shannon_a

For twenty years, people have been fighting to get bicycle and pedestrian access to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. And, it should have been an easy sell, because there was one lane on each level of the bridge that wasn't been used (except for breakdowns). But, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission fought against it because they wanted to maintain the ability to jam more cars onto the Bridge, and Marin fought it because ... well, a vocal group in Marin is overentitled and overprivileged, and doesn't want to provide access to their community.

And, that access was needed. I mean, there's almost no way to get across the Bay using bike power. If you go North, you have to go past San Francisco Bay, past San Pablo Bay, out to the edge of the Carquinez Straits before you can cross on the Carquinez Bridge, and then once you get into the north Bay, biking access is terrible, so you have to go about 10 miles more north to get to bikable roads. In the south Bay, the southernmost Bridge, the Dumbarton Bridge, is bikable, but I've never done it because it's a low, ugly Bridge, and I remember commuting across it every day when I worked at Sun, and our trucks were constantly buffeted by the wind, to the point where I can barely imagine biking across it and living.

Maybe the Bay Bridge will someday have bike access across it, but that's at least a decade off, so the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge was people's great hope. And it opened to bicycles and pedestrians (but mostly bicycles) today.

The story of bicycle and pedestrian access to the bridge is entirely one of advocacy. It wouldn't have happened, no way no how, without Bike East Bay and others. Even so, they fought for six years after it looked like they had a foothold. And both Marin and the MTC are continuing to fight now. The MTC tried to turn it into a non-rush-hour-only bike path about halfway through the process, and the Marinites are still trying to get the four-year pilot program canceled.

I'm not convinced it's going to survive long-term, especially since it's never going to be a major bike commute. It's just too long. At 5.5 miles, it was the first or second longest bridge in the world (depending on how you count it) when it was built. And that's ignoring the fact that the east side is way out at Point Richmond and the west side is miles from downtown San Rafael. But for a pleasure ride, and for access to Marin for a weekend day. It's magnificent.

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I purposefully went a little late, because I didn't want to hang around the ribbon-cutting ceremont at 10, nor did I want to have to fight with huge crowds on the bridge. So I meandered out, had lunch at my favorite Oscar's replacement in Point Richmond, then got to the Bridge around 1pm.

The whole time I was heading toward the Bridge from Point Richmond, I saw people coming back, many talking about how great the ride was. The numbers increased as I approached the Bridge, and though it was never crowded, I really felt a part of this community of bicyclists, and it was a great feeling. Pretty soon I had a broad smile on my face whenever anyone went by. I might admit to getting a little emotionally choked up too.

And they were right, the ride was great. It was really foggy as I approached the Bridge, but pretty soon I ascended above it. And since the bike trail is on the upper deck, I could really see everything. It was like I was out on the ocean, with a sea of clouds, and mountains rising all around me. It was like being on Avalon. And unlike the Dumbarton (and the Bay Bridge for that matter) it wasn't particularly windy. Instead, it was just a magnificent ride, up above the whole world, with the beauty of nature all around, and smiling people occasionally going by.

I was a bit worried about the difficulty of the ride because the roads up to the Bridge always looked long and steep to me. But the ride from Richmond proved to be quite doable, with the only gotcha being that the Bridge is made up of two cantilevered sections, with a big dip between them.

And, as it turns out, I can't speak about the approach from San Rafael. People certainly did look more winded coming from that direction, and the drop into San Rafael felt long and steep (but I couldn't even see what it looked like, because I descended into the fog, and pretty soon couldn't see much of anything).

So yay for a bike ride I thought I'd never take, because the March 2019 opening kept getting push back to back, to the point where we were only about 45 days from our planned departure on today, when it opened.

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The downside of the Bridge is, of course, that it comes down in San Rafael. I'd say the ugly part of San Rafael, but I haven't actually seen the attractive part yet, if there is one. But you have a mess of highways and very busy roads, and San Quentin Prison, and a lot of unattractive industrial areas.

I meandered further into San Rafael, wanting to check out the bike paths along the new SMART train line, and found those pretty unattractive too, pretty much just a fenced path running alongside railway tracks. (It'll be nicer in 50 years when SMART fails, and it turns into a full greenway.) And then I ended up dumped from the path into a more commercial area, and there were huge masses of cars on big streets everywhere.

That's where a lady started screaming at me to get in a bike lane like everyone else. Obviously, she was at a pretty low level of moral development, since her basis for doing things was "what everyone else did". But what really confused me was that there was no bike lane. "What bike lane?" I said. "There's no bike lane." But she just kept screaming about how everyone else was using the bike lane that wasn't there, and I should too. I finally decided that she'd fulfilled her lifelong dream of moving to Marin County, but it turned out to be shitty San Rafael.

(Maybe the northern half of San Rafael is prettier. If so, this woman, who seemed very displeased with life, doesn't live there.)

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I thought about continuing through that icky commercial area, because I saw more off-street bike lanes further north, and suspected they were more SMART-adjacent lines, but then I remembered a long-time dream I'd had: doing a mighty bike ride from RIchmond BART to San Francisco, across two Bridges — and truly showing the power of the new Richmond-San Rafael bike path, which opens up both peninsulas to bicyclists from the East Bay.

I looked it up on my trusty iPhone and was told I could make it in 2 hours and 1 minute, which would put me in the Tenderloin just as twilight descended. I decided to go for it. (It ended up taking me about an hour longer, getting into Civic Center BART around 6pm, so I actually got to see the Tenderloin in full dark: "Why did everything suddenly get so sketchy?" I would ask, as I biked along Polk, and then I realized where I was.)

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I've done the north part of that ride before, through the super-cool CalPark Hill Tunnel, which gets you out of ugly San Rafael and into beautiful Larkspur. They were still building up the connectors south last time I was there (after taking the scant one bus out to San Rafael), but they're all done now, so you get to bike over to the attractive Corte Madira Creek and southward for quite a while before really having to worry about roads.

Though 101 is a constant presence as you head south, the bike paths are nice and the rest of the scenery is beautiful, with hills often surrounding you on two or three sides and waterways frequently snaking in from the Bay. I continued on into Corte Madira proper, then around a nice hillside road, and into Mill Valley. That's perhaps the most gorgeous area I biked through, with all the water and hills interfacing so nicely. And also it's where the start of the Mill Valley - Sausalito Bikeway is: another entirely off-road trail that took me a few miles further south.

I skirted Sausalito, and remembered fondly the Anniversary that Kimberly and I spent there some years ago, even stopping to take a picture at the building where we failed to have our Anniversary dinner (because the place we'd thought we'd made reservations at had gone out of business). And then exiting Sausalito I started to climb again, as I approached the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge.

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The closer I got to the Golden Gate, the more fog I saw, blocking out more of San Francisco and much of Bridge #2. And when I got onto the Golden Gate Bridge again it was even foggier than the first: this time I was right in the fog.

And that was another amazing experience. I often could see no more than 10 or 20 feet ahead, so it was like I was in my own little world. It was actually wet! When I took the sharp turn around the southern tower (slow! I did it slowly!), I almost wiped out because of the slick surface. But I could make out the towers as I approached them, and every once in a while bicyclists would materialize from the fog.

Eventually, I made it to San Francisco, tired not just from the ride, but also from the effort of watching so carefully in the fog.

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The fog cleared as I descended down from the Bridge, and from there it was the same route I took during Fleet Week, with the exception of a stop at Ghirardelli Square for some chocolate (of course). Sadly, they no longer had Kimberly's favorite: malted milkballs.

And then it was a tiring ride up Polk, a quick turn through the Tenderloin, and perfect BART karma when I hit the platform.

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Yes, we have problems at home. Yes, there is stress from the move, and yes Kimberly is getting (much) more than her fair share of stress from not just cancer, but also a doctor who hasn't gotten his pathology of the same out to anyone in a full week.

But that was a perfect ride that I've dreamed of for years, a great day of exercise, a great day of natural beauty, and a bit of destressing for myself before diving back into the scrum.

Ugh. The last two weeks have been endless. I look back and I think "That was just a week ago?", "That was this Tuesday?"

And my work on the move has come to a grinding halt.

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Unfortunately, this has largely been centered on Kimberly's health, and she just hasn't been catching any breaks.

A week and a half ago, we thought we'd figured out her "cognitive episodes" and that the appointment she went to that Monday to look at her EEG was a waste of time. Except the EEG showed her having small seizures on the left side of the brain while the EEG was going on. So she was diagnosed with a seizure disorder.

The thing is that she hadn't had any notable (large-scale?) episodes for a full two weeks before that, since we changed out our laundry detergent for something scent-free, and I rewashed not just our bedsheets, but the entire contents of our linen closet. But her neurologist said he thought that was just a coincidence. Since she was having three or four seizures a week before that, I find it hard to believe. My suspicion is that she's now experiencing chemical sensitivities and they're triggering the seizures. But chemical sensitivities are often poo-pooed by doctors, including their possible relationship to seizures. But we can accept this medical diagnosis, and meanwhile see if we can help prevent them.

(In the week and a half since then, Kimberly has had three episodes that I know of, once when she was at a friend's house, and twice when we had people over, so that's unfortunately up from those two blissful seizure-free weeks, but they're still all in situations when she could have been exposed to unusual chemicals.)

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Last Monday night we went through the endless process of bringing our real-estate agent on to sell our house. We literally spent hours going over forms and signing them. Our realtor, B., said the forms had gotten much more extensive since when we bought our house 19 years ago, and they'd be even worse if we were buying.

Well, none of that for now: we have a house waiting for us in Kauai.

And I got some new stuff for my TODO list: get our attic door replaced and talk to stagers.

Meanwhile, I also got a DocuSign copy of our agreement with our shippers sometime during the week.

For whatever reason, I put it all off to Friday ... and then things went to hell.

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I was in the shower last Friday when Kimberly messaged me from her GI office, to let me know what was previously thought to be a growth in her kidney had turned out to be a tumor in her colon. And the GI office was frantic about it. They eventually set up a colonoscopy to do a biopsy on Tuesday.

Tuesday, Katherine took us out to Walnut Creek for the colonoscopy, and we waited around for a few hours while the GI doctor did the procedure.

And thus far we know ... very little. Full results of the biopsy are due next week; I'll be going with Kimberly to a very early appointment with her GI on Thursday morning to find out what's happening.

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This type of existential emergency in your family really throws everything on its head. Kimberly, of course, has been very upset, and I've been offering what support I can. Meanwhile, my own work has been tough going. I only started to get the least back in the swing of things on Wednesday, several days after Kimberly got that first report. And I didn't touch Bitmark work until last night, and I haven't done a thing on the move since our talk with our realtor.

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And I'd all but forgotten that we went out with Kimberly's friend J. for lunch on Friday after the bad news. It all blurs together.

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And I'd all but forgotten that PG&E's irresponsible and doublethink "public safety power outage" was occurring at the same time as all of this. We didn't get hit by it, but I was worried we might as PG&E was grossly inaccurate with their maps, showing for example that UC Berkeley was fine, when the entire campus got shut down.

Governor Newsom is now encouraging municipalities to buy up PG&E facilities, since PG&E has proven themselves feloniously incompetent. If only he had some power where he could force a takeover of PG&E. Yes, it would be tied up in court for years, but that's a first step that's badly needed.

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I have been doing my best to relax when I can. Last Saturday I biked across the Golden Gate and into the Marin headlands. I took Monday off for the holiday that shall not be named and did a hike to the back of Strawberry Canyon. Today, I got back on my bike and went out to Wildcat Canyon.

(Turns out I haven't been to Wildcat in a while. I was delighted to discover two nasty cross-streets on the bikeway north of El Cerrito del Norte are now four-way steps, which makes that ride much nicer. I was less delighted when I detoured over to San Pablo Dam Road for lunch and discovered that area is now infected with RVs parked all over; I just don't know where they all come from.)

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A bit of problem when I got up to Wildcat. After huffing and puffing my way up the first hill, leading to Wildcat Canyon Trail from the Alvarado area of the park, I found a sign that said the Wildcat Canyon Trail was closed between Wildcat Canyon and Tilden.

Great. That's pretty much the way you get from one park to the other (and the nostalgic trail that I wanted to ride).

I considered biking on up and seeing how closed the trail really was. I've been able to bull through more than one "closed" trail like that. But, bulling through a closed trail is harder with a bike, so instead I decided to go up to the ridgeline at the back of the park, and then take the Nimitz Way over to Inspiration Point.

Unfortunately, the paths up to the ridge line are pretty steep in the Wildcat Canyon Park. And I took a new path (perhaps the only path I'd never walked in Tilden or Wildcat Canyon, which went up past the ruins of an 1800s private "sanitarium") and it was really steep. I knew I'd be walking my bike up most of the hillside, but one section was so steep that I didn't think I'd be able to get up it at all with my bike. I stopped a half-dozen times over the course of a few hundred yards.

(A jogger went by in the opposite direction at my fourth or fifth stop on that near-vertical climb. "Windy, huh?" he said. Neither of us commented on my struggle up the hill.)

When I finally got up to the ridgeline, it was all clouds, fog, and marine layer. At times I couldn't see 50 feet ahead of me. And occasionally I'd hit a forested area and it was raining! The ride wasn't pleasant the first bit when that tremendous wind was buffeting me, but once I got past that it was weird and neat, with the gray fog covering everything and water occasionally misting into me.

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Oh, and did I mention that the Wildcat Canyon Trail was closed due to "storm damage"? This is an increasing problem in Bay Area parks, where trails are closed due to "storm damage" for extended periods of time: we haven't had storms for five months at this point. It could easily be closed a year or two from now, due to that same storm damage.

I'm not sure they ever get fixed at this point: the signs just eventually fall down and the tread of feet finds its way around the damage.

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Meanwhile back in the real world ...

Poor Kimberly just wants to sleep until next week, and it's entirely understandable. Me, I want to get back to a normal head-space where I can get things done.

But we've still got a long ways to go on her newest health problem. We need results of that biopsy, and there will almost definitely be surgery. And then depending on the results, Kimberly might have to fight through chemotherapy too. And if that happens, that's going to put us past January 1st, at which point we have to decide what in the world to do, because we've put a lot of effort into that January 1st move date, and there are financial issues if things get stalled out.

So, stressful times. Much, much more stressful for Kimberly than me. But for me it's on top of feeling like I need to be the one leading the way on the move, because Kimberly wasn't up to it healthwise, even before these latest few problems.

Ay.

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Hey, had my own yearly physical this recent Thurday. I almost put it off, because I was stressed with the rest of the world, but I'd been putting it off since spring, because things always seemed too busy, and I wanted to have it done at least a few months before our move.

And I was stressed about getting my blood test results. Because as we've learned, you can never tell what's going on inside. But they just showed pretty much exactly the same thing as my last tests. My blood sugar is just barely into the high range (but some longer-term sugar blood tests are within range) and my triglycerides are high. Not perfect, but neither of those numbers seem to be moving, so I'll call that fine and get back to my plan already in process to lose a bit of weight.

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Meanwhile, instead of sleeping this afternoon, Kimberly filed while I biked. So she's probably done more on the move in the last two weeks than me. But tomorrow I'm going to get back into that saddle ...

Saturday (Bikes & Games). It's time for our (sometimes) semimonthly campaign board game, and it actually happens for the second time since my return from Hawaii. Our plan is to play the fourth box of T.I.M.E Stories and we do, succeeding our on our third run. It's an adventure with a unique twist at the end of the first run, which really pays out the game's time-travel genre (which is what I love most about the game), but the rest of the adventure is pretty pedestrian.

There's a catch to gaming: Mary has suggested that they have it down at their house in San Jose, and I've been saying for months that I'd be happy to journey down there, but that's actually quite a journey because the BART line that was supposed to reach Berryessa last year was never completed (and currently is scheduled no later than the day before our move to Hawaii.) Nonetheless, I'm still happy to go down there, because it lets me do some biking through San Jose on either side of the game.

The Ride South. I do, mind you, have to be out of the house by 10.15 for our 1.00 game. That's to get me out to BART by the 10.28 train, which drops me off at Warm Springs just before 11.30. This is my first trip to the Warm Springs station, though I'd gone by it while it was still under construction (and like its Berryessa brethren, already at least a year late) last time I biked down in San Jose. It's a nice station: very modern, very clean. And, it has the elevators in rational places, which makes hauling my bike around that much easier. The other advantage of Warm Springs is that it's about five miles closer to San Jose than the old Fremont station. Whereas I made a 40+ mile round trip when I journeyed to San Jose a few years ago (including lots of travel out of my way to see parks and greenways), this one ends up coming in somewhere under 30 miles, and that's a lot more doable (though I still end up tired: see being more out of biking shape than I used to be).

Google had told me an hour and four minutes to get to Donald and Mary's house. I didn't believe it, especially not with a plan to collect lunch on the way, and especially since I've got out of biking shape in the last few years. So, I allocated an hour and a half, which turns out to be almost exactly right.

The first three miles heading south are along Warm Springs Boulevard, which is just an ugly, big street of the type that you find in suburbs. But from there I sidestep over to the base of the foothills and ride the entire length of Park Victoria, from south Fremont, through Milpitas, to the edge of San Jose. This is a very pleasant suburban street at first, and even when it becomes busier toward downtown Milpitas, I still enjoy it, because it's very nostalgic.

You see, Milpitas is the first place I lived in San Jose, so I hit Calaveras and I immediately recognize the shopping center where there used to be an Alpha Beta. (It's a Chinese supermarket now.) And looking down Calaveras I have an almost subconscious understanding that the Big Yellow House used to be there — an all-you-can-eat restaurant where they weighed you before and afterward to see what you should be charged. This feeling of dreamingly biking through the past continues through Milpitas, and as I pass the shopping center where we used to sometimes go for Thrifty ice-cream cones (also something else now), I realize that catty-corner from that is the Togo's that my dad took us to growing up, and I detour to that shopping center, and unlike everything else, it's still there 30+ years later! So I get one of my favorites, the 24 (turkey and avocado), which goes in my bag for gaming.

Shortly after that I sidestep over to Capitol Expressway and go RIGHT by my sister's house (and my dad's house when I was growing up), but I don't stop because I'll be seeing them the next day. Then it's up the Peneticia Creek Trail, next to my dad's other residence when I was growing up, and out to Donald's and Mary's.

(And this is where the gaming occurs.)

One thing I note on the way in is how green and clean everything is. There's no trash randomly thrown on the ground, no piles of furniture dumped, no parks with overflowing trashcans, and no homeless parked on every single damned street corner.

There's certainly something to be said for the suburbs.

The Ride North. We complete our T.I.M.E Stories game before four o'clock, and even do a game of the Dresden Files Co-op afterward. But it's still only 4.30 or so when I leave, so I take a longer ride home that I was considering, where I head west for a bit, then head up the Coyote Creek Trail into Fremont.

It turns out the Coyote Creek Trail sucks, at least the part on the east side of the creek. That's because the first two blocks, which include a block of street and then the start of the trail, according to Google Maps, have been blocked off by the city of San Jose. The trail now apparently starts at the border of Milpitas on the other side of the ugly, busy Montegue Expressway (thankfully there are no nasty suburban roads like this up in the East Bay let alone in Hawaii). From there it's a gravel path, up on a rise, with trees off to the left, disguising any potential creek, and businesses off the right, about half of which are internet companies, which of course have fences all the way around. It's not a great ride, because of the gravel, but not horrible.

And then I hit the first underpass, which must have been under East Tasman Drive. This is a great feature of a few different river-side trails in San Jose, which duck you under the constantly busy roads rather than expecting you to cross them. But as I enter the shadow of the underpass, I feel like the road surface is looking weird and then suddenly squelch I'm biking through a few inches of thick, wet mud. I keep going as far as I can, and make it about two-thirds of the way through the underpass, but then the density of the mud finally slows me enough that I can't maintain either my balance or my forward momentum. So I put my foot down (SQUELCH), dismount, and start walking my bike. The mud isn't quite deep enough to go over the top of my shoes, but now that the wheels are going so slow, it's rolling up into my brakes and just coating EVERYTHING.

I spend the next hour or so trying to shake mud off my bike as I ride.

Past Calaveras (and another underpass, where there's fortunately a one-inch or so path through the mud, which I manage to navigate), the trail improves to a paved path. I know I've ridden this before (after coming off the west side of the gravel trail on a previous trip, I think). And then it's roads and I eventually find somewhere to eat and get back to Warm Springs BART.

And I'm tired. I think I've done 30 miles or so. After I get home, I'm not fully coherent again until Sunday.

Sunday (Visits). After spending much of Saturday down in the suburbs of Fremont, San Jose, and Milpitas, on Sunday the suburbs comes to us. My dad and Mary are on their annual visit to California, and so they come up and see us, along with my sister, Melody, and her husband, Jared. We have a good time talking with everyone. We kids exchange Christmas presents, because we didn't manage to even try to get together this year.

Figuring out lunch was a challenge because of Kimberly's ongoing foot problems, but we finally decide on Pasta Bene at the end of our street, and when we do I realize it's a pretty good option, because I know my dad is an Italian fan.

Monday (Bikes & Hikes). Though I did get some nice exercise out in the sun on Saturday, it was in service to gaming, so I'd saved my Memorial Day for a nice hike in the sun, the sort of all-day outing that I haven't really had since before our visit to Hawaii in April.

I often start my plans for a big adventure by scrolling around Google Maps, looking for green spaces that I haven't explored. This time around I was looking at maybe getting into Mount Diablo from the northwest, and I realized something startling:

Pleasant Hill (and southern Concord) has some nice canal trails that form a big "U". To the east, they turn north at the Lime Ridge Open Space. I've ridden out there many a time, and even explored Lime Ridge a bit. I'd always assumed that was the eastern edge of the valley that Pleasant Hill is in, and there were wildlands, ranches, and what now beyond. But looking at the map I saw, no, there was actual city out there, an extension of Concord running up on the higher plateau past the Ridge. Huh.

So I get up early, BART to Pleasant Hill, then ride around the Canal Trail to the Lime Ridge. Though Treat Blvd was the most direct route up to the higher plateau, I instead picked one that I had to bike further to: a little trail up through the park itself. It was less steep, which was the point, so actually bikeable (for me). And so I'm suddenly up in this southeast corner of Concord.

I've got a long path through this area planned. First I go through the Markham Regional Arboretum (which is a beautiful little park, except that the signs make me walk my bike), then I alternatively walk and ride my bike down a long greenway that cuts across several streets (with the narrowness of the trail being what forces me to walk when someone is coming the other direction), then I bike up into the Newhall Community Park (which is kind of ugly, filled with very tall, dry weeds, at least until you get to the lake in the eastern half).

After that I jot out to Clayton Road for lunch at an A&W, which seems like it should be a treat, as I don't know the last time I was at one, but all of their classic American meals are beef. Which I guess is pretty classic. Fortunately they've also got KFC entrees. And then I bike some ugly suburban streets (which are grossly busy like the ones down in the south bay, but which unlike them don't have bike lanes) until I get to the Mitchell Canyon Staging Area, which turns out to be entering Mount Diablo from the north, I've circled around so much!

I've already spent a lot of the day biking around, so I spend less than three hours in the park, but it's quite beautiful, and I really make the most of it. Starting from the 600 foot or so staging area, I hike straight up to Mitchell Rock, at about 1000 feet, and then to the "Twin Peaks" at 1600 feet. That's 1000 feet of ascent in something less than an hour and a half. I get great views all the way up, and really enjoy being out in the wilderness. (I could keep going to another peak, not far on at 2600 feet, but I use the rapidly approaching evening as an excuse to not try.)

I'm less sure about that 1000 feet of descent in a mile and a half or so, but it turns out to be not very steep, with the only problem being a few hundred yards of trail where some landslide has left scree all across the trail. I slip down onto my butt once, but fortunately don't slide on the scree off the edge or anything.

It's past 4 by the time I'm back to my bike. Fortunately the trip back to BART is all either downhill or level. Mind you, the level is more challenging than I'd like, because I'm pretty sore from biking up several hundred feet to get to Mt. Diablo, then hiking up another 1000 feet, and in fact doing more total climbing than that with ups and downs (my Fitbit records more like 2400 feet of ascent all combined). And it turns out that I'm sore for days afterward too.

And so that's another tiny bit of Mt. Diablo that I've explored. But even after three (four?) tripes to Shell Ridge, Diablo Foothills, and Mt. Diablo, I've just explored tiny corners of the park. It's so impressively, enormously big. I wish it were more convenient to get to! (We'll see if I manage maybe one more trip out there while we're in this state.)

My stress level is running high right now.

I've been mainly attributing that to two work-related issues.

The first is the resurgence of discussion about Zak S. in the roleplaying scene, due to the revelations about his (horrific!) abusive relationships. It's all to the good, since Zak's supporters are finally giving him the boot. But for me at least it's caused introspection. It's been cathartic, working through it all, mostly in entries here, and also in reading lots of discussions. But exhausting too.

The second is one that I can't talk about at the moment, but has to do with a problematic Skotos player. More on that momentarily.

But these guys are really just the tip of the iceberg. The straw(s) that broke the camels back. Because things have been stressful for a while.

It's been a year and a half since Kimberly went non-weight-bearing because of her broken foot that we discovered in October of 2017, right around when I went to Berlin. And that has been increasing my home workload for that whole time, because she can't do many of our shared chores any more, and she also needs help with tasks like getting her lunch most days.

And, it's been a half-year since her surgery this last Halloween, after which we learned that the doctor had botched the procedure. He'd told her that the worst that could happen if she elected for the surgery is that he might nick a nerve, and that would slowdown the recovery. But we now know that he cut at least a couple of nerves and left them embedded in the scar tissue. And he was a cold, terse prick when Kimberly told him this. This fact of this botched surgery has exacted a heavy toll on our household. Kimberly is understandably very upset that this doctor may have both crippled her and left her with crippling pain. It's been messing with her ability to manage on a daily basis; and, not even just due to concern for the future, not just due to the anger with the doctor (though I have a *lot* more of that than her), but also from the fact that she has constant pain and it often impacts her ability to function and sleep. And, I've also been impacted by this all emotionally, both personally and supportively.

And finally there's been the stress of the early year at Skotos. We had a big SmartCustody workshop that we did for cryptocurrency at the end of January and now we're gearing up for our semi-annual Rebooting the Web of Trust workshop, about a month later, right at the start of March. Oh, and it's in Spain, which means that things are going to get really hectic in about a week when the long air travel begins.

So, though those two problematic users have been weighing on me, in many ways they're pretty minor in the scope of things: in their interactions with me, and in their likely long-term effect on ... anything. But when you have a plateful of stress already, a few final ingredients can add a lot.

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So, Saturday. I definitely wanted to get out of the house to be active and try and burn some of my stress away, but it was cold and raining. I was just about to go for a walk to get lunch ... when the sky cleared up. I looked at the RADAR maps and saw the biggest bit of storm had moved past us. Yay!

So instead of walking to lunch, it was more extensive biking. I had a meandering day down by the Bay. I explored Fourth Street (The taco place I was considering for lunch was jammed due to some three-little pigs public show, so I moved on). I biked the Aquatic Park (Occasional huge puddles). I got lunch in Emeryville. I biked out the Emeryville Marina, then walked along the rustic boardwalk back (An overprivileged white lady yelled at me for biking on a multiuse trail that allows biking; I assume she was from one of the super-rich condo complexes out in that area, and used to getting what she wanted, which she did not). I biked back along the Bay Trail to Berkeley (WINDY!!). And then I biked home. Overall, a nice day.

Biking helps keep the cold mostly away, though I felt it some in that really nasty wind I got on the Bay Trail leg of my trip.

Unfortunately, my stresslessness was immediately lost because Kimberly was upset when I got home (over something small, but that's because the big things are always weighing at the moment) and then I got a certified letter from the problematic Skotos player delivered to my HOME address (which I refused for good reasons, and that's all a whole other story that I hope to be able to write about in several months time). So my stress came right back, though Kimberly helped a bit by buying us Taco Bell for dinner.

And we found a new light TV show to start watching, which I've heard great things about in its later years: Person of Interest. It's relatively shallow in its first season, but we liked it enough to watch the first five episodes over the course of the extended holiday weekend.

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On Sunday I didn't exactly do any stress reduction, but I did just hang out at home all day without worrying about rushing out and getting exercise or getting sundries or anything. (And I also did some filing work, toward my goal for moving forward in the preparations for our move to Hawaii.)

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And Monday. Today I went out to Lafayette, biked up Happy Valley Road, then hiked up Panorama Road to get into Briones Regional Park. This was I think my third trip into the huge park. I entered up at the northwest corner, and circled down to a creek and back. This directly connected to my second trip when I'd walked the Lafayette Ridge Trail; my entrance today was right by Russell Peak, which is I think where I turned around last time.

I'd been planning to go all the way to the entrance right near Briones Reservoir, which would have been another 2 miles or so there and back. But it was muddy, oh sooooo muddy. One of the paths I was taking was pretty much a stream. Thankfully, I had my hiking shoes, but I still had mud spatter up to my knees. And that was all exhausting, both the walking through the mud and the being careful not to slide and land in the mud. So I turned back that mile early.

In looking at the maps I also thought, wow, it would be great to walk through the corner of Briones Regional Park, down along the Reservoir, then around the corner of San Pablo Reservoir, then back to the Orinda BART. That would definitely be an all-day affair though, since among other things I couldn't take my bike with me since I'd be starting and ending at different BART stations, and that would add a few miles getting to the park (and a few miles getting back from the Reservoir).

Maybe some nice summer day, when I'm more willing to get started early (as opposed to today, when I was like: I'm not rushing out when it's in the mid-40s!) and able to go later.

And I got home today, and despite a quick trip to CVS for Kimberly, managed to stay chill.

And hopefully that'll last into this week before my Spain trip.

January has mostly slipped away. For me it's been routine. (Not so much for the wife.) I've back to work. I've been hiking on Saturdays, but nothing new and exciting. We managed to get our first Saturday game in since September, with a Microscope session to kick off our this year's Clockwork Campaign. I've been gaming on Wednesdys and Thursdays. I've mostly homebodied on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays because it's cold outside and K. has a broken foot. We ventured out one Sunday to get yogurt and write on campus, but found that Yogurtland went out of business in October.

And so life goes on.

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But today I came up with a slightly more exciting day out that wasn't just a walk to Tilden or Orinda. I went up to San Pablo to have a delicious shrimp lunch at Popeyes, then I biked through San Pablo (and El Sobrante) and down San Pablo Dam Road to the San Pablo Reservoir.

Lots of San Pablo going on.

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There was more excitement than I expected in El Sobrante. That's because protesters were out blowing whistles and holding signs that said, "No Richmond Methadone Clinics in El Sobrante." When I saw them as I biked through I said, "Yay!" And that made people perk up and smile. But those smiles didn't know what to do with themselves when I started chanting "Heroin Users Die! Heroin Users Die! No Sympathy for the Sick! Heroin Users Die!"

Which is pretty much what they were saying too, but were too cowardly to admit.

Now, I could understand if people didn't want a methadone clinic in their residential area. I wouldn't either. But this is a methadone clinic going into an ugly cement block building next to another cement block building across an overly-large, over-busy, overly-fast street from an endless row of dying strip malls. It's practically the definition of where a methadone clinic should go.

But what really pissed me off was the coded racism of the protest. They weren't just protesting a methadone clinic, they were explicitly protesting a *Richmond* methadone clinic. That's a city that is majority black and hispanic. And if there was any doubt about the coded racism, the blinding white pallor of the protestors made it obvious. El Sobrante is 60% white; the protest was about 96%.

I lost my cool by the time I hit the third or fourth group of protestors and one called out to me specifically. I told her, "F*** your lack of compassion."

El Sobrante is Trump's America.

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Funny story: Richmond is a really weirdly shaped city. It totally encloses the town of San Pablo with a strip of land to the east that's just one or two hundred feet wide that runs from the Hilltop Mall area in the north to the Alvarado Park area in the south. The planned methadone clinic is in that strip of land, not in San Pablo (to the west), not in El Sobrante (to the east), but IN RICHMOND. In other words, they're keeping their dirty Richmond methadone clinic IN RICHMOND.

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I parked my bike at the Eagle's Nest Trail between the San Pablo Reservoir and Tilden.

I walked into the Reservoir area, then northward. Theoretically I was following Old San Pablo Dam Trail but it disappeared as soon as I got into the Reservoir area. This is typical for EBMUD. Still, I walked what might or might not have been a proper trail right along the wasterside. It was a beautiful trail with trees all along and the Reservoir to my right.

I walked a bit more than a mile to get to the entrance to Kennedy Grove. I've been there a few times, but just at their picnic tables and greens. I did sit at a table for a while and write. But then I decided to explore a bit more of the park. It's not very large, but it does have several miles of trail. I did a big loop around the southernmost trails, about 3 miles total. It was more trail with lots of nice trees. It climbed a few hundred feet up a hill and gave me awesome views of the Reservoir and other lands that side of the hills.

I was amused that two different people on the trail asked me if I knew how much further the top was. I usually don't get that on the trails. But maybe Kennedy Grove attracts less experienced hikers.

Then it was back through the Reservoir to my bike then up to Orinda then back home via BART.

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Plans for another hike: get up to Inspiration Point, take the the Inspiration Trail down to the Reservoir, walk north at the Reservoir to the Eagle's Nest Trail, then hike back up that. And that'll complete my trails at the Reservoir, since I'd previously gone south from Inspiration Point to Orinda and have now gone north from Eagle's Nest Trail to Kennedy Grove.

I have 649 days left on my EBMUD Trail pass.

(May Trump have fewer days left in his presidency.)

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I was happy to do so much biking. I haven't been doing much of that lately, but in the last few days I've been overcome by the thoughts of open roads, of community floating by on either side (sadly, including racist protestors) and trails that go on forever. The trip from San Pablo to Orinda is definitely hard work at times. My Fitbit tells me that I got into the cardio zone for 65% of my ride from San Pablo to the Reservoir, then 75% of my ride from the Reservoir to Orinda. Good stuff! And tiring!

I guess I have two years to maximize my biking shape, because there just won't be as much biking exercise in Hawaii.

These last months I've been learning about the connectivity of fire trails, Ridge Trails, and EBMUD watershed lands above Berkeley. This week I decided to take the plunge and hike all the way from Berkeley to Orinda.

It seemed like a pretty big deal. I mean, Berkeley to Orinda, that's something that you BART, not something that you can walk. But, it turns out that the walking is entirely possible.

To get up this side of the hill, I took paths that I've become increasingly familiar with: steps up Panoramic Hill, then fire trails up to the Ridge. I'd walked most of this before, though up at the top of Panoramic Hill I diverged from the Upper Fire Trail to one of the totally unlabeled trails in the area. Call it the Upper, Upper Fire Trail I suppose. It runs along Skyline Ridge and fronts the Claremont Preserve. The new trail was very attractive; where the Upper Fire Trail gives you nice views of Strawberry Canyon, the Upper, Upper Trail looks out onto the Bay (until you get far enough back that you can only see Claremont Canyon).

However, I was surprised by how many really steep areas there were: Arden Path then Panoramic Way on Panoramic Hill; the start of the Upper Fire Trail; the path from the Upper Fire Trail to the Upper, Upper Fire Trail; at least two big hills on the Upper, Upper Trail; then the final scree-filled climb up to Grizzly Peak. It didn't seem like as much on the way down last week (though that scree-filled hill was better on the way up than down by a lot). But, the whole climb is about 1,400 feet, so I suppose you need some steep.

The path back down the hill, on the other side, was totally new. It's through EBMUD lands in the so-called Siesta Valley Recreation Area. I say so-called because there's nothing there but a few paths, and you need EBMUD permits to walk most of it, so it really seems like a case of overselling the area. Fortunately, I got a five-year EBMUD pass in late 2014 or so. This is only the second time I've used it (after the day I got the pass).

Though it has an overly-ambitious name, Siesta Valley is totally beautiful. It's all green rolling hills that are largely empty. I really enjoyed the pleasant, quiet walk. It headed along the hill line toward Orinda for a while (which meant some more down and UP), but eventually set in at a steady decline. Oh, and it was very muddy at times, from the rain over a week ago. I guess that's why you call it watershed. When I got home, I retired a third pair of jeans in a week to the laundry basket due to excessive muddiness.

In Orinda I'd considered retiring to a Starbucks for an hour to do some writing. Though I've figured out how to get exercise with hiking (instead of biking), I've rarely been able to get the ratio right to also have time for writing while out. So this Saturday I'd only written about half of one of the several histories that I had outlined and ready to go.

Unfortunately, Orinda was jam-packed with families. It was apparently free-family-fun day, with climbing walls and face-painting and balloon animals and what not. So the little mall that contained the Starbucks (and is really 90% of downtown Orinda) was way too full. I glanced in at the Starbucks and it was just mobbed full of meandering people all of whom seemed to be wandering back and forth looking for a line.

So after circling around Orinda for a while and deciding there was nothing else of note, I headed to BART instead. Got a bit of writing done there.

And that was how I walked to Orinda. A little less than 10 miles, and just under 200 flights of stairs. About 4 hours, but that included sitting down to eat a 9" sandwich from IB Hoagies and write half a history.

Since I'm taking a few weeks off from Designers & Dragons, I was thinking about taking a long, adventurous bike ride today of the sort I haven't been doing since last summer. Alas, the weather conspired against me. I woke today and it was threatening rain, gray, humid, and too windy. (My least favorite riding weather: cool + humid + windy and today was trending in that direction.) Adding that on to a busy-ish weekend, and I decided to push my adventurous bike ride to next week. I've got some maps printed out for riding along part of the Carcinas Straight.

I did still ride today. I went up to Albany Hill, and once I'd ridden to the bottom of the park (which was a lot less trouble than on previous trips), I decided to hike the whole park, something I hadn't done before and had wanted to. I just had to lock my bike among thorny plants to do so. (Sigh! I have the same issue at Temescal. Park folks: give bicyclists places to lock bikes!)

Albany Hill Park was generally attractive, though I'm sad that the eucalyptus trees have been allowed to grow wild and block most views from the park nowadays. (Planted by a dynamite factory that used to be there!) I was a somewhat surprised to find a big electric cross on the southeast side of the park, it being public land and all. I looked it up when I got home, and discovered (as I'd guessed) that an easement for it was part of the agreement when the land was made into park. (I also discovered that much of the south "park" is actually private land, though there's pretty much no division.) It was very pleasant up on the hill, and I even got a few minutes of sunlight while there. I sat up there and read (by the cross) for quite a while.

Then it was home again, home again. Total ride was only about 10 miles. I was surprised to also learn that Albany Hill is only about 299 feet at its summit. I guess that matches with the effort to ride/walk up it ... but it always seems as tall as the East Bay hills when you see it. (Perspective.)

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The rest of the week was mostly low-key reading and writing. Though I'm not working on Designers & Dragons I have been catching up on other stuff — including board game reviews. I also ran Kingmaker on Saturday. We've thankfully gotten back to something like a regular schedule. (Next game in three weeks, tho, due to EndGame auction on the 20th.)

And I (finally) started out taxes Saturday night. Bleh. Got most of the way through, just excepting stock-related stuff (as our broker's site was amazingly partway down on Saturday evening, which seems like pretty horrible timing) and health-related itemizing. The health stuff is unfortunately still going to take some time, but it proves worth it more often than not. I'll get back to that tomorrow.

And sadly, we'll probably owe money, now that the $400 a year everyone was getting as tax rebates has ended.