You never knew that you wanted to do this. Now you're jealous!

The geology club has been working on their float out at a cotton gin in Buttonwillow. Yesterday, during some downtime waiting for papier mache to dry, we eyed this:

The Mt. Shasta of cotton seeds.

And then climbed it. Not unlike Mt Shasta, climbing up a 45 + degree slope of softness makes each step sink in and down. Unlike Mt Shasta, it's much shorter.

Regardless, it still took quite some effort to get to the top (not that that meant we didn't climb up more than once...)

From the top, the obvious thing to do was to use a scrap of cardboard as a sled and slide straight down, as illustrated below:

Since we were unprepared for such fun to occur, the photos and video are all cell phone captures (now THIS is how cell phones are useful!!!) and thus, not the greatest quality...

One extra strength antihistamine later, I slept like a giant allergy-infested, leg-fatigued log - and am wondering a little how this might affect my game in roller derby tonight...

cats + yarn = danger

Loki is turning out to live up to his name - trouble maker - quite well. Some time ago he ate his way through a cardboard box that was housing some yarn, extracted a substantial amount of this yarn, and then set up an elaborate trip-wire with it, a leash, and my bike shoes at the bottom of the stairs. Besides being annoying, it was also quite impressive.

He later showed that this trap may not have been indicative of intelligence and menace so much as a total fluke of spazziness. Below he has wrapped himself up so tightly in the yarn that he is "army-crawling" his way out of it with his front paws...

getting tangled...

wriggling...

the army crawl (Kiki looks on with dilute interest)

Mermaid Triathlon

At the end of September I did the Mighty Mermaid Triathlon in Santa Cruz, this is an all-women's event, and just to add in some extra challenge for myself I did the Olympic distance (1.5km swim, 40km bike and 10km run). This post is a little late because I've been impatiently waiting for the event photos to be posted!!! You can find a few shots of me through the search function, my number was 8. Anyway, the real reason I was waiting for the photos was to see if my sweet Dogfish Head beer jersey would be photographed appropriately, and the answer, sadly, is not really. The corner of the photo below is the only evidence of the coolness of my jersey, and it's so not visible, that I added a red circle to it so that you can see one of the 4 beer bottles "sticking out of" my pocket.

Especially being that this was almost exactly one week after the disaster that was my 2/3rds of this year's Bakersfield Triathlon, I was 'mighty' (haha) impressed with my results, 28th overall (at one point it was 25th, then 26th - I guess some people's timing chips didn't register or something, but the number of participants keep increasing on the results page and some of them are beating me!).

swim - 30:22 - this was an ocean swim, and a cold one at that - not to mention other dangers. One of the women who had practiced in it the day before told me it was in the 50s. That's some sort of farenheit number, and it translates in degrees C to "brrrrrrr". There were substantial waves crashing at the shoreline and as waves of competitors got in to start, we saw many of them being held back by wave after wave and they just couldn't really start swimming. When our wave, the Olympic wave, got going, I abandoned my traditional at-the-back-so-you-don't-get-swum-over rule and booted it to get through the waves and actually swimming. This partially worked, I was not held up by waves so much as the heart-stopping cold of the water (and a little bit of the stanky dead fishyness of the water) and I ended up doing the water polo head-up swim for the first 1/8 or 1/4 of the swim until I stopped gasping and won the mental battle of "just get your damn face in the water and swim". By the time we passed the half way buoy my hands and feet were completely numb and I felt like I was kicking and slapping rubber nubs around at my extremities. In the water this was fine, but when we got out and had to run across the beach and up 150 stairs (they numbered them for us) to the transition zone, the rubber foot nubs that were supposed to do the running were pretty ineffective and the rubber hand nubs that were trying to take the wetsuit off (difficult enough in general) were failing miserably.

bike - 1:32:42 - once the removal of the wetsuit was accomplished, the attempt at removing the wads of sand from my feet was the next task. Again, relatively numb hands and feet make adept maneouvering of towel between toes more challenging. Eventually I gave up getting my feet clean and just pulled my socks and biking shoes on in order to ride and warm up. We had been warned that the ride had 2 very steep hills on it, and one of them was pretty soon after leaving the transition zone. They weren't kidding! As biking is my best event, and I like to think I'm pretty good at it, I'd evaluate the course as having 3 steep hills on it - this based on me having to stand up and pump out of the saddle on 3 separate hills during the ride. I'm never out of the saddle. Not on the ridge route, on the Bakersfield course, and if I hadn't here - the bike would have stopped rolling forward and toppled over. Despite that, the route was pretty and I felt really good throughout the ride. Just past the half way mark I even managed a record setting farmer blow that finally rid my sinuses of the dead fish ocean from the first part of the tri.

run - 59:53 - I made a commitment to myself to go all out on the ride, no matter the cost to me physically. I knew the ocean swim would not be fabulous, and I had lost faith in my swim time potential after Bakersfield this year, and I also knew that I had not done anywhere near enough (ok, ANY) training on the bike besides the daily commute to and from work. I also figured that no matter what condition of fatigue I was in starting the run, I could always fall back and walk and still complete the event. By some miracle I had enough juice left in me to jog the entire entire run, including the 2 steep hills (it was actually the same steep hill that we had to run up twice). In fact, the only part of the run that could even be classified as terrible was the crispy salt thigh chafing that occurred because I did not remember to put body glide on after the swim...

In addition to my times, I was also thrilled with the friendliness of the competition, and walked away with half a dozen new Santa Cruz friends from my transition area.

"Sunny" Bakersfield

Quite some time ago, I unearthed these name stickers from the depths of my office, and sent them, among other items, to kilometres for entertainment value. Regarding the name sticker, two things truly struck me as bizarre: 1) California's most "conventionable" city??? What on earth does that mean? 2) Why is the word "Sunny" in quotes? It's almost never NOT sunny here, so... uhhh... what's going on?

Today I brought the entire roll of name stickers over to the College Archives, just in case they wanted them for some reason. I said that I thought they were funny, and I also said I guessed they were from the 50s or 60s based on the generally brown and multi-fonted theme. The Archive Queen took a look at them, and after a few moments, a look of surprise and recognition came over her face.

"These must have something to do with Sunny Scofield", she said, "she had a talk show and that little icon in the corner was her logo".

Her brief biography follows, and this will be considered another post in my unofficial series "lessons in odd California history".

SUNNY SCOFIELD
First woman producer/director and host of a television talk show (The Sunny Today Show, 1968). Almost 2500 shows aired weekday mornings. Believing that existing TV programs did not meet the needs and interests of viewers, Sunny originated a morning program with such a variety of guests and subjects that the program became nationally recognized.While talk shows are common today, there were no programs like this on the air in the late ‘60’s.

the casual triathlete

yes, that's me...

The philosophy is that if one pays the registration fee for an event, there is a certain level of commitment towards staying in shape for said event. While many use the word "hardcore" to describe me in the context of triathlon-doing, I keep the viewpoint that it's just swimming, biking and running. Breaking that down, once you know HOW to swim, then swimming is like riding a bike - you know HOW to do it, so even if it's been a while, your body still remembers what it's supposed to do. Biking, well that IS riding a bike, so there you go. And running, well, running is really just a bouncy walk of sorts - right?

Of course, there's all kinds of obstacles that can get in the way of the theoretical simplicity of a triathlon: flat tire, blazing heat, unforgiving hills, waves, opaque water, lack of aid stations, etc.

I really have lucked out quite a bit with the triathlons I've done over the last couple of years, and with minimal effort in the training department I've accomplished surprising results. We can look back on the Bakersfield Sprint, Las Vegas Olympic and Shaver Lake Sprint for examples.

Anyway, today's event does not rank up there with the others. My colleague, Air Pollution Control (APC), does the Bakersfield and Shaver triathlons annually as part of a relay team. Early this year it was apparent that his swimmer was not going to be able to do it, so he asked if I would swim for the team. No problem, I needed to get in an open water swim anyway to prep for Santa Cruz next weekend. Later it was determined that his runner had cracked his knee cap and would be unable to do the run portion either - so I agreed to do that as well, mostly because the Bakersfield triathlon long course run had been shortened to "10K". The Bakersfield Long Course is renowned for its difficulty because of the run, this is for two reasons: the run includes some of the steepest hills imaginable (a comparable slope can be seen here), and because of the late start to the race, the temperatures are usually pretty horrific.

While our relay team finished 4th in the open mixed category, I can't say that my race times were even remotely worth being proud of. Let's compare them to my Las Vegas Olympic times and throw some gripes and excuses that account for the difference in speed:

SWIM (1.5K): today 37:29, Vegas 24:25. Yikes! Issues - nasty weeds that tangled around me throughout the swim were slightly distracting, sun in my eyes in the direction that I needed to see where I was going was most distressing, opaque water also problematic in being able to see - seeing is not usually a complaint in the swim for me because when you start in a big mob there's lots of people to follow - in the relay event there was no mob :( and in the end, quite frankly, I was just plain SLOW in the water (I am also suspicious about the true length of the course).

RIDE (40K): today 1:26:05, Vegas 1:36:25 - so clearly the best part of the race, but I wasn't riding! That gloriousness was all APC, who, in his modesty, claimed that he "wasn't much help". Pffft! He clearly was responsible for us finishing 4th in the open mixed, I contributed nothing to help there!

RUN (>10K): today 1:30:26, Vegas 1:04:46. Ok, major factors going on here: 1) the 10K was significantly longer than 10K. The race director said "it was more like 11K" - for sure, if not longer! 2) the temperature at the time that I was running was 36 degrees C. Gah! 3) I tripped on a petrified item of clothing that was stuck in the trail and somehow wrapped itself around my toe causing me to do a superman face splat, additionally, my ipod rocketed out of my sport bra and died. This would have been less bad towards the end of the run, but, as my luck has run out, it was within the first 500m. *sigh*

So there we have it, some personal worsts to go on the record, and hopefully next weekend will only be an improvement! Apparently there's a photo or two of me during the race kicking around. If they're not horrendous when sent my way, I'll post them here.

making

I had this idea some time ago to make a modular wine rack out of fabric. This morning I messed around with some felt and constructed a couple drafts of it. One idea is a series of triples like this that can be placed side by side and then stacked. The other idea is rows that stack into a pyramid, a 4 bottle row, 3 bottle row, etc. I like the triple better myself.


And while I'm on here with photos, here's a kitten update: Loki is ridiculously hyper and the rest of his food energy seems to go into growing a giant tail so he's pretty skinny still, but he's catching up to Kiki in length surprisingly quickly.

socks!

Hooray! I'm in KNITTY! So exciting! It's been a surprisingly long and difficult process, but a great learning experience, and all in all I'm pretty psyched!

Meanwhile, in other news, I'm an alternate for tomorrow's roller derby bout. Wish me luck. And that actually means: luck that no one hurts themselves so that I don't have to play!!!

off to the races!

So, you thought this would be a post about my upcoming triathlon events that (as usual) I am unprepared for... does buying a new bike saddle count as training?

No, this is a post to share two FABULOUS e-mails that I received today. Both made me laugh, sigh and curse a little.

e-mail 1:

I was just wondering on the Exam we are having next week it says we have to define 5 words (out of 10), so what 10 words are they? I would really appreciate some help, thank you.

e-mail 2:

I would like to know what we have to study for the next class's quiz. I looked up the on-line information regarding the class and it said scientific method and geological time. Dose that mean the quiz will include chapter one only? I would greatly appreciate if you can answer this question since i am confused about whether to study mineral or no.

eat's shoot's and leave's???

I received a flier in my mailbox at work this week. The above image is the top 1/3 of it. Before reading any more than that (normally I'd be sold on "free dinner"), I growled aloud in my office. They're sending THAT out to EDUCATORS at a COLLEGE??????????? Where's the proof-reading? I could never bring myself to go to some sort of "educational workshop" where they can't seem to differentiate between PLURAL and POSSESSIVE.

I thought about calling the reservation number and pointing that out to them. I thought about not doing that. Then I noticed that there was fine print beside the reservation phone number that said "24 hour automated message system" - perfect.

I called... and then, to my surprise, a human answered.

"Hello" he said
"Uh..." I replied and paused, "I'm not exactly calling to make a reservation - but ummm I guess I'm calling to be somewhat obnoxious"
"Okay" he replied somewhat hesitantly
"As an educator," I started, "I just wanted you folks to know that you have an error at the top of your flier - "educators" should be plural"
"I know," he said with the annoyance of someone who's already been called about this several times, "we used a comma"
"Actually," I said stifling an explosion of appalled laughter, "it's an apostrophe, and that's why I won't register for the workshop, but I hope you have a great day"

Then I hung up the phone and a little part of me died at my desk.

Return to Canada Part 5: Bluegrass Breakfast!

C&B took us to this fantastic little place for Sunday brunch called the Dakota Tavern. From 11-3 it's "family-style" brunch with eggs, sausage, potatoes, coffee, orange juice, blueberry pancakes, and live bluegrass music! It was an absolutely genius move by C&B to share this spot with us, thanks guys!


The Saturday Saints were awesome, but alas, no CDs, no website, no nothing. So - you'll just have to see when/where they're up next in Toronto... maybe at the Dakota Tavern?

Return to Canada Part 4: Many Visits

It all began with some gardening in Waterloo with Hez. Or should I say, finding the garden amongst the zucchini jungle. I still think we could have built a log cabin out of them...

A reunion of sorts - it's funny reconnecting with someone whose blog you follow so regularly it hardly feels like you'd never actually met the 2 kids they'd had in the 4 years since you last hung out... But great conversation was had, alongside delicious grilled peaches and mojitos, and it just means that the next time can't wait another 4 years!

Then, after the wedding, it was time to garden with KM and J-Smooth at their new place in Toronto (and in a traffic calming zone). I was remiss in taking photos, but I guess that's tricky when you're covered in dirt from planting trees...

The lawn-free backyard, I dig it!

cute sign

Finally, after BEG & I returned from Newfoundland, I found myself in Toronto once again. This time for a reunion with long time Barrie friends, and where better to start than a micro brewery?

Return to Canada Part 3: Long Range Traverse (Newfoundland)

After completing the Green Gardens adventure, we first had a night of black fly molestation in camp at Lomond, then had a busy day during which the search for camp fuel continued (success finally in Rocky Harbour), returning the rental car to the airport, going through our Long Range Traverse "orientation" (which was really a map and compass test), and finally setting up camp at Green Point that night. We ate our delicious dinner (Natural High's Honey Lime Chicken ****) by the ocean, well, the Gulf of St Lawrence, and were amazed by how vast the horizon appeared considering how thin of a strip of water there was between us and the mainland.

Bright and early the next morning we ate our breakfast on the beach again, then packed up to catch our taxi up to the hike to the Western Brook Pond (a land-locked fjord) boat ride. On the boat we met a couple of other hikers who were to do the Traverse, and also heard of a troupe of boy scouts who had reportedly gotten somewhat lost on their first leg of the same expedition.

steep fjord edges of Western Brook Pond - with the uplift of the land post ice-age, the terminal moraines uplifted too and cut off the fjords from the ocean

Once we got off the boat at the eastern edge of the land-locked fjord, we had a brief bout of trail-following that lead us into some immensely tall weeds:

you can see BEG's backpack lid peering up through the weeds in front of me (sort of)

Not too much farther along we began following the creek bed and gradually ascended the 600m incline through bushwhacking, tree-swinging (yes, literally), rock climbing, and wild blueberry eating. In fact, it was through all these distractions that we were able to pop out on top without having been too distraught over the lack of trail or the flies, or really thinking about getting particularly lost on the way...

"trail"

voila! atop and looking down from whence we came! a terrific reward it was, especially when we coupled it with some lunch...

the climb above the treeline was significantly more difficult it seemed, likely due to the lack of trees hindering our progress (just straight up granite gneiss here)... here's the last view of the fjord before we headed into tundra

Beyond the fjord climb, we began navigating bog and marshland dotted with irregularly shaped lakes - all the better for map reading with! We saw barely a cloud in the sky, and progress was good. There were frequent trails, which we followed with caution, and eventually - about an hour and a half before reaching camp, we met our first moose on one of them.

beginning of the bog-slog, and a beautiful view

BEG approaches Leonardo the one-antlered moose on one of the trails we encountered

We decided to name our first moose because he had only one antler and we felt like he must have been some kind of sorrowful reject moose. Then he pooped in front of us.

Eventually we made it to our planned destination of Mark's Pond only to find the place over run with the mythical lost boy scouts. We ate a buggy Backpacker's Pantry Pesto Pasta with Salmon for dinner and Ritter Sport in the tent for dessert. A game or two of cribbage and we called it a night with the following reports (in the field of awesomeness):

• successful navigation up densely forested valley while eating blueberries (check)
• doing so faster than everyone else heading up the valley that day (check)
• getting called hard core by the young couple who caught up to us just as we were finishing our lunch break (check)
• showing up at the boy scout camp and being accused of making amazing time as well as appearing "fresh and chipper" by a boy scout leader (check)
  

On the second day of our traverse we started shortly before the boy scouts and vetoed the mysterious trails for a cross-country map and compass route - success! We made our way easily to the next camp site, our hearty lunch spot, splashed around in the pond for a little while, and just as the wind and clouds came rolling in began the next leg of our day. We drifted between trailblazing with map and compass and following random trails. The trek often felt like a slog, a bog-slog in fact, but we ate the odd cloudberry (yuck) and blueberry (yum) and just after completing the 2nd of 3 hills, we caught up with the 2nd boy scout troupe. They had of course left two days before us, and were motivational by complimenting us on our excellent progress. From there we set off on the 3rd and final hill of the day, coupled with caribou, and made it into camp (passing a moose mama and baby) along with our first downpour.

caribou. dead center. for real

Of course in our zeal with the wildlife, and trying to eat the blueberries, and making a beeline for camp, we were somewhat damped by the sogginess and found ourselves among tuckamore (where you don't want to be) and on a steep-enough hillside that we had to start considering our haste at the end of the day... During a rain intermission we ate a dinner of Mountain House Teriaki Chicken with Rice followed by Backpacker's Pantry Cheesecake with freeze-dried strawberries on top. A divine conclusion to the day!

Unfortunately the night was remarkably cold and damp - brrrr - which resulted in a buggy morning and our first morning of 2 cups of coffee to shake the cold. We had a wettish departure from there with all kinds of things hanging off our packs to dry in the 98% humidity day.

me, eating my way along the trail of blueberries, as usual

With some map and compass traversing we made our way to a spectacular view of 10 mile pond, another land-locked fjord, and a great place to hunt for a breeze and have a quick snack.

BEG at 10 Mile Pond, Gros Morne Mountain to the left

Beyond 10 mile pond we had a view of Gros Morne Mountain, our destination, but it was difficult to keep in sight over the rolling topography and overcast skies. We eventually had a detour around a round lake that we had mistaken for a different round lake, but despite annoyance, sweat and slog, not much was lost besides time and a good trail was found again. This good trail was then followed by some hairy spots in tuckamore, and a ridiculous traverse down a steep endless gully, severly overgrown, slippery, and frustrating.

tuckamore... the dwarf forest, sometimes more dwarfed than others

Then, lo and behold, there was camp! We set it up, hung things up to dry, ate our lunch and were joined by two moose while pumping water and washing dishes at the nearby pond.

camp. moose.

moose. clean dishes. moose pee. good timing!

After lunch we went and hiked up Gros Morne Mountain, without our full packs, and felt the glorious freedom that was, along with a breeze too! From up top we saw familiar views from a different angle, relaxed, gave some day hikers our water, and set back down for camp dinner.

obvious

the mountain was all nasty quartzite rubble, but the view was terrific

the 2nd boy scout troupe, with whom we shared camp 2 nights of our traverse, cheers!

Our final camp dinner was Mountain House Mac & Cheese with Sea Bear salmon, it was delicious. We packed up slowly in the morning and set off for the Gros Morne Mountain trailhead, our end point. It was signficantly farther than we had bargained for, and really the descent was relatively arduous. More than likely this was because we were mentally prepared for a piece of cake, and that it was not. Considering all the hiking we had done already we were feeling a little wimpy.

Eventually we reached the bottom and called a taxi to get us to Norris Point, which was sort of pointless, and we were delivered to Rocky Harbour by a kind stranger where we set up camp at the local RV campground (they get ***** from us!). We had much needed showers and strolled into town for a genuine Newfoundland dinner at Earle's diner. We had a large plate of fries, Quiddi Vidi beers (Honey Brown, Eric's Red and 1892 Traditional), a moose burger, fish & brewis, toutins with molasses, and lemon meringue pie (thanks to a group of hikers who had just come off of the North Rim Traverse). As if that wasn't enough, after dinner we walked back along the shore and capped our evening off with an ice cream. The other group of hikers accused us of being hard core because we were camping (again) that night, but really... it was the cheapest option!

Return to Canada Part 2: Green Gardens Hike (Newfoundland)

BEG & I arrived in Deer Lake, Newfoundland at different times, and since I had several hours to kill I found ways to effectively do so. Thanks to the town website, I found that there was a community center with a swimming pool that conveniently had open swimming time the evening of my arrival. I figured I'd head into town, pick up some fruit for our first few days, swim, wander around, and then mosey back to the airport.

It turned out that trying to lap swim in the community pool when there is nothing else to do in the community but jump around like hooligans in the community pool is rather difficult. My swim was cut short.

I picked up a Bolthouse Farms C-Boost juice partly because I had managed to sit directly in front of Coughy McPhlegmy Pants on the plane (which made me nervous for my health), and partly because I was entertained at finding a Bakersfield product on the extreme opposite end of the continent. It was tasty. And expensive.

BEG's flight was delayed half and hour which pushed our rental car picking up time to after midnight and 30 minutes before the rental desk closed. With the car "in hand" we drove off to Gros Morne to find a place to set up camp in Trout River. Although the plan sounded simple, the signage to the park was less than stellar and it was dark and it was the wee hours, so after a turn around at the Tim Horton's and listening to a cute/amusing pronounciation of the letter H (haytch), we were en route on the Viking Trail. We eventually pulled in to the camp at Trout River Pond at around 3am, and the place was packed full, not a site for a tent to be found. After a brief discussion we settled on using the apparently abandonned "walk-in" sites, which were available, and collapsed into a much needed sleep.

The next day we set off to find some camp fuel (FYI Kerosene is NOT white gas, there's a story, but I don't feel like typing it), some coffee, and get out on the Green Gardens trail for a leisurely backpacking 1 nighter. After NOT finding camp fuel, we figured the worst that could happen is that we'd eat cold rehydrated camp meals. Gross, but no one would starve. Through sheer luck we were able to mooch some fuel off campers who we encountered in the parking lot who had just finished the trek when we arrived. Meanwhile our morning had consisted of visiting some of the most poorly stocked "convenience" stores ever imagined, and at the 3rd one BEG finally found a toothbrush - ironically it carried a price sticker from the 1st convenience store we went to that didn't carry them... Que???

Green Gardens was fabulous - we started by walking, literally, on a slab of the earth's mantle. For the geologists that we are, this was ridiculously exciting. My new boots got their first REAL initiation, and once we plunked our packs down at our site for the night, we set off to explore the rest of the thrust up Iapetus oceanic crust. For this exploration we needed our swim suits, sandals, snacks and cameras - for it would involve sea caves, sea stacks and waterfalls, all carved into an ophiolite suite.

lacing the boots up in the parking lot

holding up a chunk of mantle (aka peridotite) - almost nothing grows on it

delicious ophiolite outcrop; big blobby pillows above, sheeted dikes below, BEG for scale

hidden waterfall and (cold) pools - nice for a dip if you're not me!

funky basalt sea stack

After an extensive period of exploration we set back to camp to set up the tent, make dinner, and get our pumps to filter some drinking water. Upon nearly reaching our stuff my right sandal started flopping about uselessy, this too was ironic as I had been loudly proclaiming (prior to the trip) how awesome those sandals were and how long they had lasted... I had bought them in 10th grade, and at the time they were quite the investment. While BEG took care of stove/pot/dishes type things I meticulously duct taped my sandal top back to its bottom.

doh! but check out our view!

fixed

After a dinner of Mountain House long grain rice pilaf (we ranked it ***) and Lindt sea salt chocolate (*****), we went to sleep by the ocean. The next morning, from inside the tent, I heard the following:

"baaaaaaaaa"

BEG & I both sat upright in the tent, awoken from our slumber.

"did you just hear a bleat?" I asked
"I think so" was the response

She unzipped the tent door and peered outside. There were about 10 sheep grazing and lolling about, one of them was black. This was NOT what we had expected of Newfoundland wildlife.

"it must be because I smell like wet sheep with all the merino I've been wearing" I said

Once we got up we actually saw a cluster of these sheep gathered on a basalt outcrop by the sea, nestled on it the way one would expect to see seals on a rock in the ocean. It was incredibly cute.

"baaa" - note the one black sheep and the visibly confused facial expression on the white sheep making eye contact with the camera

We saw many a spectacular ocean view, overtly fluffy sheep, and face-high overgrown raspberry brambles (among other face-high prickly greenery) on the remainder of our hike. At many times the overgrownness of the trail was frustrating, especially due to the "grabbyness" of it on our hiking poles, but at other times, especially due to the raspberries, it was quite tasty.

spectacular ocean view - this was after a particularly steep climb through some particularly grabby brambles... anyone know what kind of plant that bush with red berries is?