An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

7/12/21 Our last full day on the west coast! I guess we were running out of things to do, a little bit. In the morning, Valerie stayed back at Ted's apartment while he and I walked the nature trail around the outside of the Facebook campus, which is very close to Ted's place. Facebook occupies what used to be Sun Microsystems' headquarters, and we discovered (while searching for a geocache, of course) that the back side of the Facebook sign at the entrance to the complex still says Sun Microsystems. That's no accident. Sun was at one time a premiere computer brand, but they tanked in the dot-com crash of the early 2000's as dot-com companies went bankrupt and dumped their used Sun computers on the market at low prices. The company never recovered and in 2009 was swallowed up by Oracle. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg intentionally left the Sun sign there as a reminder to his employees never to be complacent, even when it seems you're on top. On our walk we also no...

  7/9/21 Friday was another outdoor adventure day and followed pretty much the same contours as the previous day, except that Valerie opted out of the physical exertion. Prior to the trip I had planned on hiking at Point Reyes National Seashore (which Ted had previously visited and found quite beautiful), but as with Monterey, once we got to California I decided to cut down on the driving time and opt for something closer to "home". I think I might have felt differently if we had rented a car and were doing some of the driving, but we were relying on Ted and his aging two door Honda Civic for all our transportation, and I really didn't want to make too many demands on him as our chauffer. So Ted and I decided instead to hike at Ed Levin Park in Milpitas, not far, as it happens, from where we had rented kayaks the day before. On our way out we dropped Valerie at the Stanford Shopping Center - she was happy to spend the day hiking the mall while we hiked the mountains. Afte...

7/6/21 Ted got an amazing job offer and moved to California back in November of 2019. We've been itching to go visit him, but, y'know, COVID. With the pandemic at least temporarily) on the wane, we finally boarded a plane and headed out for a visit. We went first to Ted's apartment - which takes a little explaining in and of itself. First of all, he lives in East Palo Alto, a former slum which is now gentrifying as one of the last semi-affordable places to live in the area. It's at that point in transition where people still have high security fences around their properties, but there's an IKEA and a Target within walking distance. Transitional, as it were. Ted rents an in-law suite built onto a garage. To get to his apartment, you first unlock and slide open the property's gate (making sure to lock it behind you). Once inside the gate, you look around and realize the property is probably about 3/4 acre - an estate sized lot for the area - but is hardly an ...