Out and About

Well, refreshed reader, the Christmas holidays are almost over. We've been combining catching up on our favourite British TV with the odd walk. It's been sunny here, with the usual winter weather of upper 50s Fahrenheit (that's mid-teens in more enlightened temperature units), which is more or less ideal for walking.

But before we got stuck into walking, I needed to visit the hardware store for various sundries, and I saw something so fantastic there that I just had to share with you. Maybe it's being in a band once which makes this excite me, or maybe it's something else, but just look at the array of gaffer tape that's available here:

Tempted as I was to buy an absolute ton of this stuff and start some kind of career in gaffer tape art, I somehow resisted and just bought the stuff I went for. Hardware stores haven't yet been killed off by superstores here, and in fact the place I saw this stuff, which is in downtown Palo Alto, appears to be thriving. They've also got a catchy TV advert, which may be something to do with it.

Anyway, to the walks. On what in the UK you'd call Boxing Day, we walked down to the Bay (about 4 miles from here), to Bixbee Park:

The bay shore is full of former landfill sites here in the South Bay, and Bixbee is one of them. It's now been converted into a very pretty park with sculptures and the like, dotted with methane monitoring stations which belie the origins of the place. Still, being down by the Bay there's a lot of waterbirds here: plenty of Great Egrets and various geese, ducks and waders.

Yesterday we took a drive up the windy, windy roads into the mountains (Page Mill Road in this instance) to go walking around the Long Ridge Open Space Preserve. There's still plenty of the golden hills in evidence up there, but the moisture rolling in off the ocean give a distinctly green tinge:

Walking up in the hills here isn't that different from being in the UK, but of course your chances of decent weather are somewhat better. Still, you're high enough here that the wind gets up a bit, leading to this slightly windswept New Year selfie:

And with that, we're close to being back to our working week routine. We have an additional day off on Monday, but on Tuesday will be right back into it. Welcome to 2021!