LancesWorld.com Journal

Wow, depsite being substantially less social that on past weekends, this one was still action-packed. Friday I made one of my quick trips to LA, but the trip was much more stressful than usual. My flight out of Oakland was delayed and that pretty much screwed up the rest of my day. While in the taxi in Los Angeles, I was so frustrated by the delay, I was actually feeling ill. But I got all of the important things done and even managed to make it onto a slightly earlier flight back to the Bay area than I had planned, which I was happy about.

Friday night after finally getting back to San Francisco I was dead tired, but bored because my previous Fridays had all been so active. But my level of tired was enough to convince me to just stay in, watch a DVD and get some sleep.

Saturday I slept in a little. After waking up I watched Office Space, which is an amazing movie. Once the movie was over and I was finally up and running, I went down to Borders and bought a book called "Peninsula Trails" which is just full of amazing information about hiking trails on the Peninsula (basically, everything south of San Francisco down to roughly San Jose). From the book store, I headed straight to San Bruno Mountain State Park. Here is a picture of me at the entrance to the park:

Normally there is a fee to enter the park, but if you park your car in the neighborhood at the north end of the park there is one free trailhead you can take to get in. Really, the fee you pay is to park your car, not to use the park. So I like using the free trailhead. I hiked a very easy, but enjoyable trail, called the "Saddle Loop." It runs along the northeastern edge of the park before looping down towards the main parking area at the center of the park and then returning along the Old Guadalupe Trail to the car. Here is a picture of part of the Saddle Loop trail.

While enjoying the trail, I also managed to find two Geocaches hidden along the way. I didn't go to do the hike because of the caches, I decided that as long as I was already going to do the hike, I might as well look to see if there were any caches along it, and sure enough, there were two. So I found them. After I finished my hike, I was planning on going home, but detoured instead and stopped at the Century 20 movie theater in Daly City where I saw "Batman Begins." I enjoyed it, though I felt that some of the visual effects were a little over the top. I went home after the movie and watched a couple more DVDs. I watched "American Wedding" and "Best in Show" as well as part of "American Pie" (the original). I am a big Eugene Levy fan. While watching the movies, I was also doing some laundry - one of those tasks that can only be avoided so long.

This morning I got myself out of bed at 8:30 a.m. Yes, I know it is early for a weekend, but I wanted to get some stuff done today. I had to stop by the office to finish some work that I hadn't done because of my trip on Friday, but that didn't take long. After I was done at work, I headed back to the San Bruno Mountain State Park and did the "Summit Loop" trail which took me up to an elevation of over 1200 feet. Aside from air travel, I don't think I've seen an elevation like that since I was home in May. 1200 feet isn't that much, seeing as how my house in Utah is at nealy 6000 feet, but seeing as how I've been living at sea level for the past year almost, it was nice to finally find a nice hill to climb. The Summit Loop hike round trip from my car was about 6 miles, and I tell you, my legs and feet sure were tired when I was done with the hike. There were two more Geocaches hidden up near the top of the trail, so I made sure to grab those while on the hike. The hike afforded some phenomenal views, though they would have been even better had it not been so foggy. Here are some pictures from my hike on the Summit Loop.

Here is a cool tree/shrub I found along the hike.

This is me in front of the cool tree/shrub.

A view of the city from the trail.

This is what the above picture looks like with me in it.

Here I am holding one of the two Geocaches I found today.

The "Three Kings" as I like to call them. The top of this trail intersects with some private property known as "Radio Road" where a series of communication and radio towers have been built. Not pictures is a spindly forest of towers farther south from there as well as a satellite telephone relay. The interference up near these towers made getting good GPS readings very hard.

When I finished my Summit Loop hike, I drove back home where I took a quick shower before heading to my church at 4 p.m. to setup for the wine & cheese party that we hosted after the 5:30 p.m. mass. We setup from 4 to just before mass, then went to mass, and then I bartended during the actual event. I had a great time, but my legs sure were tired after that hike.

Well, it is getting late and I want to get some rest before the work week kicks into high gear. I can tell you that my bed is going to feel really good tonight!