A long gap

It has been a month and a half since I blogged about any hiking or trails.. We did go on three trails.. one a little strenous and two were more little walks than serious hikes. 

I started a new job during COVID times and that has been an interesting transition in itself. Still for a guy who always posts something every week, it has been odd not to go type anything. 

Well, here we are. Things have not been easy as every day we wake up to news of someone passing away in India from COVID in the last few weeks. It is not unknown people anymore this time around. So did not feel like writing anything. Sometimes if you have nothing postive to share, silence is golden!

The three hikes we went on were a walk to Mori Point in Pacifica to see the sunset, a short stroll in Quarry Trail in Saratoga (which was 15 minute drive from home and a rather short but intense climb to see the valley from a nice vantage point) and the last one to Little Yosemite in Sunol area after a rave FB recommendation from a friend. 

Here are some pictures and a slide show from the three hikes..

a picture that sums up sunset at Mori point..

A early morning foggy view of silicon valley from Quarry trail hike..

Sunlight coming through the lone tree on an otherwise barren landscape in Little Yosemite trail

A watering hole on Little Yosemite trail for cows that made for a reflection photo spot..

Views of the reservoir from the top of the hills..

Mori piont was amazing. The flowers, the swing at the end of the trail, the sunset, the moon rise, it was something!

Little Yosemite would have been more fun if we had taken the opposite route on the trail. We went on the hike up the hill first and then came to the falls that is only a mile from the parking lot. It was a long hike without a clear path in most places in the barren heat.. the falls ended up being too crowded because by the time we headed back, it was a lunch picnic spot. Lots of folks without masks. So we just kept moving to the car and drove back. (this was almost 3 weeks ago). 

Since then any attempts to go hiking have been put on hold. The yoga studio has opened with a lottery system. I have been lucky enough to get through a dozen times in the last month and that is good. It is still not open anywhere close to capacity and hope the day arrives where you go and walk in and don't have to be lucky to do hot yoga. I could always do it at home with the space heater, but once you go to the studio a few times, it becomes harder mentally to fire up the space heater. When there was no studio, the space heater was a blessing. That shows I have a lot more yoga to do to treat the space heater and yellow walls with the respect they deserve! 

It is just a question of days before we go back to office again and that means things get even more interesting with time management, lottery management etc. My hiking shoes may have seen their last days for some time to come. If there is one thing I would choose between doing Yoga and hiking, it is always yoga. Sitting still is something that I have to work hard for and I plan to keep trying my best to do that!

Hope this post brings me back to blogging about things on a more regular basis!

A quick trip to "almost the beach"

MIL had a request to take her "somewhere" so she could see some nature. So the plan was to go to Santa Cruz to our favorite beach.

Once we got there, the unmasked crowd just freaked me out. So we just took pictures on top of the sandbar and drove back.. 

Some pictures..

we were the only ones on the end of the bar.. and we removed our mask just for the selfies. Most of the crowd was not wearing any mask. It was shocking to see.. when we went to the same place in December just to get some sea breeze almost everyone was masked. 

Things are changing, hope we dont get into another wave!

Watching a sunrise after a long long time

As a person who is so used to watching sunsets on the west coast over the ocean, it was odd for us to go chase a sunrise. Two weeks ago, we had to drop Jr. at SFO early in the morning. It had been a day since my gum surgery and the pain was starting to show.  Also I was on a mission to get off pain killers within a day so the 60 day Yoga challenge could continue. Taking painkillers and doing yoga is like drunk driving your body.. never ends well. 

I was also sad to see Jr. go. Not that I saw her when she was home during the last month. We had maybe a 30 minute overlap of our waking hours on a daily basis. 

San got us some help and info from a couple of friends who had recently shared snaps of Golden gate sunrises and Kirby cove views. 

managed a smile with my face still looking like an "idli paanai"! Both these are iPhone selfies .. so you can see the auto color changes..

We dropped Jr. at the airport and drove in the dark to Battery Spencer. A former military installation that apparently had canons mounted during World War times and never used. You get amazing views of the bridge from here. We were the first ones there after we used a flashlight and made our way. Within 20 minutes a dozen photographers showed up out of nowhere. It was like they knew exactly when to come and set up shop, click and disappear. It was hard to tell if they were wearing masks, so we moved out of the area.  We had been standing there for a good half hour already to enjoy the gradual brightening and once we saw the horizon light up, decided to go out and down to Kirby cove. 

We were the only ones on that road and it was probably a mile and a half walk down to the beach. This time only three other folks came to join us. We had enough gaps to put our tripods and take pictures. 

Have put the photos as a slideshow..

There were a few iPhone photos that I shared on Facebook but was waiting for a laptop and Photoshop to get the pictures from the Canon downloaded. The iPhone is good, but it auto adjusts the brightness, contrast and color to be able to "see" everything. When you take a photo of the bridge where everything else is dark because is the sun is not out yet, the pictures look like broad daylight and all the hues are gone!

It was frustrating. (you can see it in the video taken with the Phone and compare to the photos from the Canon). I had to adjust the iPhone photos to make it close to what we saw.

It is a just a question of tiem before I click a picture of me and San and the iPhone shows me a picture of Shah Rukh and Kajol instead of our faces.. so much for AI !

All said and done, the sunrise was breathtaking. We really enjoyed it and it provided me a good distraction from pain physical and emotional. 

We did check the tides for that morning and saw it was okay for 7AM. The tides have washed ashore so many people in last few months and we were warned by friends to be careful. 

We will definitely visit this place again! The Cove and beach are beautiful!