Kick, glide, ouch – more, please!

Whenever I feel blue about having left San Francisco, which is less and less often these days, I must remind myself that I now live in a place where we can drive for an hour or so and be out on the trails, cross-country skiing, which is what we did last Sunday. Back when we lived in SF, it would take us at least five hours to drive to the Sierras, and so it required a fair degree of commitment whenever we wanted to go skiing, since we had to reserve lodging and plan for at least an overnight stay. As a result, we never went skiing more than two or three times a season, and last season we didn't go at all.

But here, the snow level is down around 2000 feet and the Cascades are just over the King county line. So we finally got the lead out, dug our ski gear out from wherever we had stashed it for the big move, bought a one-day Sno-Park pass at REI, reserved a car, and zipped out to Cabin Creek Sno-Park on Sunday morning, arriving around 9:00 am after about an hour and ten minutes on the freeway, no traffic. It's almost too easy. Almost.

Cabin Creek has just a few miles of groomed trails; it only took us until lunchtime to ski all of their beginner and intermediate trails. Still, it was not a bad workout for a first XC outing in two years. After four days I've almost quit groaning from sore muscles when I get out of my chair. And I can't wait to go again!

Discovering Discovery Park

Today we reserved a car and drove out to Discovery Park on the west side of Seattle north of downtown and west of Queen Anne Hill. We hiked on a short trail down a wooded hill to, ironically, North Beach, a pretty, pebbly little patch of sand with a view of the marina at Shilshole Bay to the north. (No cafés, restaurants, or bars in sight.) I was struck by how muddy the trail was, and then it occurred to me that, with my California background, muddy trails have always been the exception rather than the rule in my experience. I guess I'd better get used to mud if I'm going to hike here in the Pacific Northwest.

Here's a picture of David on the beach. Yes, that is a blue sky!

Escape to the sunshine

David and I spent last week in Southern California visiting my family and soaking up some vitamin D. We arrived on Super Bowl Sunday, and spent the next day in La Jolla at the Birch Aquarium, which is part of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. David got some nice shots of the sea creatures; here’s one I especially like:

On Tuesday, my sister drove down to San Diego from Upland with the kids. We spent the afternoon at the playground at Liberty Station, which is what the old Naval Training Center has been turned into; it’s now a complex consisting of housing, shops, hotels, and schools. Max is five and Tali just turned three. They’re very cute and were lots of fun to watch! (Somehow we ended up not taking any pictures that day, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.)

On Wednesday, we went to Balboa Park, where we visited the Museum of Man and the Japanese Tea Garden. The Museum of Man, San Diego’s anthropological museum, was my favorite museum when I was a kid, so it was a great pleasure for me to see it again. They have totally re-done their exhibit on human evolution, making it much more extensive and interactive. Fortunately, they have incorporated many of the original life-size models of our hominid ancestors, so I was able to say hello to my old friends Australopithecus afarensis and Homo neanderthalensis. At the Japanese Tea Garden we saw an exhibit of temari, which are wrapped thread balls with intricate geometric designs. Here’s one of David’s pictures of them:


On Thursday, we left San Diego to go east, over the mountains and down into Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. When I was growing up, our family vacations were always camping trips in various state parks up and down California, and Anza-Borrego was my favorite. This time we didn’t camp (Mom doesn’t do camping anymore), so we spent Thursday and Friday nights at the Palm Canyon Resort in the town of Borrego Springs, which is actually completely surrounded by the state park and is just a stone’s throw away from our old campground.

On Friday, David and I made the 1.5-mile hike to the oasis at the head of Borrego Palm Canyon, which was my secret reason for wanting to do this whole trip in the first place. I remember going on this hike with my dad and sister when we camped here, and it was always a highlight of the trip. Now I wanted to share the experience with David. It’s not a tough hike, but it’s hotter in the canyon than in the big valley, so we were very glad to finally get to the shade and coolness of the oasis.

I don’t want to post too many pictures of the desert here because I’m afraid I’ll make the page too slow to load, so here are a couple of my favorites.

The morning light on the mountains, seen from our hotel balcony:


The Visitor Center at the state park — it’s built into the side of a hill for energy efficiency and minimal disruption of the landscape:


David the desert rat, with a magnificent ocotillo behind him:

Looking downstream at the creek that flows down to the campground from the spring at the oasis:

The oasis:


Me in the classic Anza-Borrego landscape:


After we got back from our hike, we drove east to Peg-Leg Smith’s monument. Peg-Leg Smith (1801-1866) was a “mountain man, prospector, and spinner of tall tales,” according to the plaque on the monument. He supposedly found a rich mine, but was unable to find it again later; in the 1940’s, someone started a legend: whoever adds 10 rocks to a pile in front of Peg-Leg’s monument will find the lost gold. So here we are, hunting our fortune. (I guess it’s only slightly less probable than winning the lottery.)

We drove back to San Diego on Saturday and returned to Seattle early on Sunday. There is much more to tell, but this post is too long as it is. Thank you Mom and Dad for a wonderful visit!

They fit like gloves

My Camelspin fingerless gloves are finished! Here’s a picture of a finished glove, along with the picture I posted previously showing what the yarn looked like before I knitted it.



I based the stitch pattern on a sock pattern I have, and I figured out how to shape the thumb and fingers from the basic glove pattern in Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns. Originally, I made them as mitts, with no separated fingers, but after wearing them a few times I didn’t like the way the top edge curled on the palm side. So I unraveled the top portion and redid it with fingers. These gloves are sooooo soft and warm — perfect for wearing while I work at the computer. I’m very happy with how they turned out.

Where am I, again?

As I mentioned in my previous post, David and I went back to San Francisco last weekend for the first time since we moved away. I had a meeting for work at my old office last Thursday, and I decided to take Friday off, with David flying down Thursday night to join me for the weekend.

I thought of this trip as a chance to say goodbye to our old home, which we didn’t really have time to do in our down-to-the-wire frenzy of getting ready to leave in September. We stayed at the Sam Wong Hotel at Columbus and Broadway in our old neighborhood — I really wanted to stay at the Columbus Motor Inn, which is where my parents used to stay when they came up from San Diego to visit, but a room wasn’t available for us there this time.

We walked around the familiar streets (when it wasn’t raining — on Friday there was an all-day downpour of a duration and intensity we haven’t seen in Seattle); visited the Hyde Street Pier, the fishing boat docks at the Wharf, and Aquatic Park; saw a play at the Marsh in the Mission on Friday night; and made Café Greco on Columbus our headquarters for visiting with friends. On Friday afternoon, we gathered with Paul, Barry, Tirtza, and Tom and chatted over coffee, and then Paul, Barry, and Tirtza went home and Tom, David, and I met Terry and Nancy down the street at Chef Jia’s.

On Sunday afternoon we went back to Greco and met Linda, who had been too sick with the flu to join us on Saturday; Tom came along too and we hung out at the same table we had occupied the day before, in the annex the café added several years ago.

I had some interesting moments of disorientation. For instance, the same content provider shows news broadcasts on little TV screens in the elevators in both my former office building in San Francisco and my current one in Seattle. Some of the content is tailored to the location, and during one elevator ride I saw a Tahoe ski report and thought, “Why are they reporting on Tahoe ski conditions in Washington state?” For a few moments I thought that the ski areas around Tahoe must be an even more impressive draw than I had ever realized, until I remembered that I was standing in an elevator in the Bay Area. This kind of thing happened a lot; I would see something that was very familiar, and because it was so familiar I would unconsciously assume I was in Seattle.

When we were having dinner at Chef Jia’s, Nancy predicted that this trip would be good for us, because as much as we love San Francisco and as painful as it was to leave, seeing it again on a visit would make Seattle feel more like home when we got back. Having been back in Seattle for five days now, I have to say that I think she was right.

Here's the gang at Café Greco on Saturday: