Real Time View

Last weekend I was in the Bay area again, where I found time to return to Los Gatos. For me the area between Cupertino, Saratoga, and Los Gatos holds so many memories and I seem to gravitate back to familiar haunts each time I’m there. It was early in 1988 when I began to commute between Cupertino and Sydney, Australia, and I would catch a return flight to the Bay on a Saturday, and head to Los Gatos first thing Sunday morning – for coffee at a small café on Santa Cruz Avenue. It’s still there, and this Saturday afternoon found me sitting by the front window. Located not too far from the café is one of my favorite car dealerships in all of California – Ferraris of Los Gatos, now called Silicon Valley Auto Group - and with each visit to Los Gatos I somehow manage to find the time to stop by, and to check out the showroom. On Saturday, there were two Bugati Veyrons on display – not too shabby at all! And the picture at the top of the page is of the view across the lot from the rear showr...

I spent the weekend in Cupertino. So much has changed over the past twenty years that the town doesn’t look familiar – not the buildings, as the structures are the same, but the names on the tombstones lining the streets. Some familiar names remain, but most I just didn’t recognize. Who would have guessed Apple would have taken over so much of the city, and who would have guessed that so little from the glory days of Tandem would remain. Kind of depressing, after a fashion. It was a cold weekend and snow had fallen on the ridgeline of the mountains to the east of Silicon Valley. The blustery conditions only seemed to amplify the gloominess of the place and as I slowly drove down Vallco Parkway I noticed no security fence blocking the eastern entrance to Building 3, so I pulled into the rear parking lot. With no guards visible, I walked through the rear gates and onto the basketball court adjacent to the swimming pool, behind the canteen of Building 2. The picture at the top of the page...

Last week I had to drive from Simi Valley, Ventura County, across Los Angeles to Irvine, Orange County. Kicked-back, and enjoying a coffee at my neighborhood Starbux very early that morning, a mate of mine, Brian stopped by and then looked at me with some concern and asked what I was thinking. “If you have to be there by 10:30 you should be leaving in about 15 minutes,” he told me. Three hours to drive the 80 miles? Surely not! But I finished my coffee and headed for the car. It was close to 7:00 when I joined the morning traffic heading east along State Route 118 – the Ronald Reagan Freeway. The picture above is of me, many hours later, inching slowly back to LA. And it had taken me three hours to get there with just the one quick stop at MacDonalds! The drive took me past some pretty bad areas, and some of the backstreets visible from the freeway could have even been a part of a movie studio’s back lot. These were the kind of tough neighborhoods, frequently described in popular crime...