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It's an Exciting World

The life and times of David Geisert

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Solo kayaking Corkscrew Slough

I went for a long solo kayak in my new Oru folding kayak.  It went really well for the most part.  I started at about 10am and ended a little after 1pm.  I was able to get Lyfts both ways and it was pretty convenient.  The route on the map is shorter than the real one because on the left side of the map where it goes through the middle of the wetlands I was lost.  Navigating when everything looks like water from the surface, but you get close and it is mud bars just under the surface, its tricky.

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There were also two choke points where the water was flowing rapidly.  The first one was going the way I was going so I just rode it, but the second was going the other way and I had to portage around it.  That proved tough, but since the kayak is so light it wasn’t too bad.

I saw a ton of birds, at the end there was a flock that was murmating.  I also saw some harbor seals relaxing on the bank.

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Hawaiian BBQ

Andrew hosted a Hawaiian BBQ at Lost Colony that Steph and I attended.  We first did a round of Gloomhaven with George and Tina, then all of us headed over to meet the people playing poker at Lost Colony.  Andrew was cooking some kalua pork, and it turned out really well.  I helped make the spam musubi, which was a lot of fun.  Debby also got a shaved ice machine that she broke in for the get together.  She also had made some really tasty syrups to pour over the ice.  I had a really good time.

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Kayak Camping in Tomales Bay

I got a group of 7 together to go kayak camping in tomales bay.  Five of us got there on Friday around noon and got onto the water as quickly as possible.  It was a 5.6 mile paddle to the beach we had been given, Tomales Beach.

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We had a long stopover on Indian Beach, which was approximately the halfway point.  There we pulled out the stove and cooked a bit of sausage.  After everyone got some food we got back on the water and made the final push to our campsite.  The fog was rolling in low and it was difficult to make out the far shore.  We started up a nice fire pretty quickly and got everything nicely set up.  A Prius showed up later from the service road and a few guys got out and set up a camp.  I was pretty sure that they weren’t allowed to drive in.  They looked like they were crabbing and fishing. We had a good fire that night and good food.  Riley cooked up a storm, and had brought way too much food, but we weren’t complaining.

The next morning Riley cooked up a lot more great food, and I headed out to meet up with Tina and Amit, who were coming in a day late since Amit had to work on Friday.  I got some good alone time on my paddle back, and made it to Inverness much faster than anticipated.  It only took me 1:45 to paddle the 6 miles back.  I got in early enough to have a nice meal and rest at the diner next door, where I got a huge veggie omelette.

Tina and Amit got in and we got onto the water pretty quickly.  The wind didn’t gust as fast on the way out with them as it did on Friday, but there was a lot more consistent of a wind.  We did a break at Indian Beach again, after which Amit took off and outpaced us by a large margin.   We were paddling near a large group that was heading towards Marshall Beach.  They were somewhat annoying, and had been slowly leaving behind their slow members.  The fist ones they left behind I don’t think made it to the campground.

Once we got in Steph got the fire going again.  She had a log with lots of sap on it, and once it started burning it put off a huge flame and lots of black smoke.  I was pretty impressed.  We had a great fire that night, as we had only gone through a third of the wood on Friday.  The food was amazing again, with Riley providing asparagus and bacon, with Adam providing spit-forks to roast them on.  We sat around the fire and talked for hours.  Eventually we ran out of wood and went to bed.  The next morning we had a long trek back, that was mostly uneventful.  We grabbed lunch in Point Reyes Station and dropped by the Cowgirl Creamery.   We got back and took care of the gear and vegged the rest of the day.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Michael and I had a fun day together, with a hike in Pacifica along the coast, then an evening where we went to Cupertino for Shakespeare in the Park of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  It was very well done, and the picnic with everyone was lovely.  The show was much funnier than I was expecting and the acting was some of the best I’ve seen in any play.  I brought some of the rosemary cider from Redwood Coast that was made with the rosemary from our yard.

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Andrew’s 36th

Steph and I went over to Lost Colony for a cookout.  There were a dozen or so other people there. The food was amazing, and Debby was nice enough to make mac ‘n’ cheese for Steph.  The main draw of the cookout, the smoker, wasn’t ready and had to go for a few hours after everyone had left.

A few of us played a game of survivor that Debby had set up and Shareen was running.  We did immunity challenges, the first of which was how well did you know Andrew, with Debby handily winning.  I was the fist voted off, so I did a quickly confession to the camera to keep with the theme.  The second challenge was memory, with George taking immunity.  Adam S was the next to go, and that left only the asians.  Shareen picked out a challenge of moving rice from a tupperware to a cup.  Steph tried some alternate strategies that didn’t work out.  George took immunity again and voted out Steph.  The final two were Debby and George, and we had some invites to the others to take part in the final vote.  Debby’s strategy fell apart when she kept the aggressive stance into the final round.  Andrew voted for Debby, but the rest of the votes went to George.  It was a good time had by all.

Debby made a compilation of the confessionals: pretty funny.

 

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Pinnacles Hike

Adam planned a hike for us to go to Pinnacles National Park, and it was an interesting time.  We headed to Tina’s in the morning to carpool the two hours there together.  We got in a little early and I grabbed a few apricots from the tree that overhangs Tina’s driveway.  They were delicious.  We drove to the park which had a surprising amount of traffic heading south on 101.  Once we got to the side roads there wasn’t any more traffic; although there was a little construction.

We got to the park and took a few minutes to get situated before starting on the hike.  The first part was steeply uphill, and directly into the pinnacles for which the park is named.  They were gorgeous formations with lots of bright red/orange and green/yellow lichens.  We got up to the high pass and I was already running through several liters of water, despite it only being about two miles of hiking.  We stopped by a reservoir on the way down so I could filter some just in case.  Then we got into the first cave system.  It was a short bit, but the caves were nice and cool compared to the 90’s and sun that we had up to that point in the hike.  We scrambled around the caves, eventually finding the exit and continuing down to the eastern parking lots for a lunch at the picnic tables there.

Adam pulled out a salami and ate it, while the rest of us had nuts and trail mix.  A few miles later Adam was regretting the salami, as it was strongly messing with his hydration and thus temperature regulation.  The hike was mostly flat on the second half of the day, with a longer caves section that was prettier in my opinion just south of the western parking lots.  We emerged a little worse for wear and tired.  Tina was amazing enough to drive the entire way back home, and we all crashed pretty hard that evening.

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Plant Nite (mid afternoon)

Steph and I went to a plant nite together in Mountain View.  The passes were one of the Christmas gifts she got me, but it has been hard to find a time that worked for us and had availability.  We enjoyed the event and it gave us ideas for wedding planning.

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Karaoke at George’s

Steph and I joined a bunch of people at George’s for karaoke on Friday.  We had a pretty weak set of songs this time, as we didn’t know them that well.  I enjoyed the conversations, and the singing.  This time we didn’t pull out any board games, nor did anyone suggest it.  I suppose that means the singing and conversations were more entertaining than usual.

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Big Basin Camping

Lindsay organized a camping trip to Big Basin.  This year it was just the three of us for Friday night and then Steph joined us on Saturday.  We didn’t do much hiking, but we did get a good bit of MTG in; 25 games in total.  We had a lot of fun playing some spades as well.  The highlight of the evening was the campfire and cooking.  I combined both on Friday night with a steak cooked directly over the flame.  It was pretty good, despite being dropped into the fire as I tried to pull it off the grill.  We made smores both nights and they were tasty.  We found a rogue flaming hot Cheeto, making us thing that Debby was there in spirit.  The mosquitos were pretty bad, especially Friday evening.  While playing magic I was bitten through my shirt at least 30 times.  I had a few small constellations on my back in red dots.

 

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