Preserving Open Space Around Cities

Good discussion and link to a report here.

Maggie's Half Acre and Rose Peak

Had a nice up-and-down run to Maggie's Half Acre and Rose Peak (the little-known highest point in the Bay Area) starting in Sunol Regional Wilderness. Not as muddy as I thought it would be and felt better than I expected, but I have to ask very seriously if I'll be ready in six weeks for the Diablo Trail 50k. I think not. It looks fun and I've always wanted to go all the way from Round Valley to the Walnut Creek side of Diablo but it'll have to be another time.

Comic relief of the day: about 10-15 minutes from the end of my run I passed a dad with two sons, ages about 7 and 5, fully decked out in their own hiking gear. The dad saw that I had a map and asked me for directions. After we finished talking one of the boys quietly pointed with his hiking pole, "Dad, look - poo-poo." They had just emerged from riparian woodland into open pasture and the young lad was not yet cognizant of the ubiquity of these bovine barnyard biscuits; I'm sure they didn't remain interesting to him for long.

Anybody Know What's Going On with Vargas Plateau?

I can't wait to get down there when it opens. I even have a Google News alert set, but there just doesn't seem to be much activity. Any news from EBRPD or the City of Fremont?

Run the National Marathon to Fight Breast Cancer - at Home

Set for 15 February. It's an interesting idea to clock your mileage in your own neighborhood. The company where I consult is one of the founding sponsors and it's a good cuase. If you're not planning going to Jacksonville, you can still see how to join the race here.

Ideas for Trailhead Car Break-in Map?

For all my belly-aching about mountain lions, the thing that I legitimately worry most about while I'm out running trails is some *sshole breaking into my car at the trailhead while it's sitting there for a few hours in a remote rural area. You frequently see signs at trailheads warning you not to leave valuable in your cars, but it still ends up being an anxiety I'd rather not carry with me on trail, and I'm sure others out there feel the same.

So - is there such a thing as an online trailhead break-in map? Most of us have looked at city crime maps to see the distribution of violent and property crime and which street corners to stay away from, but what I'd really like to see is a trailhead break-in map with content input by users. Because the Oakland Police Department never put up such a system like Berkeley and other cities have, private citizens have created exactly this for Oakland. This would be great for trailheads - you would know which ones are really the most likely to be hit, you could tell when there's an uptick in a certain area, and it would be easy to see if there are certain areas generating a lot of car burglars, if the parks proximate to them are often hit. It would also be a good resource for EBRPD and EBMUD as well as the local police. Does anything like this exist already? Not just a Yahoo group, but an actual map. How hard would it be to set up?

One other possible use - I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone hanging around a parking area in the middle of the day behaving suspiciously, and a few times I've gone so far as to write the license plate down (I just did this tonight at Valle Vista staging area) - but of course I'm hesitant about making such information public because it could turn into a guilty-until-proven-innocent witch hunt. Any thoughts?