Hiking with the pig

This weekend was filled with good friends. We had a sleepover last night and this morning I got treated to Eggs Benedict. Yum. It went really well, for all of us. The kids did great, the grownups had fun. I can't wait to do it again.

Today's plan was to get together with another set of friends for a hike in the beautiful Oakland Hills.

Since Monica's car broke down (over heated) in the Berkeley Hills, we ended up hiking at Tilden Park, just off Grizzly Peak. As we got out of the car, a small plastic pig fell out of my door jam. Ah, hiking with a pig.

The day was beautiful, being with Linda and Monica was perfect.

The only thing missing was a bathroom. Monica doesn't like the whole hide behind a tree thing so, we began the hunt for a porto-anything. We ended up WAY off our trail on a road that we THOUGHT was Grizzly Peak. We were wrong. We found a bathroom, but not our former trail. We continued to walk in the completely wrong direction, getting help from strangers that we mostly ignored. We finally got back to the car after hours. It felt like hours and in fact, it was almost three hours. Here's a picture of our fearless leader, on the long road back to our car. Lame urban hikers.

We three women and the pig were very happy to be back in the car, very happy to get lunch and very happy to get Monica's car back on the road.

On my drive home, back on Skyline, within 5 minutes of my house, I spotted a downed cyclist. He was standing in his socks holding a tire in one hand and waving madly at me with the other. I stopped and he begged for a ride down the hill. Seeing as no one gave us a ride on our endless hike, I figured that this man deserved a break. I drove him down the hill and then continued to drive him home. Jeff thanked me and then, stupidly, shook my hand with a very sweaty bike glove still on. Yuck.

The pig and I drove home.