Happy 4th of July!

Posted by Rachel

Just a quick update here. We enjoyed our day off from work by heading to Aquatic Park for an open water swim at 7 am. (Ok, "enjoyed" may be the wrong word. 'Took advantage of' is possibly a better phrase.) Earlier this week we received the athlete's guide for the Escape from the Rock duathlon. I've been worrying about this Alcatraz swim for some time now, and the guide did little to help. There's actually a section called "What to expect during the swim", and if you scroll down a little bit, "mild panic" is a category. Yep. Luckily, I felt much more comfortable after completing my longest ows of 2 miles this morning at a decent pace. I know the Bay out near Alcatraz will be much choppier and probably colder than AP was this morning, but at least I'm not so worried about the distance anymore. A huge thanks to Travers for making me come back in the water after I got out of the swim just to point out the jellyfish. I had read that these live in the Bay, and according to the internet they are not the type that sting. I have have no time goal for Alcatraz- just completing it without getting eaten, stung, or ending up at AT&T park or the GG bridge will be a win in my book.

We further took advantage of the day off by eating gelato and visiting my favorite park in Oakland. Here are some pics:

 

Great views of SF from my favorite park. Admittedly, I made Travers take this pic fully intending to make it my new FB pic (which I did, in case we're not friends and you can't see it).

Another very cool thing about this park- it's at the port and you can go get a close-up of the cranes transferring ginormous crates between the dock and boats. We didn't go over there today but you can see them in the background.

They took out a huge chunk of the old Bay Bridge. Where did they put it??

Looking forward to the rest of the weekend-BBQ, dinner, movie, and wine (well we don't have any specific plans for wine but it seems inevitable). Happy 4th everyone!