Willow and Juanjo's SplashBlot

This morning we ran the Chinese New Year 10k run with Rose and Andy. Last night it was pouring rain, and this morning there were sprinkles, so we thought it might be really miserable, but it was a lot of fun! Juanjo and I had not been running, but we’ve been hiking and biking and walking, and that seemed to have kept us fit enough to run a race of this length.
Rose and I started the course at a steady pace, quickly watching Andy and Juanjo disappear into the crowd going up Grant St. There were a few hard hills, but the course was mostly flat from Chinatown, across North Beach, down around the Embarcadero, and back up to Chinatown. It was my first organized run ever, and Juanjo’s 3rd or 4th. My goal was to keep up with Rose and finish, and I managed to do that (a little competition might have helped that one!). Knees bothered me a bit, but not too bad, and it was a thrill to be outside under the cloudy, quiet, city morning, running with the crowd.
Here are the four of us right after the race in Chinatown square:

And stretching to keep warm and avoid soreness later:

Rose said the next race she’s signed up for crosses the Golden Gate Bridge, which I’ve always wanted to do. Where can we sign up?

After promising each other that we were going to hike less today, Juanjo and I gave in to the peer pressure and hiked even further than yesterday with Kim and Erik. We took a different path than yesterday, one that  led us up the mountain and across a different ridge, down down down to the coastal trail below through stands of half-charred pines. The day was glorious–again, rain predicted but with hardly a cloud in the sky all day long. We’d talked about hiking together for a long time, but had never done it, and it felt good to be out with these friends, going deeply into conversations about things that matter, while pounding step after step down the trail towards the sea below.

Now we are home, back in the comforts of city life and our own abode, back to the demands, the day-to-day that already presses in with email and reminders of the week to come. A hot shower has never felt so good–we hiked more than 24 miles in the past two days! Every inch of my legs feels sore, reminding me of the glorious weekend we had every time I stand or climb the stairs. But I’ll relish it through the week, enjoying the thought of being out under the trees, watching the birds, hearing the waves crashing below, and losing myself in the beauty of this life I’ve been given. The solace of wide open coastal space, the company of friends, the meaning of sharing it all with the person I love, all come together to make me grateful for being alive. What are the places and people that make you feel grateful for being alive?

We came to Point Reyes to spend the long weekend hiking, and today took our first hike. WeatherUnderground predicted clouds and rain, so we brought raincoats, but there was not a cloud in the sky the whole day! We hiked up a ridge, through curvy paths of redwood and fir forests, over hills and around ridges until the glimpses of the sea in the distance became a roaring ocean in front of us. Then we made our way down a small ravine near a place called Arch Rock–aptly named for the arch it makes where a creek empties into the ocean. In all we hiked 10 miles–a loop that took us about 6 miiles out there and 4 back along a different trail.

Then we drove to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, flying over the road in the new car, Juanjo hugging curves and gripping the steering wheel with delight at pushing the car to the limits he dared. When we reached the trailhead for the lighthouse we bundled up with all the clothes we had and ran the 1/2 mile to the Lighthouse, wind whipping at our clothes and screaming through the grasses and trees. What an exhilirating feeling, standing against the wind, staring down the cliffs and out into the choppy waters of the Pacific. We were reminded of other times we’ve been out in the wildness of nature. The torrential rain on our Hawaii hike. The sudden snowfall in Zion. What a thrill to share life with someone who enjoys this as much as I do.

The day ended with dinner at a Czech restaurant called Vladimir’s, which has been in Inverness since 1960. Vladimir himself seated us, slowly moving through the semi-candle-lit darkness of the pub-style restaurant. He was not a day younger than 75, and was likely close to 80, but still clearly running the show in the family restaurant. We ate traditional Czech food, stuffing ourselves after all the hours of hiking and light picnic lunch we’d had out at the beach. Then we capped off the night with a dip under the stars in the hot-tub. Ah, life is good. How lucky we are to be able to enjoy it so completely, and to share so much.

We woke up this morning to the sound of rain slapping against the windows of our loft. It had been raining all night, and most of yesterday. For the past several months, we’d been taking bike rides on the weekends, often rising and dressing directly in bike clothes to head out while the day is young. Today’s rain tested us, as we’d gone out biking in the cold, but not yet in the rain. We decided to go for it when we came downstairs and saw the rain had eased up a bit. And we opted to try a ride we’ve been wanting to do for some time: up through the Haight, into Golden Gate Park, and down down down to the Great Highway and Ocean Beach. There are hills on this ride, so we figured we might get wet but we wouldn’t be cold.

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Does this make us a video-blog now? Video is in Spanish.