Irrelevance Glorified

Last Thanksgiving, I decided not to go back to Chicago, mostly because flying back to the Midwest is a pain in the butt and sorta expensive as well. I like to travel within the time zone, to minimize those hassles. So when Bruce and Tina extended an invitation to me to visit for Thanksgiving, I accepted it before they could explain that it was mostly sarcasm.

Visiting them is “interesting”, mostly due to their two young boys, Nile (20 months when I visited) and Cyrus (3 months), who are slowly draining their parents’ sanity. This was actually my first time meeting Cyrus. He was still blob-like at this age, but I liked Cyrus; he did not fuss when I held him, and we had some good conversations during tummy time. Nile was a bit suspicious of me, but allowed me to read some books to him. He’s pretty verbal at this age, although Tina is much more skilled at comprehending him than I am.

We were pretty ambitious for this Thanksgiving meal; I convinced Tina to try out the Good Eats Brined Turkey recipe, which makes for a deliciously moist turkey. It turned out well overall, although we were hampered by not having a true probe thermometer. I also made a slow-cooker cabbage dish that turned out pretty well, and a sausage stuffing that was delicious, although I should have chopped the walnuts within it a bit finer.

Overall, though, this was just an excuse to visit Bruce & Tina, two of my favorite people.

Anyways, here are some pictures of my visit, which will probably be used as evidence someday by Child Protective Services.

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures And Descriptions After the Break.

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As some of you might have noticed, I managed to score a Bag of Crap on Christmas last December. I was helped by the fact that they employed an “anti-cheat” mechanism. That is, if you just went to the site front page, it said it was sold out, but if you took the time to read the text for the time, it explained that you needed to click through to a special page in order to order the Crap. This is intended to foil any sort of automated buying program/script anyone was running. And it worked! I was actually able to score one, something that I hadn’t done in just about a year.

However, I did experience a problem : it didn’t arrive. Well, the tracking indicated that it did in fact arrive, but when I got home…nothing was there! Was there a thief in my area? Was there an incompetent mailperson? We may never know. Luckily, Woot believed my sob story and was nice enough to send me another Bag of Crap. This in itself was awesome, as I was expecting them to just refund my money. Apparently they have redundant crap in their warehouse that they were willing to send me.

See the video below to see my dramatic unboxing. Hit the jump (and scroll down past all the whitespace I’ve added so as to not spoil the video) to see individual pictures of my loot.

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Back in November, I used up some of my vacation days and visited Japan. Not just on a whim, mind you; when I travel, I travel to visit people. In this case, it’s my good friends Yusuke and Tomoko, old compatriots from High School (Yusuke) and undergrad (Tomoko). While I flew in from San Francisco, another friend from undergrad, Becky, flew in from Boston along with her boyfriend Steve. So in many ways, it was a little reunion with a lot of my favorite people.
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Merry Christmas everybody! I’m not Christian myself, but I do enjoy myself a day off. For all my loyal readers out there, I have a special treat for you, one that’s been on all your wishlists : a new post about a hiking trip I took in September! Yeah, towards the end of — wait, what? That wasn’t on your Christmas wishlist at all? Well, I don’t know, I have the whole list right here, and it clearly shows “A new hiking post from Ranjeet” for all of you. I don’t know what to say, take it up with Santa. At least it’s not a lump of coal.

Back towards the end of September, I visited The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, a redwood-centric state park a little bit southeast of Santa Cruz. It’s pretty much the southest I’ve traveled for hiking, although the trip took less than an hour, thanks to its proximity to major highways. Although the area stopped being a logging camp in the 1920’s, it only became a state park in the 60’s. Compared to a lot of the other state parks, that’s pretty young. This park is close enough to “civilization” that many people eschew the Park’s parking lot. They park at businesses that exist right outside the park and then bike or run inside, thus avoiding the daily park fee. I kinda think this is a rude move, because they are using the park while not supporting it. It’s also a tiring move, because even if you park right outside the park, it’s a long, windy, uphill climb to the park interior. Basically, if you park outside, it’s a 5k just to get to anything worth seeing.

Nisene Parks State Park was sorta disappointing. Not too much signage, so I often didn’t know where I was. This is especially true near the park entrance, where the trails meander and I found myself back-tracking quite a bit. There are some very long hikes available here, but I found myself wanting to hit trails that were really far apart, so I ended up driving between trailheads. The first trails I hit included really old growth trees, including some real monsters, while the later trails were ridgeline trails through previously logged areas.

Alongside the issues with trail signs, there was a real dearth of historical information as well. The pictures I show pretty much detail the entirety of the documentation on site, which was disappointing, because I like to think that I’m learning while I’m hiking. Also, one of the main reasons I picked this park was that the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake is actually close to one of the trails! There is even a sign! Imagine my horror when I got there to find out that the Aptos Creek trail was closed! A great disappointment. Whatever. Overall, I grade this place a C. Again, no one punched me in the face.

Anyways, enjoy the pictures, and Merry Christmas to everyone! I successfully ordered a Bag of Random Crap from Woot today!

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

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It’s still been pretty hot out here, so I’ve been continuing my redwood forest tour along the Santa Cruz mountains. This week, I traveled to Huddart County Park, just west of Woodside. The one interesting thing about Huddart is that it is directly adjoining the Phleger Estate, a piece of donated land that is actually part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, although it’s quite a bit of distance from the Golden Gate bridge. Actually, the Phleger Estate is best accessed through Huddart County Park.

One nice thing about Huddart is that it’s easily accessed; I took I-280 to Woodside Road, and after a few minutes made a right on King’s Mountain Road to get to the park. In all, it only took 30 minutes, although I had to proceed carefully through the town of Woodside because it seemed like 50% of the population was out jogging or biking. The bad thing about the park, something I really only realized during the hike, is that it’s on the wrong side of the mountains. Since the park is on the east side of the mountain, it isn’t really sheltered from the heat of the valley, unlike the other forests I’ve been hiking through on the west side of the mountains. So, the only real respite I had from the heat was when my path took me close to Skyline Boulevard, and cool breezes sometimes wafted over the ridge.

This park was full of strange noises. It’s possible that I was being tracked by some terrifying predator, but in general, there were lots of rustles, pops, and creaks throughout the woods. I did see one deer, but nothing else substantial. Of course, I tramp through the woods trying to make a decent amount of noise, so as to not surprise any ornery creatures.

While a nice hike in general, this park isn’t “special” enough to make up for the fact that it doesn’t provide a break from the heat. I give it a straight B.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures/Descriptions after the break.

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I was in Chicago at the end of July/beginning of August, but not three weeks later I found myself back again. Cameron and Gina were having a wedding reception! I know what you’re thinking. Wasn’t there some sort of reverend activity back in September? Well yes, there was. But you know, parents prefer it to see their kids getting married, rather than just hearing about it, so they decided to have a little ceremony in Chicago, and invite more than two people. I didn’t remember to take many pictures, because I was all caught up in the moment, but here they are, along with a picture courtesy of Dave Clutter.

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On August 15th, I took a trip to Butano State Park, again on the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains. This park is kinda tucked in behind Big Basin, and is much more annoying to get to. Much of the route is on winding country roads, so it took about 75-90 minutes to travel the 45 miles. The only other intrigue was the presence of a nearby wildfire, the so-called Lockheed fire. It was called the Lockheed fire because it was close to some Lockheed R & D facilities, which were in such “remote” locations so that if they exploded, they wouldn’t endanger a populated area. But that’s a different story. By my Google Maps estimates, that fire was over 10 miles and a few state parks away, so I figured I would be safe. However, the fire’s presence was definitely felt in the form of haze and the smell of smoke.

My hike was roughly 9 – 10 miles or so, and covered forests and canyons, flats and ridges. Bay Area Hiker doesn’t particularly like Butano, and I can’t disagree with her notion that Purisma Creek provides a better creekside hike. So I’ll give this hike a B+.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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For once, a post not about hiking! Back at the end of July, I traveled back to Chicago for a long weekend. Why? Well, for one, I hadn’t been back in a little while and hadn’t seen anyone in my family since February, so it seemed like a decent idea. Secondly, my sister Sharmila had recently had a kid, so I was up for seeing my new nephew Sachin. And thirdly, my other sister Vandana and her husband Rich were coming up from Orlando, which is a fairly rare occurrence. So I took a few days off from work and flew in to Chicago. Thursday was spent doing chores around my Mom’s place, such as cleaning gutters and stuff. Friday we drove up to Sharmila’s place on the North Side, meeting up with Vandana and Rich. We spent most of that day goo-gooing over the baby and taking a little walk out to Lake Michigan. Saturday’s forecast called for rain, so we decided to do something indoor, namely go to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hadn’t been to the Art Institute for a really long time, so I was definitely up for that (although I was very disappointed when I realized they had removed/hidden the medieval armor and weapons gallery). They had recently opened up a new Modern Art wing, so I was curious what they had there. It was….interesting, to say to the least. I took a few pictures, although not so many as I always tend to feel like I’m stealing from artists and the museum when I do so. Afterwards we went out for Tapas, and Sunday was time to return to our respective homes.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures after the jump.

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Even though I have been concentrating on parks in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I have nowhere near exhausted all my options. For the weekend of July 26th, I chose the Purisma Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, a patch of protected redwood forest on the western slope of the Santa Cruz mountains, right near Half Moon Bay. In a theme that has been shared with a lot of places that I’ve visited, this preserve is centered around a creek (Purisma Creek) and the canyon that surrounds it.

One thing I liked about this park is that for me, it had a good balance of ease-of-access and getting-awayness. It was about 50 minutes to an hour away, taking I-280 North to Hwy 92 West to Half Moon Bay, then getting on Hwy 1 going south for only a mile or so before making a left onto Higgins Canyon road for the final 4 miles or so. In other words, I spent a minimum of time on narrow, unmarked roads. But I still felt fairly secluded, even though this trailhead was relatively popular.

I started out on Purisma Creek Trail, which climbs gradually as it follows the creek farther into the canyon. This multi-purpose trail meets up with the Soda Gulch Trail at about the 2.3 mile mark. This trail is refreshingly hiker-only, and it weaves through the forest and into hillside quasi-meadows for another 2.5 miles before hitting the Harkins Ridge Trail. The suggested trail plan calls for heading back to the trailhead to complete the loop at this point, but I decided to extend the hike and headed uphill, to the northeast. I had to watch for a bunch of mountain bikers on this trail, but I found myself up by Skyline Blvd before heading back down to the trailhead on Whittemore Gulch Trail. Overall, I estimate my hike to be between 9.5 and 10 miles.

This hike was suggested to me by Jane Hubers “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of San Francisco”, who preferred this place to most other redwood parks. And for the most part, I would have to agree with her. I really enjoyed this hike, for reasons not quite definable. It did not have fantastic vistas, and indeed few places where I could see much beyond trees. But I seem to value varied landscapes, a nice mix of steep climb and gradual grades, and nice trees, and this trail delivered. I just remember getting back to my car and thinking “Gee, that was an enjoyable hike”. I give it an A.

Not much pictures of this hike. Well, I took a number of pictures, but a greater than average number of them turned out to be not worth posting (and as you have seen, I have pretty low standards for what I end up posting) due to redundancy or horrible composition. I did come across a family of quail bustling across the trail. They were actually really funny, because they seemed to be panicking due to my sudden arrival. Since quail don’t really fly, though, they didn’t burst up into the air, but mainly tried to scatter into the brush. But some of the baby quail couldn’t really decide which side of the trail they wanted to be at, so they zig-zagged back and forth like a trailside version of pinball, until they sorted themselves out. Unfortunately, by the time I had the presence of mind to turn my camera to video mode, they had scattered, so no proof. Sorry.

Flick set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures and descriptions after the jump.

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After my debacle at Diablo, I resolved to better consider the heat as I continued my summer hikes. For the most part, that means East Bay is off limits until Fall arrives. South Bay isn’t all that much better. North Bay is far away and almost certainly requires paying a bridge toll somewhere. So the Peninsula it is! Once you cross over the Santa Cruz mountains, summer temperatures are much milder, and the clouds often don’t retreat until noon approaches. There are quite a few state parks that straddle the crest of the Santa Cruz mountains or lay on it’s western slopes, so I figured now’s a good time to try them. For the weekend of July 18th, I chose Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, near the town of Felton and about 10 miles north of Santa Cruz. There are actually two large separate sections of the park. The southern part is more heavily used by campers, and as such, has parking fees and the like. The northern portion was donated to the California State Park system at a later time, and just has trails and stuff — and parking is free! This portion, the “Fall Creek Unit” used to be a big source of lime; the stuff was mined and calcined in limekilns before being shipped off in redwood barrels. Some of the relics of this legacy is still there in the park.

I started off this hike on the Fall Creek trail, which begins at the entrance and follows the canyon created by Fall Creek. After passing by some barrel-making equipment, I made a right onto Big Ben Trail, which proved to be a decently steep climb up to Truck Trail, an old logging road (now a fire road). This hooked up with the Ridge Trail, which took me back to my starting point, forming a 7 mile clockwise loop trail.

The redwoods are nice, although not old growth by any means. The rangers here seem to want to give this park a bit of an “untamed” feeling, as there are a lot of fallen logs that you have to pick your way around. So, while this hike wasn’t spectacular or anything, the rusticness and the little pieces of history bump this hike up to a B+

Flick set here
Slideshow below.
Pictures after the jump.

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