Back to work this week...mostly, I have a bit of a cold either from the travel, sick relatives, or both. We had a great time in California. Off and on rainy and cold the first couple of days in San Francisco, but otherwise the weather was great and we were on the go the whole time.

Our first attempt at walking across the bridge was rained out. It didn't help that I had parked a couple miles from the bridge. Within half a mile from the bridge the wind picked up and a heavy rain drained the remaining energy and motivation we had.

The second attempt was on our last day in the area. We drove up from Santa Cruz (actually Aptos), parked next to the bridge and then walked across and back. Windy, but no rain and no two-mile warmup hike. On the way back we noticed a bunch of coast guard boats heading to the south end, along with a rescue helicopter.

It appeared that a sailboat sank, but that's about all we could tell. Nothing on the news that night to fill in details. Thanks to Dan here's a pointer to Wayne Lambright's photo series showing the entire event.

We want to thank everyone for the great tips. While we only covered a fraction of them it was an excellent resource. Thanks to Andy, Shelley, Jannie, Pedraum, Tyler, Dan, and Eric.

In retrospect, and with perfect hindsight into the minds of 10 and 12 year old boys, I think we could have spent three days in SF and four days on the beach...eating pizza, watching cartoons, and chasing pigeons in our spare time.

As for me, I took a lot more pictures of birds than I would have ever expected. I could turn this into a full-time avian photoblog given the number of bird shots on the powerbook's hard drive.