What a day to stop/start blogging!

I was thinking I would take a break in my blogging, at least more than the few hours I did take, but I have the bug. I was getting tired of my LAL blog primarily because it was too much backward facing. I'm not going to count the days and may not even make daily entries in this blog because its focus will be on doing things, going forward, living my third life.

While my "third life" may have started earlier, I don't have any specific date, so it is appropriate that this blog about my third life starts on the day that a president that I helped elect was inaugurated. I am optimistic about his presidency but was mildly disappointed with the delivery of his inauguration speech. It's almost as if he were constrained by his own realization that he was speaking for posterity. Fortunately, it reads much better. I was more inspired reading it than I was hearing him deliver it. I think his convention nomination acceptance speech was delivered better.

For two days now I have been diligent in my exercising, well three if you count the golf that made me sore the day before. Today I went for a walk in the hills around Pacifica. I'm going to do interesting things more often but I still have all the mundane maintenance things to do. I've decided I just won't write about them. This is why this blog may not be a daily thing.

Today my doing consisted of hiking a portion of the "Planet of the Apes" road. At least that is what a former boss of mine called it and I can see why. It is actually an abandoned paved road, Old Pedro Mountain Road between Pacifica and Montara, that is slowly being reclaimed by nature. It has a nice gentle but consistent rise to the ridge it crosses. Where it crosses the ridge, there are two paths to the left and one path to the right. One of the left paths is actually the trail to the top of Montara Mountain. I took the other left path, which was essentially a maintenance road to some electrical wires. Earlier on the hike, I had thought to myself that I'll keep walking until the next bench I pass after 1:00 PM. These creosote coated logs became my bench.

After eating lunch I took the trail to the right and came upon "Bill's Overlook" bench. In my haste I had missed the perfect lunch spot, with a view, and instead chose a non-flat surface which required wading though at least some poison oak. (Even if it wasn't, I'd get sympathetic itches just thinking that it was, and it really was.)

I chose to walk up still further to a point that my oldest daughter, her husband, and I had walked soon after we had moved to Pacifica. The trail down to the paved road was just as I remembered it. Since I originally hadn't planned on walking that trail I wore my tennis shoes for the hike. While I never slid or worse, fell, I didn't technically need my hiking boots but there were times that I wished I had worn them. They fit better and my toes feel less jammed on the steeper downhills than they do in my tennis shoes.

I didn't really see that much wild life and just when I was thinking that the only wild life I had seen were birds, although I saw a lot of fur as if the remnants of a meal for some non-bird carnivore, I saw something brown streak across the trail going up hill in front of me. It looked to be smaller than a bobcat and definitely wasn't hopping like a rabbit. Later I saw a kitten, which may or may not have been wild. It scampered off just like a wild thing.

I was waxing quite philosophical on my hike about how the works of man are temporary with this "Planet of the Apes" road as the embodiment of the metaphor. There were slips and other soil incursions from the upper side of the road and an accumulation of decaying leaves and other on the downhill side. Both supported encroaching growth. Then there were a couple sections where slips had even taken out part of the road.

I did see a lot of horse and dog scat. Those I was looking for to avoid. I didn't see, or if I did, didn't recognize any other animal droppings. While I didn't see any horses, I did see a couple of dog walkers, one of which was obviously doing it professionally. She had at least eight dogs, only three of which, the smallest three, were on leashes. A couple mountain bikers passed me and about three fellow hikers. Otherwise, it was quite a solitary experience.

Unfortunately, I didn't undertake this hike as well prepared as I would have liked. I had intended to start carrying a plastic grocery bag with me so I could pick up litter. I forgot to do so and left it all up there. This gives me reason to walk it again. I also forgot my mono-pod in the car. Thus my telephoto pictures may be blurry. You can see the whole album of my hike in my album on Kodak Gallery.