried to get a few pictures on his phone -- regrettably, we didn't have a camera! They eventually climbed the nearby hillside and we went back to the parking lot.

I definitely prefer this hiking area to Russian Ridge -- it has almost the variety of Sam McDonald or Pescadero, with a much shorter drive (albeit on The Twisty Road, as I like to call Page Mill).

My progress on this goal is (ack!) still seven parks left. I need to get hiking!

I'm a very verbal person, so I often assume that words, numbers, lists, and tables are going to be enough for me to figure something out. But there's really something very visceral about images, even crappy pie charts made in Excel.

I've been re-doing my budget (I fell off the wagon a bit, in the sense that I stopped tracking expenses, and decided I wanted to try a slightly different structure to see if that would help), and I decided to make a monthly column and an annual column. Then I got the idea to make a pie chart of it, and I have to say, I know I pay a lot of rent -- it's the Bay Area, right? But it's kind of shocking to see all that magenta in the pie chart. (I had a plan to change that, but then rents started going up, so I'm counting my blessings.) It's also interesting to notice that I pay more for federal income tax than I do for food, and what a tiny slice of my projected spending public transit (aside from, or even with, my monthly Caltrain ticket) is. Also, I find it interesting that I was once given 25% as a ballpark figure for how much tax I should expect to pay, and that's exactly what I do pay. It also makes comparisons about how much I've allocated to things like "Donations" or "Gifts" vs. "Fun" rather graphic and easy to see. Not sure I'm going to get any philanthropic awards for my current allocation...oh well.

101 update!

#35: Museums
( Legion of Honor museum )

#16: Vancouver and #32: Kayaking
( Canada+Kayak=Awesome )

#18: North Carolina
( best. wedding. ever. )

#59: Haircut
( hair? )

Thoughts on the goals
Doing the 101 is interesting because it definitely does push me to do things I probably wouldn't otherwise do. I like having a list, and I think it's important to have a time period, because otherwise there's no push there. But it's hard because I'm always having new goals come up that become important because they occur in the moment, or I realize after doing something that maybe doing that was more valuable than doing a 101 goal.

When Shari was visiting, we made blueberry pie together from blueberries she brought fresh from the Oregon fields, and it didn't quite gel properly, but it was so fun to make together and it doesn't matter that it's not part of the 101, really. Not just because of course life has to consist of more than just the 101 (obviously it does) but because that's just as cool as I ever imagined, say, making sushi could be, yet it didn't occur to me at the time of making the list that making a fruit pie should be on the list.

When I did the Sequoia century, I was really pleased to have participated in my first organized ride, and I definitely felt it was a milestone for me. But somehow, most of my 101 goals relating to biking are about distance and consistency. It just didn't occur to me at the time that participating in organized rides would be something I wanted to do, and would be an important experience. I just saw the brochure for it and decided, hey, I want to do that. And I do look at my goals and think, geez, why does it matter if I ever ride my bike every day straight for any longer than five days (which is the longest I usually ride every day for)? Isn't it really the total experience that matters?

So I guess I feel a little uncomfortable with the constraints of the 101 in that regard, because it arbitrarily elevates the things I do for the 101 above, or at least apart from, other things I decide to do that may, in the end, be more fun or valuable. I haven't quite decided what I plan to do about that, if anything. But I am rethinking the way I approach goals so that I can be more focused on what I've decided I want to do at any given time, and on the basics or essentials of what I want to accomplish. Which is funny because it means that trying to do the 101 is even valuable in the ways that it's annoying, simply because it makes me think these things.

Brief updates on currently-in-progress goals:
( fairly good progress, some clarification of goals )

It's been a nice weekend. Saturday I got to complete one of my 101 in 1001 goals: I went sailing in the bay! There were eight of us and a pretty big sailboat. It was cold and foggy most of the day, but for a while on the back side of Angel Island, it was calm and sunny and very pretty. It was very exciting for most of the rest of the time, with some big waves and high winds (gusts up to 30 knots). We didn't have any specific destinations, but did have a great picnic lunch on Angel Island. Other than that we just sailed around and back and forth. I was somewhat inadequately dressed for how cold it was (I factored in "cold on the water" but not "also a lot colder in Berkeley than Menlo Park to start with"), and at one point when I went below to get something, I started to feel quite ill, but after a while it passed without incident. I unfortunately didn't help out too much because I don't have any previous experience in how sailing works, but I learned some of the basic concepts and terminology, so maybe if I go again I can be more helpful and even try driving the boat for a little while. It's exciting to be out in the wind and weather and see the big waves push the boat up and down.

Yesterday was an early bike ride down to the bike shop and back up Junipero Serra/Foothill Expwy, then a nice (if foggy) walk in GG Park and the Haight, and today I repeated the Menlo-Atherton bike loop with my dad. Being more prepared this time, I felt less nervous about the hills and was able to manage my descents better. The hills didn't seem as scary this time, I think because I knew what to expect, I had practiced on some other hills yesterday, and I had my cyclocomputer to help get an idea of whether, when I felt nervous, I was actually going really fast objectively, or if it seemed faster than it was. I still tended to slow down when I was nervous, but having the actual number there in front of me tended to steady my mind (though I kept my eyes on the road and not the computer most of the time!). I'm looking forward to next week's short course for the Sequoia Century (31mi and 1200 feet of climbing). Just have to figure out how to get there in the morning, but it looks like the good old VTA #22 should do it.

Four new recipes from Vegan with a Vengeance for my 101 in 1001 list.

Since the last report, I've cooked:

Lemon-Corn Waffles with Blueberry Sauce
Sweet Potato Crepes with Cilantro-Tamarind Sauce
Garlicky Kale with Tahini Dressing
Brooklyn Pad Thai

Of the four, the one I was least in love with was the Garlicky Kale with Tahini Dressing. The tahini dressing is really strong and has kind of a funny texture, where the oil doesn't totally emulsify with the rest of the ingredients. The vegetable itself was fine -- I made it with spinach -- and the amount of garlic is nice (you do have to like garlic; there's a lot of it). The sauce does keep a long time, so that's a plus, especially since the recipe makes way more of it than is needed for one batch of the kale, and it's good spread on bread and topped with tomatoes and green herbs, or mixed into hummus for additional flavor. It would likely be a good pita/sandwich spread. I don't like it plain as a spread or dip, unlike hummus.

The rest of the recipes are all absolutely amazing. The sweet potato crepes: first of all, VEGAN CREPES. They use chickpea flour, which is obtainable at whole-foods places or Indian groceries, and apparently is good at binding stuff together, because they smell, taste, and behave exatly like normal crepes, as far as I can tell. They're savory crepes, since the chickpea flour has a distinctive flavor that doesn't do as well with sweet stuff, and the oil is olive, which is the same in that regard. They're so good that I've since made another batch of them just to stick vegetables into, or whatever I have around. And they're not hard to deal with. I tore a few of them a little, but I found them quite manageable, and I have no experience cooking crepes at all.

The filling for that recipe uses a very tasty mixture of Indian spices (fenugreek, mustard, and cardamon seeds, cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, and cayenne -- why do all spices start with c?), and the combination of onion, red bell pepper, and sweet potatoes is slightly sweet but not too much so. We did most of the spices (as the recipe recommends) from whole spices, toasted and ground, which left a nice smell in the kitchen for days, but the spice mix is similar to garam masala, and a faster version of the recipe could use that instead, or just ground spices mixed.

The sauce was the only thing about this dish that wasn't perfect, from my perspective. It doesn't contain nearly enough tamarind in the recipe as written; after the first time we ate it, M and I added several more tablespoons of it to get that nice sweet-sour flavor. Also, it's easier to grind the cashews properly if you soak them first; our sauce turned out a bit grainy, which is more our fault than the recipe's, but the tip would have been useful. Still, the sauce is an excellent counterpoint to the crepes & filling, with a cool, green taste backed by the richness of the coconut and cashew base.

The pad thai was also extremely tasty. The instructions are very good and the ingredents not overly complicated, and include a note saying to do the final cooking phase two servings at a time, or else it'll be unmanageable. This seems to be sound advice since it turned out very well this way, and already reqiured a very large skillet to mix adequately. Use the largest skillet you have around. This recipe is just totally solid. The lemongrass is a nice touch to give it a real Thai flavor. We were able to get a stalk (more than needed) at Draegers for $0.26, so it's not an expensive addition either.

Finally, the waffles. These are the most interesting waffles I've ever had, and very close to being the most tasty. I'm a sucker for anything with lemon zest in it, and combined with the cornmeal, it gives the waffles a bright, crispy flavor and texture that's a really excellent way to start a morning. The sweet blueberry sauce is simple and a great counterpoint to the tart waffles. The only dangerpoint for this recipe is that the waffles, for whatever reason, tend to stick to the waffle iron. Regular waffles come off my waffle iron easily if it's been sprayed once at the beginning of the cooking. These have to be sprayed every time. And there's also a very small window between "too soft" and "too crispy". M and I both like our waffles to be a little crisp, rather than floppy and soft, but these can get almost burned very quickly after they turn crispy, so you have to be careful.

This weekend was a good one for the 101 in 1001 list.

38: Visit Moad and 5 other local museums
On Saturday, it was raining, so M & I abandoned our plans to go bike test-riding and instead went to the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City. I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but it looked pretty interesting. There was a lot of detail about transportation (stagecoach, rail, streetcar, bus, and car) and the rise of the great estates and then the suburbs and commuters, as well as detail on farming, fishing, and logging, and on the Ohlone Indians who used to live in this area. There was a little about the Spanish missions, but not much, and an interesting exhibit about immigrants that didn't really live up to its full potential because very few of the photos had comments.

It was also neat to see the stained glass domes in the main rotunda and Courtroom A (the picture on the main page of the website gives you a glimpse), which is the site of the San Mateo County Superior Court deliberations. They're quite beautiful, especially when the sun is shining through, and the building has been restored and is very impressive. I also liked the photos in the main rotunda of local farmers. I really appreciate that we have so many local farmers around here.

47 & 48: PBPC/SVBC Meetings & the NS Route Ride
These goals aren't inherently related, but they do go together. I attended my first PBPC meeting on April 5, 2007, and met the other members. I found the atmosphere friendly and welcoming and it was nice to talk with people who share my perspectives and concerns about cycling and transportation. It's not a large group -- the meeting was about 15 people -- so I didn't feel overwhelmed.

Not entirely coincidentally, one of the main items on the agenda for the meeting was final prep for the North-South route ride. The group has been working on a route to traverse San Mateo county from north to south, for the purposes of commuting mainly. I think it's a great idea and when I found out there was a ride planned for April 15th (which I learned from an SVBC newsletter I received earlier this year) I wanted to go. But the route was 27 miles, plus a ride into San Francisco thereafter, and I wasn't sure about riding more than my previous daily maximum of 19. The group members, particularly Caryl, were very encouraging and reminded me that I could always catch the train home or to SF at one of the station meeting points, so I opted to start out from Menlo Park at the origin of the route (less than half a mile from my apartment) and see how far I could get.

During the previous week, I rode 20 miles Tuesday, 7 on Wednesday, and 13 on Thursday. I felt okay after these rides and decided I could make it, though I was nervous about wind since it had been windy during the week. I made sure to prepare plenty of water, plus some sports drink and a Clif Bar to keep me going, and other necessities, so that I would be prepared whatever happened. I met the others there at 7:45 am yesterday, and we started out at a reasonable pace. In the end I was able to keep up for the whole way and rode a total of 39 miles yesterday (including my trips to and from home) and climbed more hills than I've ever done in one day. I don't think any of them were as steep as the Arastradero loop hill though. Flying down the Grand Ave overpass was pretty fun -- not so fun was coming to stop when the light suddenly turned red! Then I appreciated why bikes need good brakes.

After the first 15 miles or so, my wrists felt pretty sore and my bottom and feet felt funny occasionally, almost going numb and then clearing out. It was very windy during the bayside stint and pushing along there was pretty brutal. As we got into SF my legs started to feel very tired, and I was pleased when we finally arrived at Pakwan for lunch. After lunch a number of us went back to the train station and took the train back together, continuing the enjoyable chatting about bike equipment etc. I was the last of us to get off, and after everyone else had left I chatted with a couple who had biked from Mountain View to SF (wow)!

When we got to Menlo Park I went straight home. After my shower I felt very exhausted and took a nap for a while. My legs still feel sore but there's no lasting pain other than that. I was and am quite pleased and satisfied with my performance -- especially considering I was poking along on a hybrid while virtually everyone else was on road bikes. (Though I appreciated my front shocks on the rough parts!) Now I'm thinking seriously about signing up for one of the longer courses for the South County Century ride I picked up a brochure for ages ago...I figure if I get my new bike by then and do a longer course of training than just "ride more than usual the week before", I should be able to manage going fairly far. (But getting there could be a problem.)

Update: Our group picture at the Hillsdale station did appear in today's Palo Alto Daily News, but only in the print edition; I can't find it on their website since there's no story that goes with it (unfortunately). I snagged a few copies and may try to scan the photo eventually.

I made sushi (hosomaki, thin rolls) for the first time on Wednesday night. It turned out to be not that hard, actually. By the third roll, I was making rolls that looked right and stayed together during cutting, but there were a few hitches/deviations from instructions.

The instructions in my Japanese Vegetarian Cooking book for sushi rice are complicated. You're supposed to rinse the rice, then soak for an hour, bring to a boil and cook about 15 mins, bring the heat up high 10 seconds, and finally turn off the heat and allow the rice to finish cooking in its own steam for 10 min. Then you turn it over and over with a paddle while adding the vinegar/sugar/salt mix, and have someone else "fan" the steam away so it cools sticky and glossy.

We were hungry so we ditched that plan and cooked the rice about 20 min. It seemed to work fine. The rice was still quite sticky. I'm sure it comes out better if you do it the other way, but...so much time!

Then, the instructions say to cut your sheets of nori in half, but not what size the nori should be. We examined the size of the nori we had and determined that it was the right size already, so the instructions should explain what size it should be, as well as tell you you may need to cut it.

Then, the first few, I tried to make with a filling of chopped up edamame. They didn't have enough structural integrity, so it didn't work very well. I also put too much rice in the first one, because it doesn't explain how thick it should be.

The instructions again led us astray in suggesting that you should leave 1/2" blank space on both the top and bottom of the nori and an additional 1/2 in on the bottom. I found that it worked better if there was only a tiny bit of space on the side where you start the roll, so that the rice doesn't slide up and off, but you don't need much space. The instructions also didn't make it clear which side to wet and which direction to roll. As long as you start with the right side (the one with less space between the rice and the edge), I don't think it matters if you do it towards or away from you, but the book made a big deal out of it, and out of which direction the "smooth side" of the mat is supposed to face. Who cares? As for which side to get wet, it's the end side, so that when you get to the end, it grabs up onto the part of the roll you're rolling.

The book, while it did recommend cutting the roll with a moistened knife, was not as clear as it should be that the knife must be re-wetted after each cut. The rice is VERY STICKY.

We also didn't have wasabi or pickled ginger. Oh well, next time!

The end result: Carrot/cucumber roll, in my bento with the rest of the chopped edamame.


There was nothing else of note in my bento, unfortunately. One of these days I'll do a full Japanese meal in there -- but that's another goal for another time!

When I finished doing my receipt review and making my budget, I noticed that my cash spending tended to escape my notice, and decided that I needed to actually keep track of all my spending, at least for a while. It turns out that while that is pretty tedious, it really, really gives me a better sense of what's happening to my money, and it brings a lot of simplicity to my decisions about whether to buy things.

The other day lonesomepioneer mentioned a new album by one of my favorite artists, Shawn Colvin. I thought about it, and thought "I would like to buy that album." In the past, I would have had two options -- buy it without knowing whether I could really afford it, but presuming I could, since it's not that expensive after all, or not buy it because I wasn't sure about affording it. Now I can just look at the Bal Fwd and current budget for my Books & Music category, and see what I have there, and whether I'd want to spend some of it on the album or not, depending on how much is there. It's pretty neat.

In general, having the 101 in 1001 list motivates me to do things I know I want or need to do, but didn't have concrete reason to get on doing right away, and a lot of those things have good effects in the long run. It also increases my awareness about all the things I decide to do, because tend to I look at them in the light of seeing what I get out of doing them. On which more later.

This past Saturday I went hiking in Muir Beach, in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), with M and my parents. It was an absolutely beautiful hike on an absolutely beautiful day. The sky was blue, the ocean clear except for a rim of fog at the far edge, warm and just windy enough to take the edge off. We hiked the Coastal Trail to Pirate's Cove, stopping every so often to appreciate the amazing views. At the cove, we took a little break, and went back. M and I walked on the beach, buried our feet in the sand, saw starfish, and made drip sandcastles. The water was COLD.

The plants were really interesting. Wildflowers were out, and we saw poppies, little white flowers, and little purple flowers. There were big plants with thick stems topped with white flowers, and by the creek near the cove, some of those skinny reeds that come apart into sections. We saw a wild strawberry plant and got a few choice morsels. Yum! All in all, an awesome hike for when the weather is nice. If you're more ambitious you can go all the way to Tennessee Beach and back, but we were just out for a romp.

The trail is fairly steep, but not otherwise difficult, and has recently been restored, with non-native plants cut back and the surface improved in places. There aren't that many junctions and they're clearly marked. Before you get to the Coastal Trail branch from the fire road, there are a few branches to outlooks, which have nice views. However, the trail down to Pirate's Cove shown on the map at the trailhead is really more of a spur, very short, and the last part of it is mountain-goat territory. We didn't go down the whole way, since there was a nice vantage point for a rest not far from the trail branch start.

My progress for this goal is now 8 parks remaining. At this rate I'm doing well.

I made the Lemon Gem Cupcakes tonight, because I thought it was time for monthly birthday stuff at work, but it turns out that there are none in March! By that time I'd gotten into major anticipation mode for these cupcakes, though, and decided to make them tonight anyway.

They came out well overall; I've already scarfed down one because I just couldn't wait. But there were some hitches:

The recipe requires more sugar than I had. It wasn't so much as to be a big deal, so I subbed brown sugar, which probably gives them a slightly molassesy taste, but I couldn't taste it. Anyway, that's just an execution hitch.

The recipe requires 1/4 c + 2 tbsp lemon juice. This is a lot of lemon juice. You should have at least 3 good-sized lemons. Mine turned out to be thick-skinned so they yielded less juice than required, but fortunately only slightly.

The recipe tells you to fill the cupcake liners 2/3 full so the cupcakes don't quite come to the top when baked, but it doesn't explain why, so when I ended up with more batter than I expected, I just filled them a little more. I still had two extra cupcakes, so either New York cupcake liners are bigger or the recipe tends to make too much. But with vegan baking you get guilt-free batter-licking, so no worries. :-) I swear, it would be worth it just for that, even if it weren't crazy tasty and probably at least a little better for you than the animal-based stuff.

The big reason for the fill instruction is that the icing is basically liquid when made as described in the recipe. Apparently this isn't a mistake I made, just how it's supposed to be, or so says the PPK forums. You're supposed to chill it, and then fill the cupcake liner to the top with the icing and let it cool and solidify. I didn't, so the cupcakes are making a mess. I think it's a major oversight for a cookbook not to explain that the icing won't be solid, and that that's why the fill instruction should be strictly followed. The recipe isn't hard and can easily be followed by someone relatively new to baking, who will have no clue what to do with the frosting and will make a mess (and have fun licking her fingers).

Also, the icing tends to soak into the cupcake, which is an interesting phenomenon, but not really to my taste. Even after adding a bunch of arrowroot and putting the frosting in the freezer for 10 min, it was still mostly liquid and soaking in. There's also far too much of it considering you can't put much on each cupcake, which saddens me because I love the icing as well as the cake in general. I think next time I'm going to put in WAY less soymilk, and halve the icing recipe generally. Or double the cupcakes, because DAMN they are good!

One reason this recipe was such a success compared to previous baking attempts is that I finally bought a thermometer for the oven. I'd had trouble with things not cooking as fast as the recipes claimed they would, so finally I changed from my previous "Hm, the thermometer can't be that wrong, right?" to "Hm, I really should verify." People, my oven thermostat is 25 degrees off, so that the temperature is 25 degrees lower than it should be. That's a lot. When I turned the oven thermostat to 375, the thermometer read 350 and the cupcakes, which are supposed to bake at 350, baked beautifully. I think for the next Carrot Raisin Muffin batch I make, I'm going to actually only need to bake them for the specified time!

I cooked a new recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance with M yesterday: Chickpea Spinach Curry. I thought it was quite good. It has quite a good spice number and balance, but doesn't have any really obscure spices in it that can be off-putting for making a curry. (Asafoetida is optional, and I don't have any, so we didn't use it.) There aren't too many ingredients, either. Aside from the spices, it's onion, garlic, ginger, chickpeas, spinach, and canned tomatoes. Nothing hard to get. The spinach had a nice creamy texture and all the flavors worked well together. We added all the reserved tomato juice during cooking because it seemed dry. I'm guessing that it's because we used baby spinach instead of regular, which might not have had as much liquid.

M thought the spices could have been amped up a little. I think they were probably okay, but I would have added some cayenne or a fresh chili for a nice little bit of heat.

Since this is my first entry about this goal, I should also note that I've already cooked the following recipes:
( Cooked already )

Recipes high on my list include:
( all these sound extremely yummy )

I did a major step toward completion of the "Tag all my past LiveJournal entries" goal. I tagged all entries worth tagging in this journal between when it was reinstated in 2002 and the present. (Most earlier entries won't be tagged because they're private.) I'm not done because I need to go and look at the tags and see which ones should be collapsed or removed. I might also go through again because there were some tags that I didn't know I needed at first, so only later-tagged entries of that type got them. But it's a huge step toward being fully tagged. I really enjoyed reading over my back entries. Plenty of it is inane but I've written some nice stuff as well.

I found something I wrote in summer 2002 funny:

Vowels are the strangest thing. People say stuff like "iownedemvryofn" and somehow we get "I don't eat them very often" from that. When they say "I" they say ai, ui, uih, and uh, and somehow they all sound like "I" if you listen to them in context (instead of in a speech program that can isolate recorded pieces of speech). I don't get it at all, and it really makes me despair of ever getting a computer to understand spoken language with anything like human fluency.

Little did I know how relevant this would be almost five years later.

I just realized, this May I'll have been away from Rice for as long as I was there. Wow.

In more linguistics news, there was a guy talking outside my neighbor's door earlier. I could tell he was Asian even though I can't see him, but I don't know exactly why. He has one of those accents that isn't -- he sounds completely American, but somehow his voice contains additional information beyond that. It's bizarre.

Today I made progress toward #25 on my list: Visit 10 Bay Area regional parks I haven't yet been to.

Today's destination was Sam McDonald/Pescadero Creek County Park in San Mateo County, outside La Honda in the hills, with a group of people (http://www.unixfolk.com/hikers/). The part we hiked, the Brook Trail Loop, is mostly redwood forest and we saw some impressive trees, a waterfall, nice meadows, some early wildflowers, a deer, and nine banana slugs. This is the first time I've ever seen a live banana slug, and I found them a little disturbing. They are very large and very yellow and I was constantly afraid I was going to step on one that I hadn't seen in time. Ewww. Luckily I didn't. It was quite muddy in some places, and today remained foggy for most of the time we were there, but the views were beautiful with layers of mountains marching off into the distance and when the sun came out it was nice and warm.

At one point we got a little lost because we didn't have detailed maps, and I think we ended up hiking about 10 miles rather than 8, and never completed the loop of the trail but rather backtracked to our origin after taking various interconnecting trails including the Pomponio trail. It was challenging for me because I'm not a regular hiker of long distances and there was significant altitude change.

Afterward we ate at Duarte's in the town of Pescadero. Their offerings for vegetarians are slim (sigh), but I got a grilled cheese (real cheese) and fries, good veggie junk food. They do have olallieberry pie with amazingly tasty berry filling. Even after being told it was amazing, it was more amazing than I thought it would be. I regret to say, though, that the crust does not quite live up to the promise of the filling. (Before reading the Wikipedia link, I thought the olallieberry was a cross of just raspberry and blackberry, but it turns out that dewberries also play a role.)

I've discovered that I need to start stretching my legs more regularly. All my riding has resulted in the fronts of my hips being tight and they get sore when I hike for a long time. Still, today was fun, and I definitely want to do more exploring of the trails in this area, since most of my hiking until now has been further south. I'm not sure if today should count as one or two parks, but I'm going to go with one, since it was one trip.

I submitted my enrollment forms for my 401k today, and it'll go into effect tomorrow. This one is complete!