Applied Theology

After two days of feeling like a slug, mostly staying at home on my four-day weekend I had a definite not-slug day today. Hawk and I drove out to the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline park in Richmond, California for a hike. Mind you, Hawk is still getting over a bout of bronchitis, so doing this hike today was a big deal for her.

Point Pinole is not the kind of place you see on a map and say, "Ooh, let's go there!" That's mostly because it's not the kind of place you see on a map. It's an out-of-the-way park in in Richmond, California, a suburb of Oakland and San Francisco. It's behind a county juvenile detention facility, on the site of a former dynamite factory that closed up 65 years ago.

The fact that it's out of the way is kind of cool. That means it's not thronged with visitors even on a beautiful Saturday on a holiday weekend. Oh, there were plenty of people at the park with us today. But the ample parking lots were not full.

We started from the parking lot up a hill on a paved road and then over a bridge across train tracks. This was easily the worst part of the 5 or so miles we hiked. Fortunately it was also short. Once across the bridge we left the paved road and ambled down to a shoreline trail tracing around the west side of Point Pinole.



After the paved road being the worst part of the hike, this stroll along the western shore and then the bluffs above it was the best. From here we could see clear across the bay to the hillside of Marin County, including Mt. Tamalpais in the distance.

We traced along this side of the promontory for maybe two miles until we reached the tip of Point Pinole.



Here there's a fishing pier. It wasn't too busy with fishers today as, presumably, a) it's far from the nearest place where one can park, and b) it was very windy out on the pier when we walked even 50 feet out from the shore. Beyond the fishing pier, to the right in the photo above, are the remnants of an older pier. It was used by the Giant Company, the dynamite manufacturer previously located here. Cases of dynamite were transported on local rail out to the tip of the point, then on conveyor belts to small ships docked at the pier. The small ships would transport it to freighters out in the San Francisco Bay, from where it would be shipped to places around the Pacific Rim, from Mexico to Chile to the Philippines and beyond.

From here we hiked back on the other side of the triangular peninsula. The west side has saltwater marshes (i.e., swamps) along the coast, which are protected— and frankly wouldn't be fun to hike through anyway— so we didn't enjoy views from as close to the water.

Today was the start of a four-day weekend. We'd had plans to travel but canceled those plans a few days ago due to lingering sickness. Instead I stayed home and basically wasted the day. 😞

I had trouble sleeping last night. I got down to sleep okay, going to bed a bit early (before 10pm) as I'd been up since 5:30am. But then I awoke at 3am and could not get back to sleep. I tossed and turned in bed for a bit, willing myself to get back to sleep, but gave up after 30 minutes or so when I could tell that wasn't going to work. I got up and fooled around on my computer for 3 hours. I felt tired after the sun had risen and went back to bed at 6:30. Then I slept until almost 11. I'd fret about wasting half the day in bed but it's not like I had much else to do today.

Hawk and I got out late for lunch today. It was her first dining out in several days, since she was diagnosed with bronchitis. She still has a cough— we both do— but it's typically for a cough to linger without being contagious for a few weeks after this kind of sickness. I'm very familiar with the lingers-for-a-few-weeks cough, unfortunately. Anyway, since it was her first time out of the house in a few days we went to one of her local favorites, Speedy's Tacos. We got donuts after at Daily Donuts.

In the afternoon I continued my tempo of not doing much at home. Late in the day I got really bored and finally pulled out my sewing kit to fix seams and buttons on some pants and shirts that have been waiting for attention for, in some cases, 6 months. I had been debating the over-under of sewing them myself versus taking them to a tailor shop to be fixed for, I dunno, $10 or whatever each. Probably it would've made economic sense simply to pay for someone else to do the work, but I chose to do it myself because there's a certain Zen aspect to doing it. Even with the frustration of how it just gets harder to thread a needle as I get older.

For several weeks we'd been planning to travel this weekend. Tomorrow is Juneteenth, which is a company holiday, and I used PTO for Friday to have a four day weekend. It'd be our first trip of the summer. Unfortunately we decided Monday to cancel it. Why? Because we're still sick.

Hawk visited the doctor on Monday and was diagnosed with bronchitis and an ear infection. I'm still getting over my cold... which may actually be/have been bronchitis, too. We hope to be better by tomorrow or Friday, but just in case we're not we made the tough decision to cancel our travel plans.

I hate missing the opportunity for a vacation, even a short one. Being sick really sucks.