On February 21 of 2022, I wrote that the previous day I woke at dawn to hear coyotes barking. Later on when I woke up again someone told me that the raccoons had trashed the campsite even though I had tried really hard to minimize the damage they could potentially cause.
We I got up, I had the boys to run across the way and I got the boys dressed and fed. I wanted to get them oatmeal but there were many steps between. The tent was wet so I had to dry it. Someone had made coffee and then I told several people I wanted to climb over to the country club and they all‘s seemed interested. Some one made eggs which I offered to the boys but they only wanted the bacon.
I ate and drank in between putting stuff in bags for the day. In the meantime all of the kids in China Camp it seemed were out riding a loop up to the upper campsites. I think they rode around on their bikes four times. When I was done putting everything away I made oatmeal and then took them on the upper campground loop myself. Then everyone got on their bikes and we took the coastal trail. Unfortunately a section – the ADA – was not finished yet so we had to go on the road for a short bit. The rest of the trail was easy.
The only hard part was my cargo bike was really big and inappropriate for the trail. Unfortunately, it was not possible to get off the trail until the Visitor Center. One of the kids on the ride had a mishap with his bike, which turned out all right but I had to leave him to go forward in the column. When I found his mom she headed back to return to the camp to make sandwiches for everybody.
The rest of the group had gotten ahead of us and were waiting for us to catch up. At the visitor center we all got on the highway to China Beach - the park’s namesake. Once there we had beer and a special visitor everyone knew showed up.
When the sandwiches showed up I fed my boys. I also did a little walk to the pier with a few from our group. We also saw the group from the neighboring camp site who were going stand-up paddle boarding.
When we finished at the beach, the rest of the people decided to go back to the campsite but I packed up the bikes on the GSD because I wanted to visit Peacock gap. A few of us went to a spot on the ridge and then took a trail down to the country club. I bumped my knee. We had french fries and cheese sandwiches. Later on we climbed through Peacock Gap and took the coastal trail back. The ADA was closed so we took the perimeter trail and cheated back to the camp. I discovered that the ADA actually wasn’t off-limits.
From there I had a limited time to prep dinner and got the boys and sleeping bags. Someone in the group had made paella but I still dinner for the boys and at least one of them put effort into eating it. There was also roasted kale with which I added to my ramen after eating the paella. I also had a bratwurst in a bun. I added my horseradish and some mustard.
I took the boys aside twice to tell them to be good. The boys at least once attached themselves to members of the group so I let them sit next to each other at the fire. The fire was really big because someone had told all of us to get extra wood after we got back from our bicycle ride.
New people from the East Bay and the city showed up. I got the boys situated and eventually they went to bed. I sat with the group by the fire then. We had a lot of controversial discussions. Then fire got overly large. We pointedly asked each other about controversial topics then and later a few of us put food away. One of our group was wearing a full body sleeping bag.
I probably slept four hours. I woke at 5:45 and was up at 6:15. I started the fire again and set food out for the boys. Then I started breaking things down. I took the fly off the tent and the boys got up. They were dazed but not too wet. I broke up everything into piles after the tent came down. My neighbors at the campsite packed faster than me because they had an appointment to keep in Larkspur. They left at 8:45
I had instant coffee and soldiered on with the mattresses first before doing the sleeping bags. and I paced myself based on their civic center smart trip. Two people offered me coffee which was nice.
I left at 9:45 and took the boys riding their own bikes on North San Pedro to the train station. It had a sidewalk after the first real uphill. We made it to the Smart Station nearly 10 minutes before the 10:26 train came in. We found our companions in Larkspur. They had just finished their appointment.
I got coffee and snacks at Starbucks before we boarded a boat for San Francisco. The boys were hard to get along with at times. At the ferry building we all rode to Polk Street in a group. As it was late we said goodbye really quickly. Octavia was hard and I noted that I need to rethink about how to cross that intersection.
I gave the boys Pepsi when they came home and later that we rode to get some burritos. Ironically, we saw some of our campsite companions riding through the Wiggle as they had returned on the next boat.
This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.
