Yosemite Weekend

I took off Friday from work and drove up to Yosemite on Thursday night. A Curry Village tent cabin provided my shelter for the night. No heat made it somewhat cold, but I got up early the next day for my Half Dome hike. The shuttle did not leave until 7:20am. I could have parked within about 1/2 a mile of the trailhead, which might have been advisable, but in the end not necessary. I finished the hike by around 3pm, which means the entire 14 miles and 4100 ft elevation gain took me only about 7.5 hours. I did quite well overall on the hike. The cables again proved to be more than I cared to attempt, so I just sat near them for awhile watching people coming up and down. The weather in the Sierra Nevada range generally was rainy and cold. I hung out around Yosemite for a bit after my hike and then decided to drive to Mammoth Lakes the next day. On Saturday I ended up not doing much other than driving around the whole day and making it back to San Jose around 8pm. Sunday I got up and went on another hike at Sunol Regional Park, attempting to go to Mission Peak. I made it most of the way but became worried that I wold not have enough time to get back for dinner at Yevgeniy's, so I turned back early. Still went about 8 miles round trip. I see that the weather this week is looking warmer than previous weeks out here, about the time that I am going back to Phoenix. Working out is still going well, P90 and/or hiking every day.

Weekend of Hike

I drove up to the Sonoma, CA area on Saturday. Jack London State Park provided the first entertainment. The park closed at 5pm, however, leaving me with only about an hour of time to explore it. The land and trees throughout the area were beautiful. Hills and Oaks much like the Bay Area, but with added larger redwood trees and generally a bit more tree density. I then drove to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park where I hiked about 5.5 miles round trip to Bald Mountain. In deciding whether to drive north to the redwood parks or go back, I decided on driving east towards the Desolation wilderness, west of Lake Tahoe.

I stopped in Davis, CA for the night and then stopped by the Ranger station for a map and hiking suggestions in the morning. Settling on a nice looking hiking around around Wright Lake, I started out on the Rockbound Trail around noon. The area's beauty reminded me of the high elevation areas I had visiting before and brought me to realize that I had not done a hike in higher elevation mountain ranges since Mount Whitney in 2004. Being in those areas for me is like looking at creation itself. The unimaginable vastness and seemingly endless rows of mountains humbles me and I believe focuses my thoughts in a very spritual way. I am really looking forward to doing Mount Whitney in July and then going to Colorado in August. I've been away from those mountains for too long now. The weather was overcast, wet, and cold. I enjoyed the about 12 miles round trip a great deal, though. I almost made it to Rockbound Pass, but had to stop just short due to a large amount of snow on the side of the mountain and thus the trail.

Working out is going along still, P90,Hiking Sunday,rest monday.

California Gaming and 30 Days In

Well, I've made it over 30 days now into my workout routine. Things are going good so far, I believe that I'm beginning to see some "results", but I'll know better in another few weeks probably. Wed:P90+Hike, Thu:P90, Fri:P90, Sat:Hike, Sun:P90, Mon:Rest, Tue:P90, Wed:P90

Sunday I went to Santana Row. I had lunch, read some of my book, listened to live music, and bought some stuff from the farmer's market. It was a good time and I might go back this weekend. I also visited a couple of board gaming events this week. Monday I went up to Yahoo's campus for a pretty big weekly meet up there. I wrote up a little session report from that:

Galaxy Trucker - I played 2 games yesterday, first one was Galaxy Trucker with the Big Expansion. Played with Steve, Walter, and Alon(spelling?). I've played the base game a number of times and the expansion sure put a hurt on us. Our ships continually were being destroyed. Going in to the final round, Steve had a "commanding" lead of about 6 points compared to the rest of us with 0. I gave up early after scoring 10 easy points. I thought I would assured victory. :) However, Alon had looked ahead on the cards and knew that this final voyage was actually pretty much a cupcake run compared to the last 2 gauntlets of death. So he pulled out the win with ease after pulling like 30 points of cargo alone.

Ghost Stories - Next game was one I brought that I played with Steve and Randy. This was my 3rd time playing and I have to say it has quickly become one of my favorite cooperative games. We were holding pretty strong against the onslaught of ghosts, however our Taoist monks started to run out of Qi about 5 ghosts too soon and the Incarnate over powered us. We were all killed the village overrun. I'm now 0-3 at the initiate level in that game. Lots of fun and very strategic in my opinion, though. The dice can help or hurt you, though.

Last night I checked out a group that meets weekly at the Mountain View community center. I played a game of Through the Ages. I did not remember the rules well and the person I played against was a bit impatient in the very brief teaching of them. I ended up winning the game interestingly enough.

Tonight I am probably going to go over to Jon's and hang out for a bit. I've also been reading a book called Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross. Jade is letting me borrow it. I find the book very interesting so far, with lots of very deep scientific ideas. The problem is he has jumped between 4 different characters and multiple times in history within just the first 70 pages. I am not much of a fan of that style of writing.