Saturday, April 04, 2009

A Busy Saturday

Today turned out to be a busy day, but busy in a good way, and somewhat planned in advance too as there were a bunch of things I wanted to do this weekend and planning would be required if I were going to be able to do them all.

Firstly, I went mountain biking; my now regular 16 mile ride. The trails were littered with folks training for the Sea Otter Classic races that start in a couple of weeks' time. One small group looked confused at one part of the ride, and asked if I knew the course. I did, so I told them to go in the direction I was going (as my personal route intersects with the Sea Otter route at various stages).

Unfortunately for them, this small group were better cyclists than I was, so after they followed me for a while, they passed me and were disappearing off into the distance when I watched them take the wrong trail. I was too far back to do anything about it, I hope they found their way eventually!

After I got home, I showered and left the house almost immediately as I wanted to catch the Good Old Days fair in Pacific Grove. They close down about 8 blocks of downtown and have art, craft and food stalls lining the streets. The photo below shows the first of the 8 blocks.

I wandered up and down the booths, learned some stuff about polishing jade, saw some cool posters, had some lunch (shrimp combo - battered shrimp on a skewer, fried rice, chow mien and a big egg roll) and caught up with a photographer friend who had a stall at the fair.

They also had a bunch of hot rods on a side street, so I checked them out too - the most interesting was an old style Corvette that was actually an old style body on a current Corvette's running gear. The old style body was carbon fiber and upscaled a bit as modern Corvettes are physically larger than the original ones. It was really nicely done (sorry, no photos - I should have taken one!)

After I'd checked out the fair, I headed to the coast in PG and walked back along the coastal trail. They have the extra fencing up that indicates that it's Harbor Seal birthing season, but there were no seals on the bit of extra beach - I guess we're just getting into the season.

I took the coastal trail as it drops me off outside the aquarium. The aquarium is opening a new feature on Monday about sea horses - this weekend is a sneak preview for aquarium members, so I decided to go check out the new feature.

They explain the life cycle of sea horses, and have various examples of the creatures (and their closer relatives) from all over the place. The feature is quite dark (it's downstairs near the outer bay exhibit and doesn't have windows), so the photo below is a little blurry - there are two unusual looking sea horses in the photo - both about 6 to 8 inches long.


The most impressive were the sea dragons - really large sea horses that had all these extra "bits" so that they looked like plants - but they were plants that swam around. It was a cool exhibit (they were moving too much to get a decent photo in the low light).

I've no idea if there's any sort of relationship, but seeing all these different styles of sea horses reminded me of all the different styles of stick insects - both sets of creatures trying to emulate their plant like surroundings so they blend in.

After that I headed home as I was tired (16 miles of cycling, about 6 miles of walking), watched Liverpool win (I had it taped!), watched F1 qualifying (also taped!) and currently have the Sharks game on TV as I type (they're losing 5-2 with 6 minutes to go - I felt safe updating the blog).

As both the Good Old Days fair and the aquarium preview are going on tomorrow too, you might wonder why I packed it all in to today - easy - tomorrow is supposed to be another great day weather wise (t-shirt and shorts weather today), I want to go out on the Ducati!

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