Our friend Tully is currently staying with us, just for a little bit whilst his daddy is out of town. We’ve looked after him quite a few times before but usually it’s been on his own turf, and one time when his daddy was away we took him on a camping trip with us. But this was the first time he’d actually stayed with us in our apartment. Predictably he was feeling a bit blue with the situation as we’d stolen him away from his comfort zone and just to make his point clear he decided to go on hunger strike and make loud audible sighs as he flopped pathetically to the floor every five minutes. So I thought some distraction was in order so took him out for a nice five mile walk along one of the local ‘scenic‘ hiking trails. Note that I said ‘scenic‘ and not ’scenic’ as I’ve come to the conclusion that Silicon Valley has nothing much to offer except for STERILE BLANDNESS which I will no doubt illustrate in an upcoming post or two just to make my point clear. Although where we lived before in the East Bay was a perfect example of spaghetti junction road mess with hardly a flat bit of land unbuilt on or unpaved, the hills up against which everything urban was squashed provided a rather pretty country respite and literally just five minutes out of town you would never have guessed that you were near a city at all. It was also nice being just a 15 minute drive or a 20 minute train ride to the beating glorious heart of amazing San Francisco instead of being like two trains and a whole hour on a good day (i.e. when there are express trains) away from the same place. Maybe I’m just not good with change? I mean I have put myself through A LOT the past few months. But I digress….

Back to the walk. I thought it would hopefully make him work up an appetite, or at the very least tire him out to the extent that he would just sleep away the remainder of his stay and so make the return to his normal life come all the more sooner. And just to make sure he enjoyed it, and hopefully burn up even more energy, I decided to take two of the local dog crew along with us too.

Except for all my plans of tiring him out I completely disregarded that FIVE WHOLE MILES with THREE WHOLE DOGS might just ever so slightly exhaust the hell out of me too. Needless to say we both ate well tonight, and will no doubt sleep well also.