Adventures in California (Part 1 of many...)

As promised last week, here's the post for this week and last weekend.

As I believe I mentioned previously, the weather here is amazing.  Like imagine a day that is the quintessential spring/summer day and it's like that here.  Every day.  It gets into the 50s at night and into the low 80s during the day.  A slight wisp of clouds/fog helps the transition from a refreshing morning into a beautiful afternoon.  When we first arrived, we thought we just had arrived on a great day.  Then the weather was the same the next day.  And the next and the next. :)

Anyway, this weather lends itself perfectly to planning outdoor activities.  So, Bridget and I took full advantage of it last weekend.  We went on a nice hike on the foothills that separate Palo Alto from the Pacific Ocean.  Now, quick geography refresher.  Click on the image to make it bigger to read the text labels. :)

Map of the Area

San Francisco sits at the very tip of a peninsula that lies between the Pacific Ocean (on the West) and the San Francisco Bay (on the Easy).  It doesn't really loo like a peninsula because it doesn't stick out into the Ocean, it just kind of follows the coast. Anyway, if you follow the southern coast of the San Francisco Bay, you will pass right by Palo Alto as you head to San Jose, which is at the end of the bay.  As the bay sweeps southeast, the peninsula widens until it merges with the rest of the land and you can't tell a difference.  As the peninsula begins widening just south of San Francisco, foothills begin to rise from the flat countryside.  By the time they get to the Palo Alto area, they are quite a formidable height, although many a biker enjoys the challenge of biking up (and the flying back down) the hills.

Anyway, to end the digression, Bridget and I went hiking in the hills just outside of Palo Alto.  We drove up about as high as we could go and then hiked around for a bit.  But on the way up, we passed at least 200 bikers.  It was insane!  Just like most of them!  And some of them had gaudy bike jerseys, like these...

Really?  Yes, people do wear stuff like this...

Now, I have worn my fair share of athletic attire that some would refer to as, ... well, let's just say they wouldn't wear it on their body.  So, I am most likely the pot calling the kettle black, but I have often wondered what possesses them to wear that stuff.

Anyway, we passed about 200 less-than-fashion-conscious bikers on our way up.  The road was really steep and windy; very reminiscent of the roller-coaster taxi rides in Thailand.  Glad it was a short ride.  Once we got up to the top, it was a bit cloudy.  Which actually ended up being really cool.  So, without claiming to be a meteorologist, here's the scoop on the cloudiness around here.  Moist air from the ocean cools and heads inland, buffeted by the natural breeze.  This air becomes cloudy as the moisture makes fog and clouds.  And the breeze/wind pushes it up the foothills on the western side and the clouds race up and then spill over and down the eastern side toward Palo Alto.  However, the air on the eastern side is warmer, so the clouds only last until the sun and warm air "burns it off".  So, in the morning when the air hasn't warmed up yet, we often have light cloud cover.  By mid-morning, however, it's normally gone.

So, rewinding to our hike last weekend, we made it to the top of the foothills when it was still cloudy up there.  We hiked out about 1.5 miles in the clouds, but could feel the strong breeze pushing the clouds up the hills.  On our way back, we hiked around the western edge of the ridge and could actually see the clouds rushing up and over the ridge.  It was so cool!  By the time we got back to the car, the clouds had burnt off and we got some nice views of the bay.  It was such a blast!  Here are a few of our favorite pictures. :)

Panorama of the Bay

The clouds rushing over the road on our way up

Notice who has both bags... :)

Bridget's magical tree picture!

Little flowers

On Sunday, we went to church and then headed over to one of the other fellows' house for lunch and tennis with her and her husband.  We brought some salad and they made some chicken on the grill.  It was really good.  And tennis was alot of fun.  Tennis is pretty much a year-round sport here, much unlike the Midwest.  So, Bridget and I got some rackets at a garage sale two weeks ago and have been practicing every now and then.  Unfortunately, the practice really didn't do too much and we got slaughtered, but it was still a lot of fun. :)

The rest of Sunday was pretty chill.  We relaxed a bit and then braced ourselves for the oncoming week!  Bridget had her first week of nannying on her own.  It went really well.  She's having a blast so far!  My week was pretty busy, as is to be expected by now. :)  But, that's about all I've got for now.  I'll need to go back and add some details from a few weeks ago, but it'll have to wait...

Until then,
~ Jeremy

...and we're back!

So, the last few weeks have been pretty hectic, as anyone with a relatively good imagination could imagine.  Moving our (meager) belongings into a spacious studio apartment, finding furniture for said apartment, starting work (for both of us), and trying to make some friends can really take a toll on the down time! :)

But lest I present myself in too positive a light, I must apologize.  In all honesty, I was thinking that the blog would have kind of fizzled out after my last semi-goodbye post.  I was wrong.  Not only was I wrong, but I have come to find out that some of our dear readers have been checking in on a daily basis to see if we had finally posted something new!  I am so sorry for my gross negligence.  Since I'm out here living in the moment, I lost perspective.  But I still have the opportunity to right that wrong.  So, I cannot promise to begin the steadfast daily blogging anew, but will try to post once a week and give a relatively brief update of what's going on out here in the Golden State. :)

So, here's a quick update from last post until 2 days ago (that will take another post).  So, I officially started my program on August 1st at 10:30am.  I was the first one of the new "Fellows", as we are called, to arrive.

But a quick digression on what "my program" is before I get too excited... :)  The program is called Biodesign, and the purpose of the program is to train people on how to create innovative medical technologies.  Click here for a link.  Now, "training people on how to create innovative medical technology" still sounds like Greek to me (and I'm in the program!), so I'll try to break it down a bit more.
- The first step is to identify medical needs.  These can be in the form of an important problem that hasn't been solved, something that is more difficult than need be, or something that doesn't quite work how it should.  And as anyone who has received medical care (which is pretty much everyone) can attest to, there are certainly things that need improved.
- The second step is to take a laundry list of needs and do some research on them to learn as much as possible about the needs to see which of them are really needs and which may have been solved already or may not be as big of an issue as first thought.  This includes reading research papers, talking to doctors and patients about their experiences, and reading textbooks to learn the basics of medical care.
- The third step is to take the "top" few needs that we really want to tackle and think about ways to solve them.  This includes brainstorming (listing as many ideas as possible in a set amount of time), more research, and a lot of thought. :)  And at this point, we haven't even made anything.  It's all thinking work and lots of writing/drawing on paper.
- The fourth step is to identify the most likely solution to meet its respective need and begin working on seeing if the solution will actually work.  This is the step when we will actually start making things (this will be my favorite part).  This will also be accompanied by more research to see what kinds of experiments have been done before.
- The rest of the road is all dependent on how the previous four steps have gone. :)  If everything works, then the road, albeit a very long road, leads to bringing the solution to the market to begin making a difference in the lives of doctors and patients.

Wow, that was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be.  Hopefully it makes a little bit of sense now... Anyway, needless to say, there's quite a sizable amount of work that goes into this process.  Which is probably a good thing, since it's really important to make good medical equipment since it may be used on me or you someday!  And, to make the first 5 weeks of the program even more fun, we have to cover the first three steps in an accelerated "boot camp".  It definitely feels like boot camp, with one or two presentations per week to keep us accountable for getting everything done.  It's required some late nights and early mornings (sometimes on the same day...), but it's so much fun that I really don't notice how much I'm working.  Which is the best kind of work there is, right?

Last quick comment on Biodesign.  One of the cool parts of the program is that I am working on a 4-person team with another mechanical engineer who worked in industry for the last 8 years, a cardiac surgeon who is still in the middle of his training (he did engineering undergrad), and a internal surgeon who just finished his residency (so he's been in school for like a bazillion years and just finished).  So, the program intentionally puts people with different backgrounds on the same team to complement each other.  Which makes total sense considering how much knowledge is required to pull off what we're hoping to.  And it's a ton of fun to meet new people and learn how doctors approach problems and how things are done in industry.  Oh, and there are two other teams.  One team of four and one team of two.  Those teams are comprised of two more doctors, two more engineers, an assistant professor, and an MBA.  We're a crazy bunch, that's for sure! :)

Anyway, Bridget didn't have a job for the first few weeks here, so she was working full-time on finding cheap furniture for our apartment.  And she did a fantastic job!  Here's the roundup.  A really nice bed (box springs, mattress, and frame), dresser, table, chairs for the table, futon, TV (free at a garage sale!), lamps, two rugs, two comfy fold-up chairs (think luxury camping chair), door hangers (for coats and such), and make-your-own wonder hangers (out of duct tape and cardboard - genius!).  And amidst all of that, she found a really cool "part-time" nannying job for a family about 15 minutes away.  She is watching a three year-old boy for just over 30 hours a week.  But she has to be there relatively early in the morning, so she has a few afternoons off for tutoring.  So, she's heading into her second week of work now, and is loving it so far!  She gets to take the boy to the ocean, into the city (San Francisco), to parks by his house, and all kinds of fun stuff like that.  Perfect match for Bridget. :)

And since this post was void of any visual stimulation (e.g. pictures), here are some pictures that Bridget and I took on Stanford's campus last weekend.  Enjoy!

Cool-Looking Computer Science Building (I think...)

Nice little courtyard

Fire Lanes... the only "roads" on campus

White flower

The d.school

Graduate housing (I tried to get an apartment there... didn't work out)

Bridget chillin' with the palm trees

Sidewalk toward one of the many libraries

The courtyard outside Memorial Church

Yet another cool stucco-ish building

Hiding behind a pillar... (not so well, though since I caught her!)

The view down Palm Drive

Cool perspective shot

Jordan Hall

The sun setting on another beautiful day at Stanford

So, that was really long.  I congratulate you if you read the whole thing.  If you read it in one sitting, I think you may need to go rest in another chair for awhile... :)  If you didn't, well, you still get a gold star.

I'll try to post again in the next few days to cover this weekend's happenings!

~ Jeremy