Weekend Snippet

Sawyer Camp Trail
'Bladed down the Sawyer Camp Trail in like San Mateo. Nice scenery, shitty trail. Bumpy, cracky, and craploads of tar filling in the cracks. Decent jogging/walking/biking trail, but avoid it for rollerblading.

You can't see the actual trail in that picture, but the trail goes along side the Crystal Springs Reservoir and there's a lot of foliage. The trail was nice in that it went through the trees, so it was shady for most of it, which is appreciated when you're sweating. Wildlife wasn't that exciting. I saw some deer, which is about as exciting as looking in Kevin's or Kives's backyards in Winnipeg. I did see this rather large black and white striped snake.... and it was stretched out across the path. It freaked the bejesus outta me. Didn't expect that at all. I just narrowly missed it too. It would not have been pleasant to have run over that.

Parking at the top of this sizeable hill seemed like a good idea at first because I could start off by just blitzing down it... going back up after 8 miles of rollerblading was not however, very much fun.

The intent was to buy a new pair of rollerblades and use them on the trail, but Inline Sports in Sunnyvale had shitty skates and Black Diamond Sports in Palo Alto was out of the pair that I wanted (Rollerblade Crossfire 90), which sucks because I tried them on last week, but hesitated to buy them because I hadn't decided if I was going to buy a new pair. They're supposed to call me this week when they get a new shipment in. I contemplated buying online, but I wanted to try them on again to make sure about the size.


You call that a Downtown?
"Downtown" Palo Alto and "Downtown" Mountain View are almost as exciting as Winnipeg's. Wait, that's a little harsh. Both of them are like one street with a bunch of restaurants and pubs, but they close at like noon. Ok, well, maybe they're open just a little after noon. Palo Alto's a little more lively than Mountain View, but for a college town, it's pretty pathetic. Tied House in MV wasn't too bad (restaurant and brewery), but it closed at 11 pm. Nola's (restaurant/pub) in PA was pretty good and lively. Apparently there's another place in PA that's good as well.


Extreme Jenga
Apparently Jenga's an appropriate game for a group who's average age is 29. The sad part is that we were playing sober. And we weren't even using it as a drinking game (that's for when the average age of the group is like 24)...

Our first game, we actually finished Jenga! Yes. I said FINISHED. There were no more pieces left to pull out! It was pretty crazy. After having conquered Jenga and playing a few more times, we decided to mix things up and GET PERPENDICULAR. Ok, well, maybe it was more of flipping the pieces onto their sides, which is still perpendicular, just not as extreme. It then fits 5 across and gives many more options :)


Knee seems to be healing
Limiting volleyball to just once a week, and where that once a week isn't that intense on my knees seems to be really helping. Knee didn't really hurt today, though I still felt that it wasn't at 100%. It's really the deep squat and jumping that's a killer, but with this clinic, I'm not having to jump and much as I'd do in say, pick-up or a game, at least not for as prolonged as a period.


Mosquito bite
I have a mosquito bite just above my left ankle. Kinda itchy. It's annoying. Not sure when that happened. I'm going to guess the rollerblading expedition. I haven't had many bites since like 2004. I managed to miss the insane Winnipeg mosquitoes last year, you know, those "30+ mosquito bites on each leg, even with bus spray on" and those "mosquitoes bigger than birds chewing threw jeans". Playing beach volleyball in Assiniboine park surrounded by forests at dusk and where you literally see swarms of mosquitoes flying around, is not the brighest idea, though I'll be doing it again in August :)


And now for the weather report
The daytime temperature around here is beautiful, highs consistently in the low-mid 20's. Sunny. No clouds in the sky. Temperature inside Google's a little cool sometimes though. Night time gets a little chilly, particularly if you're dressed for mid-20's. Lows are like 12 or 13, but with the wind, shorts and t-shirts are not a bright idea. Once the sun goes down, the temperature drops faster than my blog audience reading this post. In some respects a cool night is good because then it won't be hot when you sleep (unlike in say Winnipeg or Toronto), though I have well-functioning air conditioning here :)