cold hike

last saturday i had a cold.

what's a good thing to do when you have a cold?

that's right: go on a hike. also, don't bring enough water. then, go off-trail and get slightly lost. finally, prance around in the mud and get your favorite jeans all stained with mud.

that ought to make your cold... um... worse.

but i was pretty sure it was gonna get worse anyhow, and i was right!

when i say lost, of course, the park i was in wasn't big enough to get really "lost" and my sense of direction and my boy scout skills are good enough that i knew what direction to go in -- also, I had a map. also I could periodically see redwood city. so I wasn't lost in the sense of will robinson. but i didn't know how many meters until i returned to my car. that's a problem that will be solved when/if my GPS arrives...

so, the part that you're all waiting for: pictures.

yes, virginia, it's a banana slug. i looked at this critter -- 5 inches long if he was a centimeter -- and said to myself, "self," I said, "I've never seen a banana slug before -- aside from the UCSC mascot featured on John Travolta's teeshirt after the scene with Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction -- but if ever there was a banana slug, this thingy right here is it. It's a slug. It looks like a banana. It's gotta be a banana slug." And so it was. So it was.

if you're a tree, erosion is not your friend. if you're a tree, you probably don't have many friends at all. except for the Lorax, I understand that he speaks for the trees. I'm not sure if he's on friendly terms with them, however.

ah, so that's why they call it "eagle trail". neat.

that's where I was, and it was aptly named: there was a hill (which I was too tired to ascend -- it was near the parking lot and I planned to climb it when I got back to the car, but by the time I did, I was too tired, dehydrated, and full of cold-eze to attempt it.) and there was a breeze. I had to don the infamous Green Shirt, the second time in 7 months, perhaps no more than its third use since I came to the bay. The Green Shirt was washed this evening, and has now returned to its proper home in my trunk, to be called into active duty whenever it is once again needed. Whenever the weak cry out in despair or the hungry croak in... uh, hunger. The Green Shirt will be there, ready to spill old kleenex from the frayed pockets and instill despair in nearby fashion critics.

leaves come in many colors. i saw several of these colors. now you have too.

I got a new pair of boots after the previous hike. the new ones are waterproof. how do I know? I don't just trust the ad copy, no sir. I ducked off trail to go cavorting in a stream. all parts of my boots were fully submerged -- some parts remained submerged for minutes at a time, the tops were doused only for seconds. But unlike my previous boots, no water at all came inside. Stream wading was fun. Especially slipping off of rocks and stuff. The traction isn't so great in mud with these guys, though. Oh well.