Arrrgh!

That's one the Giants really let get away to the A's in the "Bay Bridge Series" interleague baseball game last night. Ray Durham will be having nightmares about that 3-1 pitch (1 out, bases loaded, score tied 3-3 in the bottom of the ninth) he popped up. And then in the tenth, the backup catcher went down (the first one already having been pulled due to injury), necessitating the emergency holographic catcher (infielder Pedro Feliz, who had never caught a big-league game before), an outfielder (Randy Winn) moving to third base, and pitcher Noah Lowry to come in and play right field (because the Giants had used up all of their position players).

It would have been a miracle if the Giants had been able to come back from that one. And there were no miracles in the air at Emperor Norton Field AT&T Park Friday night. Somehow it seems appropriate that pitcher-turned-right-fielder Lowry was the last out of the game. More messy details on the Giants web site.

If We're Not Back by Tomorrow's BASFA Meeting, Send Out Search Parties

Cheryl and I, having made the 6km walk around Quarry Lakes rather routine, have decided to attempt a much longer hike up the Alameda Creek Trail . How far we go depends on how we feel after an hour or two.

Call Off the Search Parties

We set out just past 12:30 PM and set a course for the Alameda Creek Trail. Here's the course we followed. Two hours later, at about 9.5 km, we stopped and had lunch at the Alameda Creek Stables Staging Area near the Ardenwood/Union City Blvd bridge. Then we decided that rather than turning back home, we would swing around through the Coyote Hills Regional Park, which sort of committed us to continuing on along the Bayview and Apay Way trails, crossing CA-84 on the pedestrian bridge over the Dumbarton Bridge toll plaza, and into the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge. Here, I fed a couple of dollars into a vending machine to buy a couple of Diet Cokes priced at 90 cents each. Thanks to other people having not collected their change, I got fifty cents back. This would prove important later.

We had previously resolved that if we made it this far and didn't feel like continuing, we could call a taxi from here. Although we were a bit tired and footsore, we decided to go ahead and continue walking home over Thornton Avenue through Newark. If you went and looked at the walking map, you'll see that it's an open loop. That's because while walking through Newark and waiting for a traffic light, I looked up back and saw that we were at a stop for bus route 218, which also runs right in front of our apartment, and the once-an-hour bus was approaching. On the spur of the moment, we decided to go ahead and ride the bus the last 5 km or so home. We boarded the bus and I dug for my wallet in our backpack. (I was wearing shorts today, with no place for my wallet.) Bus fare is $1.75. I hadn't brought any small change when I packed my wallet in the backpack. Fortunately for me, the extra change from the vending machine at DENWR meant that I didn't have to waste fifty cents overpaying the bus fare.

The bus driver didn't notice that we'd pushed the "Stop Request" button for our stop and overshot it. "Oy! You missed our stop!" I yelled from the back door. The driver, who had been yakking away on his cell phone since before picking us up, made a quick stop that actually put us slightly closer to the entry to the apartment complex. I appreciated this, as my legs were starting to seize up after slightly more than twenty kilometers hiking today.

Including the bus ride, we got home just before 6:30 PM. We both think much rest is now called for. We can veg out and watch rugby matches without feeling the slightest bit guilty.

Update, 21:00: Corrected typos and clarified some points. You expect me to be coherent after hiking 20 km?