California Expedition July 5, 2018

Copyright © 2018                               John F. Oyler 

July 5, 2018

California Expedition

I have just returned from an interesting experience, a trip to “a different world”. My son John and his family are spending a few weeks in northern California while he conducts business at his company’s office in San Mateo. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas and was glad to have the opportunity to fly out there to visit them.

Their home base is in Beijing, China, and I lack the stamina for making that long trip to see them; the five-hour flight across the country is enough of a challenge for me. I managed to watch two forgettable movies on the flight west. Coming back in the daylight on a nearly cloud-free day, I preferred to sight-see, out of the plane’s window.

It is hard to imagine any movie being more entertaining than watching the scenery change as one flies from the Pacific Ocean across the Rockies, to the prairies. I concede the view once you get to Iowa is a little boring, but what precedes it is certainly spectacular. 

We took off from the San Francisco Airport headed nearly north, providing a “tourist’s choice” view of the “city by the Bay”, then turned east and followed I-80 to the Sierra Nevadas.  We closely paralleled the Amtrak route we rode from Colfax to Truckee last summer, with snow-covered Mt. Shasta dominating the horizon to the north. 

At the peak of the Sierra Nevadas we flew right over Donner Lake, close enough to see the boats pulling water skiers. The landscape of course changed dramatically once we passed Reno. Comparing the desolation of Nevada and Utah to the prosperous farmlands in California’s Central Valley certainly highlights the significance of water to our survival.

We Civil Engineers tend to downplay the importance of Water Resources Engineering when we consider the various areas of specialization within our profession. The challenges of redistributing freshwater and reusing waste water, coupled with developing a cost-effective way to desalinize seawater probably are the most significant ones looming ahead, especially when one considers the global society.

Lai An has just celebrated her fifth birthday and, like all grandchildren, is remarkably precocious. She is equally fluent in English and Chinese and moves back and forth between them seamlessly. When the family is travelling, John and Victoria do a fine job of involving her in local activities. This week she was enrolled in a Day Camp that took the children to Foothills Park, a lovely spot high above Palo Alto, where the children engaged in group activities. Lai An immediately made friends with several other young girls and appeared to have a good time.

She was also enrolled in swimming lessons, a schedule that necessitated someone picking her up at the Park and driving her to the pool. This provided an excellent excuse for picnics there, as well as short walks in a very attractive environment. When we were there, the kids were having a grand time playing “Capture the Flag”, taking advantage of the opportunity to run around in a relatively unstructured environment.

We had no difficulty finding things to do in the evenings. Twice we went to dinner at Chinese restaurants in San Mateo, providing the rest of the family the opportunity to demonstrate their dexterity with chopsticks in contrast to my fumbling. Firm meatballs are the biggest challenge, especially for a mathematician who knows full well it requires three points to define a circle. Two chopsticks and one sphere spell instability in any language.

The second evening we went to a Mongolian “Hot Pot” restaurant, a concept that was brand new for me. A large divided pot containing two different hot soups is placed on a hotplate in the middle of the table. The waiter then brings a variety of dishes of raw food (meat, seafood, vegetables, etc.) which the diners then cook by inserting the food into the hot pot and retrieving it after it has properly cooked – an even greater challenge for the rookie chopstick wielder. 

One evening we went to the Stanford Movie Theater in Palo Alto, a wonderful experience for any movie fan. They specialize in old movies, presented in an old-fashioned environment. Before the feature begins, instead of the garbage one must sit through in a modern theater, an organ rises out of the basement, with a gray-haired gentleman playing appropriate music.

The film we saw was “Singing in the Rain”. After a medley of other songs the organist went into the theme song for the film and was rewarded with considerable applause. The crowd in the theater was also quite enthusiastic during the showing of the film. After nearly every musical selection in the movie there was considerable applause. When Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds performed “Good Morning”, the response bordered on “standing ovation”. 

One evening we took Lai An to a Children’s Theater performance of “Snow White”. I continue to be amazed at the poise and stage presence of young children who are involved in theater. With a very few exceptions I can’t imagine any of the kids of my generation being able to do that. Small wonder today’s young people are so confident.

Another evening we went to a modest Gala at the Art Center in Palo Alto, celebrating the opening of a special exhibit of three dimensional collages. It was a small-town version of the sort of thing that is ballyhooed in the Society Page (Seen?) in the papers at home, including an authentic (at least in appearance) Mariachi Band, light refreshments in the outdoor garden, and a participative collage workshop in the Center.

The workshop provided guests with small blank cards, boxes of pictures and other two-dimensional items, scissors, and glue; and challenged us to produce small “trading cards” as art objects. It turned out to great fun, once we got started. My masterpiece was abstract – a fragment of the music for “I Never Knew”, the nutrition label from a bag of snacks I had eaten, and three bits of the snacks glued onto it.

We also went to a talk by a Master Gardener on maintaining and propagating succulent plants. It was particularly appropriate for me, as I have done a poor job with my wife’s houseplants since she is gone. Perhaps it will motivate me to replace “benign neglect” with proper husbandry.

John is familiar with the Palo Alto area from his Stanford Business School days in the mid 1990s; his sister Elizabeth was also at Stanford at the time working on her doctorate in Asian Studies. The climate there is wonderfully moderate – cool nights and warm days. 

When you combine it with the abundance of water, thanks to the snowmelt in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and a long aqueduct, the result is a marvelous environment for growing a wide variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees. Palo Alto is full of majestic redwoods; in fact, the city is named for El Palo Alto (the tall tree), an historic redwood in a public park.

The city is justly proud of its urban forest. In addition to the thousands of trees on private property, the “Canopy” initiative maintains 36,000 trees along streets and in the numerous public parks. In addition to the redwoods, black oaks, maples, cedars, and pines are native to the Bay Area. Trees full of fruit – apricot, lemon, orange, fig, olive, etc. – are common in most residence gardens.

It also appears to be the perfect environment for roses. I was impressed to see them flourishing in the public space between the sidewalks and the street. Walking in any neighborhood in Palo Alto is like walking through a formal garden – there are lovely flowers blooming everywhere, many of which are unfamiliar to me.

Being flat, with a regular grid-work of streets and cross streets, the city is a perfect place for urban planners to experiment with traffic engineering to provide optimum opportunities for walking and biking without negatively impacting automobile traffic. The result is the “pedestrian pocket” variation of the superblock concept. The large number of people walking and bicycling in local neighborhoods suggests that this version is effective.

Realizing that I was near the epicenter of twenty-first century technology-based power, in Silicon Valley, I decided to visit the Starbucks on California Avenue, close to the edge of the Stanford campus. At first I was concerned about looking out of place because I didn’t have my laptop with me, but I quickly realized that my I-Phone was even more avant-garde. 

I made the mistake of ordering a conventional coffee, rather than cappuccino, and a scone, but once that faux pas was behind me, I blended into the environment by finding a seat at an outdoor table, playing with my I-Phone, and observing the folks passing on the street as well as the other non-conspicuous Starbucks customers. Glad to report that Starbucks’ employee sensitivity training appears to extend to conservative, red-state, Pennsylvania Dutch octogenarians. I really felt comfortable when I noticed that the sparrows scrounging for my scone crumbs looked just like the ones at home.

I’m sure it is constructive for us red-staters to occasionally visit the elite areas that exist in this “different world”. We are inherently paranoid about California and worried that the culture there will eventually overwhelm ours. Somehow we must find a way for both cultures to co-exist and to merge the best features of each, rather than the worst. 

My collection of trite expressions that continue to be relevant includes “nice place to visit, but I still prefer home”. I missed the excitement of the recent gully washer and McLaughlin Run flash flood while I was enjoying the near perfect weather in northern California. Nonetheless I grew up knowing that our weather here would never be boring, and that still works for me.