Weekly New's, Week 8
Last Monday, I went hiking with two friends at China Camp State Park. We picked it primarily on its write-up in this really tacky book of hikes that my friend has, but it was seriously so cool. How have I never been there before?! It was super convenient (3 miles north of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge) and has a very cool little historical area and museum where you can learn about the Chinese shrimp fisherman who used to inhabit the area. The last living member of the Quan family, who apparently maintained shrimp fishing in the area long after everyone else left due to a combination of racist laws and changes in shrimp populations as they changed the waterways, still lives there. He came out of his house and unlocked this barn so that we could see all of the original shrimp drying/winnowing equipment. Very cool. China Camp is pretty tiny by state park standards (we hiked most of the way around it in 4-5 hours), but it's beautiful and seems to avoid the flocks of hikers that usually descend upon any patch of open space in Marin on a sunny weekend/holiday. It does appear to be a haven for mountain bikers, though, and we were nearly mowed down on several occasions but some of the less polite cyclists. In any case, we were thoroughly sold and are planning on coming back for some hassle-free weekend camping sometime this summer :)
I continued to bike commute this past week, although I am slowly coming to terms with the sad reality that it is notably exhausting. I have to organize all of my stuff the night before (pack my lunch and my work clothes, set aside bike clothes to put on in the morning, make sure my wallet, cell phone, and work keys are in the correct bag, etc) and then I have to wake up earlier, which means that I'm burning the candle at both ends a little bit. After all that, I also am biking an additional 11 miles a day. The fitness portion of this will presumably become less of a big deal the more I do it (although it's not seeming any easier quite yet), but the sleep/organizational portion has the potential to be a much bigger deal, since I'm not particularly good at managing my time and getting enough sleep under the best of conditions. It's helping a little that I'm baking bread on the weekends, which means that I have tasty bread for no-hassle sandwiches all week, but it's still a problem. Also, my knee has been bothering me. I'm hoping that consistently wearing my brace will help this. Realistically, I'm eventually going to have to just bite the bullet and see a sports medicine doctor, but that's going to require some amount of time and money (highly variable depending on who I see, whether it's covered by insurance, and how much of a problem it turns out to be) and I'm feeling in short supply of both these days.
On the plus side, this "one new thing a week" plan is without a doubt improving my quality of life. I chatted on Skype today with a friend of mine who is living in Argentina, and she mentioned how much happier and more energized I sound about my life as compared to last fall. It's certainly true. Forcing myself to do new things is really forcing myself to live the life that is most in keeping with my personality and emotional health.
My friends are also just sort of awesome and are doing silly, creative things all the time. Last week we had a surprise beer pong party for a friend of mine because her roommate always jokes about the secret beer pong tournaments that she's hosting while my friend is away. This weekend we had a dinner party with all sloth-themed foods in celebration of my friend's love for sloths. Today we had a clothing exchange and spent a whole afternoon running around half-naked as we tried on one another's old clothes. On Wednesday we're going to celebrate February 29th with a special Leap Year party featuring foods that indicate changes in elevation or distance. With friends like these, how bad can life really be????
Sadly, many of them are going to be moving away within the next year. My other "new" for this week was joining a MeetUp group so that I can hopefully find some new people to fill the void left by those who are going away.