Hiking Partner

A friend at work says she likes hiking so it looks like I've got a hiking partner now. This is good. Going hiking alone isn't much fun, and its a bit dangerous for a diabetic hiking alone. I suspect we will start with the lower elevations and work our way up, to harder hikes with more interesting terrain. I have LONG wanted to see the lakes in northern Nevada County. I've made maps from them. I've processed their data in GIS databases. But I've never been there.

Good hikes and drives, since she likes moving so drives might be a good thing too:

• Empire Mine
• Hwy 20 PGE Discovery Center
• Donner Pass Trail
• Castle Crags (north of Donner Pass)
• Hwy 89-70 Truckee-Grayeagle-Oroville loop. 
• Sardine Lake and Packer Lake, drive and picnic
• Gold lake to Silver Lake hike. 

I need some better hiking boots, and she might too. I'll ask.

She also expressed interest in mountain biking but doesn't have one of her own. I expect we'll talk about that a bit. See if we can find something for her, maybe a used bike or maybe her interests aren't so hardcore so a gentle one from Kmart will do. A road bike is good exercise around here, actually, and you can go some pretty interesting places. I have cruised around that way and found good things.

Its good to have friends to spend time with. I didn't have that in the Bay Area. The people I knew rarely called me, and only one of them down there called me on the weekend. The people who call you on the weekend are your friends. They ones who don't are acquaintances. I had to explain that to some classmates in college. They never called me on the weekend.

Tonight I will sleep with the window cracked open. Its so warm its pointless to worry about anything like heat. I want the fresh air and the sound of the night. This is spring in the mountains. In another month we'll have some proper heat waves. We're already using the fan at work in the afternoons. Its just too warm by that time of day.