Irrelevance Glorified

I’ve been trying something new recently. Namely, I went to Meetup and started joining hiking groups. I figured there are a lot of people in the Bay Area who like to hike, and I could tap into their latent desire to organize things. For this particular weekend, the organized hike was up at the Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, an open space just north of Livermore, in the East Bay. Now is pretty much the best time to visit, because Winter is over and Summer has not really begun. In July, this hike would have been intolerable due to the heat, since East Bay gets really hot and this hike has very little shade. In Spring, however, the wildflowers are out, which is a nice treat.

For the first half of the hike, we just admired the wildflowers and the rolling hills. The views were not fantastic, although there was a pretty good view of the peaks of Mt. Diablo. The second half of the hike was more shaded, and passed through groves of trees and poison ivy (luckily, I didn’t run into any) while climbing rather steeply back towards the parking lot.

Overall, this hike wasn’t all that interesting. The wildflowers were nice, and the more challenging portions of this hike were interesting, but it was fairly short (~ 5 miles) and the views were not great (it was a little bit hazy). It was nice to visit an area that I hadn’t hiked at before, and we had a great lunch at Sai’s, a vietnamese restaurant in Livermore. I’ll give it a B-, but the whole experience an A-.

Flickr Set Here
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Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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Well, it’s been a long time in-between hikes. We can blame my laziness as well as the threat of rain, which combined with my laziness can make it hard to motivate myself out of the house. One of the last weekends of March proved to be quite beautiful, so I decided to try out Mission Peak, in East Bay. It has a reputation of being quite a steep hike, but it’s relatively short (~ 5.5. miles out and back) so I had always elected to try other hikes.

This hike is very accessible, which is both good and bad. Good because it’s only a 30 minute drive from my apartment, and there is no segment of the way that is composed of windy, narrow road. Bad because this means that everyone comes with their kids and their strollers and such. I got a somewhat late start, and arrived to find the parking lot full and the residential streets packed all around. I lucked out and found someone leaving, so my walk to the trailhead was only about 5 minutes.

This hike is not fooling anyone. You get to the trailhead, and you see the peak ahead of you, with the path snaking up to the crest. You know exactly what you’re getting into. The path up from the Stanford Avenue trailhead is wide and graveled. I’m not a huge fan of multi-use trails; I like to pretend that I’m trekking through the wilderness, and that illusion is disrupted if I have to watch out for mountain bikes and if I hear the sounds of babies in strollers.

I also was hoping that the view would be clearer, since it had rained a few days before. Alas, the haze returned sooner than I would have expected. Overall, though, it was a good way to break in my otherwise lethargic body (I was sore for a week) and to get myself prepared for the hiking season. While steep, the view was pretty rewarding. I give this hike a B+/A-.

Picture set on Flickr Here
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Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

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You’re probably shocked and confused that there are two angry bad rants so close to one another. Well, the publishing of the rant for G.I. Joe was precipitated by my viewing of Equilibrium. As I was watching this movie, I realized it was perfect for a rant, but I had a draft of that G.I. Joe one sitting in the queue. So, I pushed it out so I can get going on this one.

Equilibrium is a 2002 action flick starring Christian Bale & Taye Diggs, among others. While not getting the greatest reviews when it came out (37% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), it’s had a bit of resurgence in the intervening time, and at this point it’s rated 7.8/10 on IMDB. Because of the intriguing re-evaluation of this film’s merits, I thought it was worth a Netflix rental. As it turns out….this is a bad movie. Read on for more, spoilers included.
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