Well, I made it out on my bike today. I discovered that there are many wonderful bike trails practically right on Kevin and Douglas' doorstep. Today I took the Contra Costa Canal trail past the Lime Ridge Open Area and into Walnut Creek, from whence I meandered back to the community pool in Concord (farther from Kevin and Doug's than the little neighborhood pool, but much, much bigger - and OPEN!). I'm calling it a 15-20 mile ride because although it took 2 hours, it involved a number of stops to check the map, take pictures, swig some water, and so forth.

Tomorrow I might try to get to Diablo Foothills Regional Park before I hit the pool, and then pack up and head out to Palo Alto (via BART and then Caltrain).

As I was riding along I thought, "I could live here. I could really live here." The temperature was just perfect: Low 80s, tons of sunshine, and no humidity. The community pool is open from 7am - 1pm for lap swimming. The library looks nifty (and it's just a few blocks away). BART makes it easy to get anywhere you'd want to go around here. To say that this is a bike-friendly corner of the world is to say the very, very least - there are bike lanes on all the major thoroughfares, and trails crisscross the area. It seems like the quality of life here is very high.

Of course, there's that small matter of the housing prices (astronomical), and oh, yeah, the earthquakes . . . My brother called this evening to make sure I was okay; I guess there was a quake in northern California, some 300 miles from us, although we didn't feel anything. Still, it served to remind me that paradise (this paradise, anyway) has a price . . . Perhaps we should think about moving to Hawaii . . . :)