Missed Shift

Well, something happened, and I don't know what, the days slipped by without any entries about anything. I think the job and my feelings about it started becoming less important and the whole thing of getting laid off kind of diminished as I started riding around and finding out what it's like to be free again. In between storms we had some fantastic weather in the last months of 2005 and the beginning of 2006, nice enough to get some sunburn relaxing on the beach. The ocean had reshaped the beaches along the San Mateo County coastline with ferocity, depositing huge piles of driftwood, virtual forests in some places. The surf was huge and scary at my favorite spot, the beach steep with at least a ten foot drop at a thirty degree angle between the high and dry and where the waves broke.
In February I started visiting California's historic Missions, beginning with the Mission in San Juan Bautista, made famous by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. It was a good ride, but I cut it short, I didn't want to be away from my Sweetheart on Valentine's Day. A few days later me and The Missus went over to Mission Dolores here in SF, then rode up to Missions San Rafael and Solano (in Sonoma) and had some sandwiches in the sunny Sonoma Plaza.

The next week I rode solo to Carmel and caught the tail end of the California Bicycle Tour before I visited the Mission there. I took the Carmel Valley Road through the Santa Lucia mountains to Mission Soledad and then 101 down to King City and turned onto a County rode that leads to Fort Hunter Liggett, an active Army Base in the broad, park like San Antonio Valley, filled with large old trees, looking very much like an oak orchard. I stayed at The Hacienda, William Randolph Hearst's hunting lodge, a mission style structure designed by Julia Morgan, an incredible location with magnificent solitude, even though it's on this Army base. Mission San Antonio de Padua is just a mile away, carefully preserved and beautifully restored. The next day I made my way back to 101 and continued down to Mission San Miguel Arcangel which has been severely damaged by earthquake, then back home to Frisco in one shot.

March was one of the worst months I ever had in my entire life. Constant rain just wet my brain, I was a near meltdown, rain is my kryptonite, I lost all my strength and purpose. There was one nice weekend when Mrs. Neutral and I went for a ride with about thirty bikes, to the University of Santa Clara pulling up in front of the Mission there just as Mass was letting out!
Then we went over the hill to Mission Santa Cruz, a stop for lunch, then up the Coast to Pescadero and a coffee at Duarte's then fought the wind back all the way back to the City.

April is promising to be as wet as March, houses slipping down hills, cars tumbling off roads giving way under torrents of water and super saturated soil. We took the car down to the Carrizo Plain this weekend and found out that if you get away from the Bay Area, the weather's a lot nicer, beautiful, sunny and bright, the hills and valleys so vibrant and green against the blue sky and puffy clouds that my eyes hurt from looking at them, more on that later.