First Hike, more travel, more confusion (from many sides….many sides)

My search for direction and structure has met only marginal success as I approach my third full week of retirement. That my be due in part to usual lack of focus, but also to our continued confusion and indecision on where to live. Go..or stay. Since we are considering moving. quite a bit of my first few weeks of freedom has been consumed with home related tasks (see last post on the Avocado Roundup). But his past week, I finally executed on one goal, which I had initially targeted for Day One - hiking.

Henry Coe State Park is the second largest in the state, and spans a huge area just east of the Anderson Reservoir in Morgan Hill. I’ve done a few hikes there in the past, and thought this would be a good warmup since there are a series of ridges and valleys which should provide a good workout. The park is also a great place for wildlife and scenic photography - I’ve seen lots of wild turkeys and California quail there. So, off I went with one of my friends who suffered through the Half-Dome adventure last year. I promised my wife I would not require EMT services this time. And I also remembered to bring some food along as well. In fact, I still had the chicken jerky I bought for that trip - the good thing about jerky is that it has so many chemicals in it (even if it is from Whole Foods), that it never goes bad. How could you tell? It looks like dried turds when it is fresh.

Aside from the exercise, perfect California blue sky, the nice cool temperatures, the great views of the ridges and valleys in the park, and the marine layer creeping over the Santa Cruz Mountains (and all the quail running around on the trail), the best part of the hike was sharing stories about our days at Google, opinions on how long Trump will remain in office, and thoughts on just about any topic that came to mind in four hours, it was great for me to get some ideas from another relatively recent Google retiree on what one does with their time.

Unlike my last outdoors adventure in Yosemite, this hike was uneventful. No falls, collapses, bruises or lost blood. Just a nice hike. But, one minor problem I’ve had with my first few weeks of permanent unemployment, is my lifetime habit of taking on way too much in too short amount of time. In the few days before the hike: played tennis twice; spend countless hours doing landscaping; spent hours hacking through an overgrown avocado tree (see previous post); walked 6 miles along the cliff’ in Capitola; played Pickle Ball with friends and a mutant golden retriever (I’m not making this up). So, add in a 6 mile hike, I was really sore when I got up the next day. To play tennis again. Yeah, I’ll figure this out somewhere along the way. Until I do I’m going to be taking a lot off Aleve.

Next post - Chicago & Denver...