The dogwood bloomed for over a month this year, 3 times its baseline!
After two years of being home bound, we started going out this year. Inertia had kicked in, so it took a lot more effort to get out. And we have a big reason to celebrate. We had decided to hike more frequently this year with a goal to hike new trails and explore new parks. Part way through the year, we realized that we could take on the 52 hikes challenge. And we did!
Highlights of our 52 hikes challenge:
- Median number of hikes in any month: 3
- Maximum number of hikes in any month: 10 (in Dec)
- Total miles: >200
- Median number of miles per hike: 4
- Median number of stairs per hike: 30
- Park visited most often: Edgewood (8 times!)
- Number of unique parks visited: >30
While much has stayed the same – we started a few new habits, and improved upon some old ones. We adapted locomotoring tagline as it turned 16 this year. We added an audio blog (“Archy and I“) that explores and celebrates sounds. We hope that 2023 allows us to live with greater appreciation for good things in an increasingly complex world.
We spent the New Year in Joshua Tree National Park. This is the early morning view from our AirBnB. At night, we made s’mores.
Highlight of the trip (and of the year) was night sky photography in JT.
We brought back a paper spine cactus from a shop in JT. The cactus is native to western Argentina. In the year it has been with us, each of the original cone segments grew a couple more cones, a couple of cones have since detached. One has found a new home already.
A monocotyledon wild flower (Golden Brodiaea, Triteleia ixioides, Prettyface, Golden Star) in Wunderlich county park. It is native to northern and central California and southwestern Oregon. Inspired by Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t, and aided by iNaturalist, we explored the wild flowers in our neighborhood. About 90% of plants are angiosperms (flowering) and of the angiosperms, monocots make up 25% of the species. In the woods, we found fewer than 25% monocots.
Summer trip to the Lost Coast. View from the front yard of our AirBnB in Shelter Cove. Early in the morning, the fog rolled in creating infinitely changing views .
Highlight of the Shelter Cove trip was a hike along the lost coast, on the black sands beach.
Ta-da! My orchid re-bloomed! I didn’t do anything except give them my love. Did you know that in the wild, orchids can live for 20 years. Domesticated orchids can live 10-15 years so we are glad to have it re-bloom.
Flavors of India: Spanish tomato and Chinese Manchurian potato chips at Kolkata airport.
Flavors of India: Couple of super cute rakhis arrived this year!
We brought home some brassware and copperware from home. Some of these have been with our families for several generations.
Baking skills (only one of us is into precision cooking) have gone up another notch, honey spice cake from Tartine.
A new format of cauliflower started to appear at our green grocer. These are leggy, the grocer sells these as baby cauliflower. We like to weigh them down and pan sear them. They look like a mini forest on the plate.
We made our first samosa at home, thank you chef Ranveer Brar.
And the first chicken wing, thank you chef Kenji Lopez-Alt!
The bar as doubled in size … we now have well defined cocktail hours when we do nothing but settle down with our cocktails. Most of our cocktail explorations have been guided by Anders Erickson. The precise one is becoming a fine mixologist. We now have two original cocktails – one named the Apple of my Eye and another named Divorce Italian Style.
Two classic cannolis from La Biscotteria, an unassuming storefront in Redwood City, operating here since 2003. The baker, Augustine, had first founded his biscotteria in Belmont, in 1989. They make Italian biscotti, cookies, panettone and fill up cannoli shells upon order.
First time carving a pumpkin – augmented carving skills with decorating skills! After several years of quiet, we had a lot of trick o’ treaters this year.
Last but not the least, we started a new podcast, “Archy and I”. The image is produced by OpenAI’s DALL-E for Episode 2 to the instruction, “Draw a line drawing, in the style of Gary Larson, where a cockroach is listening to a man playing a piano”.
Locomotoring 
10 hikes in December!!!
Ankur
December 31, 2022 at 8:58 pm