Old hometown

Yesterday Roy checked the weather report and found it was to rain all week, and indeed it rained today. Gal went on a road trip to southern California today so I had breakfast with him and he advised me on what I can see in the area before he left.

I took the car to my old house in Sunnyvale. It looks exactly the same, down to the smallest details! Across the street from it there are now big villas where there was always a big empty lot where we’d hit tennis balls and crawl under the fence to retrieve them.

I walked to my old school through the park. The big gazebo still looks the same but they’ve updated all the play equipment. They have a little climbing wall there now. Lots of things reminded me of activities I did as a kid: the wall of the tennis courts where I’d bounce balls to practice, the big green field where I would launch model rockets. I got to the school just when recess began so there were hundreds of small screaming children running around. I went to the office to check in as a visitor, ask if it was all right to wander around, and ask about the old teachers. None of the male teachers are there anymore. Mr. Burnham hasn’t taught for years and is in the religious field now. Within about five minutes the new principal saw me wandering around and asked me to leave.

I drove back from Sunnyvale but nobody was home so I skipped lunch and went back out to visit NASA’s Ames research center at Moffett Airfield. They have a free museum-like visitor center, which I explored. There was a brief minute of sunshine when I left so I put the top down on my convertible just to see that I could, but none of the other convertibles I saw bothered and I put it back up when it got cold. On the way back to Los Altos I got lost a few times. Fortunately I took the maps of the area to the car and I could find my way back.