Hike

My thighs are sore. But I love it. Because they are complaining from the maybe 6 mile trek this morning on a trail in Half Moon Bay with a group from Sons in Retirement. For the first time in a long long time, I was the youngest person in a gathering. How cool is that? We went up the Purusima Trail and most of it was uphill. So though I have been diligently walking every weekend, the hike was tiring. I can't imagine what the rest of the team felt, especially those in their late '70s. Funny thing is only the last 1.9 miles were downhill and parts were a little treacherous because of the loose screes and you can easily slip. Especially with normal walking shoes instead of proper hiking boots. So you take baby steps and you dig your toes or heels in to get more grip.

But it was a beautiful trail, most of it very shady and cool, with the Purisima Creek gargling gently close by for most of the way. The secondary redwood trees were slim unlike those in Muir Woods or the Avenue of the Giants. At one stretch, I was walking next to Tom and he told me the original redwoods were all cut down, brought up to some peak and then floated down some river or other to Redwood City for lumber. And that was how that town got its name. Sunlight speckled the trails here and there and it was just very peaceful. Surprisingly, there were hardly any animals or birds. But lots of poison ivy or poison oak. Luckily they were not too close to the trail although there was one plant that actually grew out and hung partway over the trail. Like it was reaching out to us.

Only when we were more than half way through did we see a family of quails where the trail branches, I think with one going to Harkins Ridge which would be more uphill trekking. But we were going the other way. downhill, back to where we had parked the cars. And somewhere we ran into the mostly eaten carcase of a small deer. Only bits of skin, the tail and the rib cage were left.

We were the only non-Americans in the group but they were all very warm and welcoming. The stories they shared as we walked were of the old days, and I mean old. Where they went to school in the '50s and what they did in the '60s in their youths. Of restaurants and hamburger joints in San Francisco that have long gone. Most of them were long time or native Californians. We were young then in every sense of the word. But there was one Daphne who gave me a hug when we were still at the starting point because she went to UBC too even though she left after two years in 1959 to USC to study physical therapy. We were immediately bonded by that tenous thread.

It was interesting how Americans open up - pretty soon I was hearing about their families, the kids they had, the illnesses and deaths of spouses, times shared with grandkids... I don't think Asians air stories about their families in quite the same way. I was a stranger to them but pretty soon, I knew much more about Debbie's history than I would have cared to at the start of the trek. They like to hear about your children and will ask.

After the hike, a well deserved lunch at San Benito sandwich place along Main Street in Half Moon Bay. Good sandwiches on fresh bread baked daily by the small deli. Healthy and tasty.

On the way back in Tom's Lexus, I dozed off a little. That was how tired I was. I like Tom - he is very funny and seem to have taken a liking to the Man. While the man brought the half man for his tennis lesson, I took a nap, too tired to even bathe. That had to come later. Even the horrific mess in the bedrooms of the girl and boy could not keep me from laying down my weary body.