Biking the Baylands

The Boy and I headed off to the Baylands Preserve in Palo Alto to do a bit of bike riding. It has been a long time since I've been on my bike and even The Boy's bike had cobwebs on it when we started.

We had never been to this area, and it was pretty nifty. There are some hills that are closed to bikes from April to August due to some sort of owl that has a restraining order. Which was OK with me - riding on the level trails was enough of a challenge, especially when we had to ride against the vicious breeze.

One of the coolest things there is the farm where they grow telephone poles.

There were also a variety of very nifty waterfowl in the sloughs.


I declared that this was a heron, although it could have been just about anything from a pheasant to an albino sparrow with a thyroid condition. After we paused for me to take this picture we came across a herd of these, which I weirdly decided was not cool enough to take a picture of.

We had a good ride and the weather was nice. We will come back once the owls are up to visitors and my thighs are up to pedaling again. Man, I'm old...

That's it - move along...

PS: Completely unrelated to this post, a picture on my phone I had forgotten about reminded of a weird incident a couple of weeks ago while I was walking Idiot Dog Teddy out at Bayfront Park.

That white minivan is ours. The guy leaning on its passenger door, who really looks to be casing it, possibly looking to get the poop bags I keep in the console, is not ours.

I went up to the back of the van, turned off the alarm (with the annoying chirps that blares), opened the hatch and got IDT in, closed the hatch, and the guy had never moved. I finally walked up to him and asked if I could help him. He jumped a bit, dropped his cell phone, and said "No, I was just resting." This was really weird for out here in the 'burbs, especially out at this park. Nest time I'll put the poop bags out of site.