The hike started out ok, but getting there was a battle. For the life of me I don't know why bikers feel the need to pedal their schwinn in the middle of the road - especially when they are riding the bike to take off-road trails! Ok, I know some people actually ride the road with road bikes, but there is an obvious difference between a road bike and a mountain bike and when you ride your mountain bike in the middle of the road, I get mad. I get even more mad when bikers ride in groups of four or more and hog the entire side of the road. The polite thing would be to line up single file and let the giant car ride past you safely. Because if I hit a car head on trying to get around you, you can bet that the energy propelling me forward will suddenly propel me sideways and I will hit you with said giant car.
Now that the rant is over, LIZARDS!!!!!
Because I didn't do a lot of hiking on my own time in college - forced hikes where the biggest drag! Who wants to get up at 7 in the morning on a Saturday to go walking with people you see 5 days a week???? I never understood the value of what I was actually learning while on those walks. Now that I regularly take walks into our beautiful hills I am seeing all sorts of things that I wish I knew what it was. For example: poison oak. It would have been helpful if, in a year of studying botany I had learned to identify poison oak. After an interesting experience of my mom getting the itchiness I learned that I was immune - good thing because my dogs probably tromp through it a few times a week! But I'll probably never know. . .
Today I came across a lizard sunning himself in the path. I was initially interested, then I became worried because he was in the middle of the bike-tire divots on the curve. I had never seen a lizard like this before - he wasn't one of the typical alligator lizards one catches as a child. He was brown on his back and yellow on his stomach. I tried to take some pictures of him but all I had was my camera phone - see problems with camera phones here. On top the camera problem, I had three dogs that almost stepped on him trying to eat the turkey out of my pocket. Poor little guy, I felt bad when we scared him out of his sun - but at least he wasn't going to get run over on my watch!All the rest of the walk I was kicking myself for taking the "easy way out" and not taking a herp class in college. Sure it would have dropped my GPA down slightly, but what's a 3.2 GPA worth 5 years out of college? Actually I probably wouldn't have remembered his scientific name anyway. But after looking it up on Californiaherps.com I decided that he is a Plestiodon"gilberti" rubricaudatus (yeah, I copied and pasted that one!) or aka: Western Red-tailed Skink.
Here is a better picture:
Here's hoping to seeing him again - or one of his beautiful babies
wait, can anyone say "supanerd"
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