As my knee recovers from the assault and battery it went through in March, walking is officially part of my rehab, so I’m slowly extending the range of my walks. Today I did an errand on foot, instead of in the car – I had to pick up a couple of items from the local drugstore. The weather said it might rain, and it did, but not while I was walking; it was cloudy and not even very cold. My pedometer tells me I walked 1.3 miles, round trip, which was just about the right increase from my 1 mile walk the other day.
My neighborhood, Rockridge in north Oakland, is a walker’s paradise, and in April in California just about everything is in bloom. Sorry, I didn’t get any photographs. I particularly liked the Pacific coast iris, but the whole walk was very floral.
As I was walking down Florio to College Avenue, I heard a rumble and a roar, and just as I reached the corner, three California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers swooped into Florio, curved gracefully into a perfect line, and backed in formation into a parking place. It was a really elegant maneuver. According to the immortal Herb Caen’s definition, I guess that makes the Claremont Diner, on the corner, a “Santa Rosa three-star” restaurant!
On my way home, I stopped by the juniper patch in the Bank of America parking lot to watch the birds. There were four or five male and maybe one or two female sparrows hopping around on top of the plants – let’s just say they were doing what birds do in April! I saw at least three tries at it, plus numerous males chasing other males away from the girls. In case you wonder how birds do it, the males weren’t in position on the females for more than about 2 seconds at a time. I assume they were successful but I’m not a bird expert – maybe these were all near misses.
