Saturday two friends from my local riding group and I carpooled up to Sunnyvale. Our parent club, Almaden Cycle Touring Club, had a bird-watching ride that looped from Sunnyvale over to the shoreline trail along San Francisco Bay, then past a special street in Mountain View next to the Google campus where egrets and herons nest. There were surprisingly few birds in the bay compared to other times I’ve been on the shoreline trail, but we had good luck seeing the nests and mama and half-grown baby egrets. It was all in all a very nice adventure.
Twenty five miles in about two and a half hoursSurprisingly hard work for a flat ride (Average heart 124, max 159), on my non-assisted upright. There was a headwind for a good bit of the ride.Pelicans on this slough next to San Francisco Bay
Blue Heron. Sorry it’s blurry
Now the path is next to south San Francisco BayThe Space-age looking building to the left is the most striking building of the Googleplex, with the rest of the campus to the right. Some nerd humor: Google’s name is a play on words on the word “googol”. A “googol” is 10 to the hundredth power. A”Googolplex” stands for ten to the power of a googol, an unimaginably large number. I don’t know what the dry area is in the foreground, possibly it’s a reclaimed former salt pond.Looking south from the same spot towards Nasa Ames and Moffett field. The large rounded building to the right is airship hanger 1 while the two large structures to the left are airship hangers 2 and 3. These hangers at Moffett Field date back to the 1930s. Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft used to take off from Moffett routinely on long sub-detection missions. The noise of their turbopr takeoff was quite pronounced where we lived in Mountain View and Sunnyvale.The Googleplex up close. We came to see the Swallow’s nests under the balconyA baby peeking out of one of the nestsThis is on a road adjacent to the Google campus. The city of Mountain View blocked it off to motor vehicles when it was discovered that Egrets and Herons are nesting in the trees along this street.These are the Eucalyptus trees containing the nests. We saw a mama Egret feeding her babies but I didn’t catch it on camera. Our ride leader also saw a heron in its nest but I couldn’t spot it.My wife and I lived in these apartments in Mountain View- 45 years ago. The apartments look about the same, although they now have a fancier sign.
https://ift.tt/wxOr4u3 My last strength workout went really well, I was able to go pretty hard without pushing my heart rate excessively. But afterwards it occurred to me that monitoring heart rate might not be enough. Strength training can cause a temporary spike in blood pressure which is probably not a good idea. I figured there must be a lot of research on this, because there are a lot of older people with cardiac limitations besides mine which is relatively rare (including heart-attack survivors, angina sufferers, and those with valve regurgitation). And they are still encouraged to do strength training to prevent sarcopenia. So I asked Gemini deep research about it and it produced this fascinating report . It points out that a resistance training session, properly performed, is beneficial to the heart because while it temporarily raises blood pressure, there is “a phenomenon known as post-exercise hypotension, where blood pressure remains below pre-exercise resting levels for se...
https://ift.tt/CX7dOP2 Yesterday my group did a loop first heading to the southeast of Morgan Hill and then turning north to pick up the Coyote Creek trail. We headed North up to Metcalf Park and then south, finishing at Rosy’s in Morgan Hill for lunch. A few of us also added a detour to check out a side route along Basking Ridge road on the way back. This was 40 miles for me, in about 2 1/2 hours, a nice brisk ride. Rosy’s has Taco Tuesday the 1st Tuesday of each month, their special is their delicious Salmon Taco’s which I love. The Coyote Creek Trail on a nice summer day, tailwind on the way out.
https://ift.tt/aS2nC3F Fall in our area is not as spectacular as in other places but it’s nice that it lasts this long. Some trees have lost their leaves by now, but other species, such as maples, are peaking. Yesterday I enjoyed a long ride up into the hills West of town. I rode through Paradise valley then past Chesbro reservoir, and returned to town via Willow Springs road, enjoying the glorious sunshine. Long rides at an easy pace, like this one, feel like they are good for my leaky heart valve, or at least are relaxing. I won’t give them up unless my cardiologist convinces me too, but I’m pretty sure he’ll approve. The hill across Chesbro reservoir, with the dam on the left Looking down Willow Springs road Japanese Maple in our back yard
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