california update

well i've been here almost a week and california has been... interesting.
my mother keeps trying to persuade my wife that she should move here to california. what she doesn't realize is that she'll get me to move to CA before she getrs my wife. At least I see a huge recreational opportunity in the giagantic dirtpiles around - peak bagging, dirt biking, geocaching.. there's a lot for a guy like me to do. alex, on the other hand, is not into any of that stuff and all she sees is brown - because thats what riverside californai is. it actually reminds her of india - the brown sky is sometimes actually hard to distinguish from the brown horizon. it can be pretty depressing. and lets not forget that we're here during an unusually mild time - the highs have been about 85 - so at least its somewhat comfortable - the hiughs are normally closer to 95 or 100 - where its not so comfortable. my wife gets downright depressed in places like this - she needs some green growing things. there is n't a lot of that around here.

there are cool things i've been doing before my week of hiking next week. we visited a lot of friends and took a ride through my old neighborhood. there are also some decorative orange trees in my parents' complex of cookie-cutter houses (they call it victria grove) and some of the oranges are becoming ripe right now - i've never had a more delicious orange in my life. so juicy are they that it takes only three to fill a pint-sized glass with juiice - and it sure is delicious as far as OJ goes. So that is kind of fun. and, of course, its good to be enjoying my father's cooking again - try as i might to duplicate it in NY, I'm just not good enough yet.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty excited about the hiking that starts on tuesday, when we do san jacincto peak outside palm springs. wednesday we go to whitney for a midnight start up on the moutain. and there's nothing more to say about that that I've not already mentioned..