Rides & Stuff
Mar. 21st, 2010 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aK. and I were planning to go for a bike ride today, with the ever-improving Bay Area weather, but this morning she opted not to go as she's been sick lately. I decided to go on my own, though not where K. and I had been planning.
Instead I biked up through North Berkeley, visiting a number of the parks that we used to frequent during the scant year we lived there. (It seems like longer, but such is usually the case during transitional periods in one's life.) I skimmed by Live Oak, but when I got up to Indian Rock I parked for a while to climb the rock. As always, the view was nice. I read for a bit up there. After that I headed further north to John Hinkel Park.
I'm happy to say that I managed to actually bike to all these places. Some of them are up in the hills of North Berkeley, but by (bike) climbing skills have improved. I'm better at being able to ride up slight slopes with some force, to shit down when things are too tough, and to ride up pretty steep hills in first gear.
In any case, there's a nice little amphitheater at John Hinkel Park. K and I saw a a Shotgun Players Romeo & Juliet there many years ago. I read a bit while at the ampitheater today. Kids occasionally circled around, looking for Easter egs. I also remembered a hike up to a waterfall back in the park, but if I was in the right place, it had ballooned in my memory, because there were just a few hundred feet to walk past the amphitheater, and the "waterfall" was mainly a trickle. Maybe I was thinking of Cordinices Park, which is a bit further up (but not as far north), or maybe I'd just conflated the walk to the park with the walk inside it. (I'll have to bike up to Cordinices next time I get the urge, to continue with my North Berkeley nolstalgia, and see if I can correlate my memories with the physical realities.)
I was a bit sad to see John Hinkel more rundown than it used to be. There were "caution" signs and orange netting along many of the paths, and the lodge seems to be practically a ruin now. Sad to see Berkeley doing such a terrible job taking care of its community responsibilities.
Afterward I stopped by Solano and was very pleased to pick up two of the Dumarest of Terra books that I did not yet have at Pegasus Books, for just $4.50 total (still marked up, but not as bad as Half-Price Books, which seems to be shifting its stance from marking all "half-price" books up to $3.99 to marking them up to $4.99).
I think I've got 12 Dumarest of Terra books still outstanding. I'll soon have to go to individual volumes on the internet, which I've been avoiding (other than a lot of 5 books, 3 of which I didn't have, which I picked up cheap off of eBay last month). But, I've got a year or two of Dumarest reading in any case. It's just fun to look for them now.
When I got home, I received somewhat frightening news. The docs in Hawaii haven't been liking the sound of my dad's heart, so they're sending him over to Oahu for an angiogram, which is going to happen tomorrow.
That, by the by, is the concern with living on Kauai. As I've noted before it has a population about 65% of the size of Berkeley. So if you have something major to deal with healthwise, you have to go over to the next island.
My guess is that they're going to find blockage tomorrow and put in a stint. My hope is that it'll all go well. If so, this is definitely the [i]better[/i] way to find out about something like this. But I'll be on tenderhooks until tomorrow afternoon. I think we should hear what's going on by 1 or 2 or something.
Today, I've just been trying to keep myself busy since I got home and heard that news (and then called and talked to my dad for about an hour). Watched episode #5 of Glee (which is quickly threatening Lost as my favorite show, though they're tons different), then the Amazing Race. Read volume 7 of X-Factor (which was great!), also been working on the two novels I've been reading, the first 4400 novel set after the show and the final Concordat of Archive novel.
And I've been working on my history book. The first week of real work was very successful. I've put in more work than I intended, but the amount of work that's getting completed is gratifying. I'll probably write about that in the first of many weekly updates (mainly to keep me motivated) tonight or tomorrow.
Instead I biked up through North Berkeley, visiting a number of the parks that we used to frequent during the scant year we lived there. (It seems like longer, but such is usually the case during transitional periods in one's life.) I skimmed by Live Oak, but when I got up to Indian Rock I parked for a while to climb the rock. As always, the view was nice. I read for a bit up there. After that I headed further north to John Hinkel Park.
I'm happy to say that I managed to actually bike to all these places. Some of them are up in the hills of North Berkeley, but by (bike) climbing skills have improved. I'm better at being able to ride up slight slopes with some force, to shit down when things are too tough, and to ride up pretty steep hills in first gear.
In any case, there's a nice little amphitheater at John Hinkel Park. K and I saw a a Shotgun Players Romeo & Juliet there many years ago. I read a bit while at the ampitheater today. Kids occasionally circled around, looking for Easter egs. I also remembered a hike up to a waterfall back in the park, but if I was in the right place, it had ballooned in my memory, because there were just a few hundred feet to walk past the amphitheater, and the "waterfall" was mainly a trickle. Maybe I was thinking of Cordinices Park, which is a bit further up (but not as far north), or maybe I'd just conflated the walk to the park with the walk inside it. (I'll have to bike up to Cordinices next time I get the urge, to continue with my North Berkeley nolstalgia, and see if I can correlate my memories with the physical realities.)
I was a bit sad to see John Hinkel more rundown than it used to be. There were "caution" signs and orange netting along many of the paths, and the lodge seems to be practically a ruin now. Sad to see Berkeley doing such a terrible job taking care of its community responsibilities.
Afterward I stopped by Solano and was very pleased to pick up two of the Dumarest of Terra books that I did not yet have at Pegasus Books, for just $4.50 total (still marked up, but not as bad as Half-Price Books, which seems to be shifting its stance from marking all "half-price" books up to $3.99 to marking them up to $4.99).
I think I've got 12 Dumarest of Terra books still outstanding. I'll soon have to go to individual volumes on the internet, which I've been avoiding (other than a lot of 5 books, 3 of which I didn't have, which I picked up cheap off of eBay last month). But, I've got a year or two of Dumarest reading in any case. It's just fun to look for them now.
When I got home, I received somewhat frightening news. The docs in Hawaii haven't been liking the sound of my dad's heart, so they're sending him over to Oahu for an angiogram, which is going to happen tomorrow.
That, by the by, is the concern with living on Kauai. As I've noted before it has a population about 65% of the size of Berkeley. So if you have something major to deal with healthwise, you have to go over to the next island.
My guess is that they're going to find blockage tomorrow and put in a stint. My hope is that it'll all go well. If so, this is definitely the [i]better[/i] way to find out about something like this. But I'll be on tenderhooks until tomorrow afternoon. I think we should hear what's going on by 1 or 2 or something.
Today, I've just been trying to keep myself busy since I got home and heard that news (and then called and talked to my dad for about an hour). Watched episode #5 of Glee (which is quickly threatening Lost as my favorite show, though they're tons different), then the Amazing Race. Read volume 7 of X-Factor (which was great!), also been working on the two novels I've been reading, the first 4400 novel set after the show and the final Concordat of Archive novel.
And I've been working on my history book. The first week of real work was very successful. I've put in more work than I intended, but the amount of work that's getting completed is gratifying. I'll probably write about that in the first of many weekly updates (mainly to keep me motivated) tonight or tomorrow.