What Does Whale Do When She's Thirsty?

Gets a drink, of course. I was a little surprised to see this one at the swimming pool the other day, but she seemed to be doing well for a fish (a mammal, really) out of water.

I was swimming because my recovery from my hip injury has slowed to a crawl, or a breast stroke, I guess you could say. As of a few weeks ago I was about 90% healed, and that's where I'm stuck. It's frustrating to be able to do everything without pain except run. I can bike, I can swim, I can walk, I can lift weights, I can even (carefully) carry my bike up the front porch steps--which was the act that got me into this mess in the first place. But when I run, even gently, even on the treadmill where I can unload my legs a bit by holding the bar with my hands, my hip hurts. My quad hurts. My knee hurts. Not unbearably but enough to interfere with the activity. Yes, I am having some cheese with my whine today. As in, cheese whiz, I'm sure sick of this.

Full confession--I don't go back to the doctor because I'm afraid he'll tell me to lay off running for a few weeks. Well I've already laid off running for seven weeks, and don't intend to lay off any more. I will continue to be moderate, going slowly and taking walk breaks and then icing and stretching when I finish.

I did all those things early today when I headed out the door for a small run. I biked down to the Berkeley shore (no running on pavement for this good girl) and did about 3.5 miles on dirt trails in the incredibly beautiful still of the morning. The inlet east of Caesar Chavez Park was like a lake, inhabited only by a lone heron, who dipped for fish as the silhouette of Mt. Tam rose up behind him. When I see how inadequately the camera phone captures what I've seen, I start having (expensive) visions of a small but optically excellent camera that I could run with. I love the ease of using the flip phone and of carrying it always with me, but...well, you can see its limitations.

Usually "clouds" overhead in a Bay Area morning are really just a gray marine layer blanket, also known as "fog." This morning the clouds were the real thing, probably the heavenly equivalent of leftovers from the celestial offering of the night before. And that was? Another very unusual Bay Area occurrence--rain in July. Not a lot of rain, but enough to gift us with a rainbow.