San Francisco and Silicon Valley

We spent the last several weeks on a Grand Pacific Coast Adventure: traveling from San Diego to Seattle by bike, train, and plane. This is post 3 of 4 about that trip.

Feeling recuperated, we took the train from San Luis Obispo to San Jose. We thought it would be appropriate, given our backgrounds, to ride through Silicon Valley on our way up to San Francisco. I found the valley simultaneously under- and overwhelming: all these companies and power in one place, but that place just happens to be a cluster of suburban office parks!

The train ride was beautiful – we always had a view of either mountains or the coastline.
Jim, double bicycle stevedore.

In San Francisco, we stayed with our college friend Katherine and her two roommates, Maggie and Buro. We spent that weekend catching up with Katherine, including taking a long, scenic ride through the city, and visiting many of our other friends who live in the area. Seeing so many people we knew, and staying put for a whole week, made me feel at home in San Francisco.

Artist’s rendition after Burmese food and possibly a few too many glasses of wine.
I couldn’t stop shouting about how San Francisco is unbearably pretty.

I’ve been thinking a lot about baking lately – a side effect of neglected hobbies and burning a whole lot of carbohydrates – so I signed up for a course at the San Francisco Baking Insitute. I spent the rest of the week on bakers’ hours, waking up early to make it to “bread school” by 7 AM. Every afternoon, I came home with an armload of bread to share with everyone. I had a blast scratching my baking itch, and using my mind and body in a completely different ways than usual.

The SFBI is also a working bakery. This meant we got to play with a lot of very fun “toys”, like two gigantic commercial deck ovens.
Being covered in flour is my happy place.
Five baguettes from day 1. Our bread production only escalated from there – I brought home more than a dozen loaves on day 4.

 

 

One Reply to “San Francisco and Silicon Valley”

  1. Great stuff! Michelle and I have been watching the series “Silicon Valley” this past week and I was imagining you both cycling by the Hooli bus while it was “empowering its passengers” 🙂 Your assessment of it being under and overwhelming reminds me of a pic someone posted of a typical, annodyne series of server racks in some generic colo facility– the caption reading, “Pandemonium on the trading floor” back when the market crashed a thousand points. The significance really is incongruous with its appearance.
    Keep the posts a coming!

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