Virtual Greg

I finally arrived in Palo Alto! After a Melbourne winter, this town is in the middle of a Californian heat wave, temperatures over 30 degrees, though it feels like 40, making it hard to move or sleep. I caught the Caltrain from San Francisco before 9am, when it’s the commute for Silicon Valley employees around Potrero Hill. I managed to get off one station too early, looked for the street that should have been there, went on two bus rides through Stanford and eventually got to the Hotel California. I’ve been singing the song all day.

After check-in I rented a bike from round the corner and set off to see the local sights. Palo Alto is bigger than it looked on the map. I thought I might walk to work, but there’s not a chance – I’ll bike, like at home.

Pros: friendly and laid back, fresh air (away from big roads), nice old houses, some good shopping strips, and for anyone into technology history it’s like visiting Hollywood.

Cons: car town. But biking works well too.

My hotel (sadly, for this week only) is great. It’s not a regular hotel, though it charges like one – more like a hostel with private rooms. The rooms surround an outdoor courtyard, where I am typing this. (They have good wireless.) The owner puts free fruit and snacks in the kitchen. It’s in the middle of a shopping strip which I love already. It’s like the inside of my brain made real: coffee shops with laptops a-plenty, eateries, organic supermarket, weekly farmers market, chiropractor, second hand bookstore, all within 100 m or so, and a gym and Ananda church round the corner. Can it get any better than this? What will PARC be like? Computer and internet related stuff? That would make my day.

The journey through Silicon Valley is like traveling from Brisbane to the Gold Coast – it’s basically a long highway with suburbs scattered along it, most of it looking less than 30 years old.

I want to swim, but haven’t seen a public pool. I may try to strike a bargain with the motel round the corner, who have one tantalizingly on display in their front yard.

I looked around Stanford Uni. What a giant campus! It’s as unlike. say, Melbourne Uni, as it’s possible to be. More like Queensland Uni, on steroids. I can’t imagine walking around it. There’s a lot of empty space, like paddocks at a farm. There seems to be a mini-suburb of housing for staff and students. They even own a very large swathe of grassland between campus and PARC which is fenced off and signposted “Stanford academic reserve” – what are they doing there? Environmental experiments?