Yesterday's walk report: I'm doing this for my health?

Yesterday, November 1st. There was some weird stuff going on Halloween night, and I never figured it out. I would've swore someone banged on the door, but after I turned down the blaring Mahavishnu Orchestra from the TV and took a look... nothing. Nothing on the security camera either, although that thing is a crap shoot. I'm getting a new one. It was also raining, certainly hard enough to deter errant trick-or-treaters. The only real confirmation that something had happened was Junimoon; she was hiding behind curtains in her safe place in the living room. Maybe it was a ding-dong runaway, and they couldn't find the doorbell button. For the most part, Saturday, October 31, was a really good day. I only went for a short, 1.35-mile walk because rain was heading my way, and I had a lot to do, but for the most part, I felt the best I've felt in quite some time, all day too. 

 It seemed all that goodness was carrying into Sunday morning, despite the powers that be messing with the f'n clocks again. I was out driving to my launch pad for a walk by 9:35 a.m., PST, and I was on foot a mere four minutes later. Happy go lucky, feeling great on a beautiful morning after a total of 0.27" of rain. The air was cool and clean; the paths into the local college campus arboretum were quiet. Physically, every step was grounded. However, things changed once I was just over a mile into the walk. I was 0.8 miles from my car, and the walk became an exercise in quiet recalibration. I was talking myself through the simple mechanics of the path ahead to keep my thinking clear. Once I was back to the car, there was a deep sigh of relief. I was also able to sort through contributing factors and figure things out. Suffice it to say, it was an accumulation of factors. A couple of nights of fragmented sleep and the quiet, lingering fatigue of the week, plus some acute vestibular wobbles and disorientation, caught up to me all at once; high anxiety fed into a loop. 

Here are some pictures I took before I hit the abyss at 1.05 miles. Yep, I mapped out exactly where it happened. 

Female Calypte anna hummingbird.

The coreopsis, of course!

 I'm pretty sure this is one of the two gulf fritillary butterflies I saw last week. In fact there were two again but one moved farther away.

 Weather shot number one.

 Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa), still dripping raindrops. 

 The California Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma californica). I have a special fondness for these birds. 

 One of a pair of red-tailed hawks. This is a recent pairing. I'm pretty sure I know which birds they were. 

Female Selasphorus sasin hummingbird. It was very difficult to track.

 
Weather shot number two.

 By whatever mechanism, this clock had been adjusted for the hour change from DST to PST, however, it's also 15 minutes slow. It was a perfect metaphor for how I was feeling in this moment. 

 Mahavishnu Orchestra, Antibes (1974) 

P.S., I’m fine now. I took a brief 1/2 mile walk this morning just to make sure I was back on my rocker.