Well, I made it . . . actually, all things considered, it's hard to figure how the journey could have been easier.

I started the day with another bike ride, this time along the Iron Horse trail. I have to say, the more experience I have with rails-to-trails projects, the less impressed I am with them. The problem for me, chiefly, is one of scale. Train tracks were designed to go as straight as possible, and be as level as possible, and also, probably, to go through rural routes as much as possible (but probably pretty much everything was rural when they began, so I'm not sure when & why development did or didn't happen along them . . . ) These sorts of routes work if you're going, oh, 60 miles an hour, but generally do not make terrific riding when you're going a quarter of that speed.

Nonetheless, the Iron Horse was pretty good, as it ran through the center of several suburbs - Concord, Pleasant Hill, and Walnut Creek. If I'd gone far enough south, I could have connected with the Contra Costa trail again, and tried yesterday's monster hills from the other side . . . but I didn't have time; I had to get to the pool by noon so I could squeeze in some laps and some lounging/reading time . . .

So I did all that, and got back to Kevin and Doug's by about 1:30. I took a shower, packed, dealt with the Washer Disaster (the laundry tub overflowed, creating a mess in the garage that completely negated my Nice Gesture of washing my sheets . . . ) Called a cab, which arrived at about 2:45. I got to the BART station, got my ticket, lugged my stuff upstairs (using the elevator - my luggage has gotten dramatically larger since I bought a proper 'suitcase' for my Dahon; I figured I didn't want to waste the money I'd just spent fixing it by sending it back home in that flimsy bag, only to get broken again on the way). About three minutes after I got to the platform, the train arrived.

The car was pretty empty, and stayed empty through San Francisco (I'd wanted to miss the commuter crowd). I got to Millbrae, the connecting station for Caltrain, lugged my stuff down and up the elevators to the proper platform - and just as I got there, the Caltrain to Palo Alto arrived. Thanks to the kindness of strangers, I was able to get my stuff on board; this was an actual commuter train, which meant that, unlike the subway, the doors were not flush with the platform, and there were stairs and very narrow aisles to negotiate besides - thus sealing the deal with respect to my return journey to SFO on Saturday; I'm taking an airport shuttle . . . The price for my journey today was certainly right ($8.50), but I don't want to have to drag those bags up and down again . . .

Anyhow, turns out this was a bullet train, too - Palo Alto was the second stop; I arrived in about 20 minutes instead of the usual 45. I got off the train, looked for a cab - and discovered there weren't any; Palo Alto is Too Cool for Cabs, apparently. I was told that if I went to the Sheraton, I could get someone to call me a cab - but I knew where my hotel was, and I knew it wasn't much farther than going to the Sheraton would be, so I just dragged everything over here. I was in my room by 5:10; Kevin opined that the Public Transportation Gods were indeed smiling on me . . .

This hotel (the Cardinal Hotel) is the same one I stayed at with Charlie a few years ago, and it has charm galore. It was built in 1924, and really feels like a European hotel - or like the hotel in Barton Fink, or like my brother's downtown Denver apartment, or something. I particularly like its funky old elevator, with the door you have to slide, and the iron railing behind it . . . Unfortunately, having been built in 1924 also means that it doesn't have central air - which [a] I didn't notice when I was here with Charlie, because it was April and we didn't need it; and [b] seemed a problem to me when I arrived, hot and sweaty, after lugging my bags the half-mile from the train station. I'm now thinking that things might be okay, though, since there are ceiling fans and huge windows that open wide. I was a bit worried about street noise, but with any luck that won't be a problem either. Palo Alto is not exactly party central.

I spent a long time walking around downtown this evening, and the place is nothing if not tony. What a contrast with Berkeley! Here every block contains about five restaurants, on average, and three of them are Italian. There simply won't be enough meals for me to eat in every one that took my fancy: There's a German restaurant, a Jamaican restaurant, an Italian place that looked like a hole in the wall but had huge lines out front, a fifties-style soda fountain type place, Korean, Thai, Indian - and did I mention Italian? Ah, yes, and the House of Protein is right across the street; I wanted to have dinner there tonight (I was craving a steak), but my god, the prices were as high as California real estate. And then I remembered: Yes, it does cost over $40,000 a year to send a kid to Stanford . . .

So probably I should aim for something more in the price range of Pizza My Heart (which is the best restaurant name I've ever heard). Starting tomorrow. Tonight I ate at one of the Italian places . . .

Of course, tomorrow night I'll probably be dining with other conference-goers. I find I've gotten rusty at attending conferences; ordinarily my first act upon dumping my bags would have been to head over to the Sheraton (the conference hotel) to round up some buddies . . . but it's been years since I've hung out with those buddies and so I'm feeling a little shy. Not sure if they remember me. Pretty sure I don't have the reputation/cachet that I had back then. Time enough to wait until after tomorrow's preconference session to reconnect with everybody . . .

If my eyes can stay open for the requisite length of time, I might even get my pictures uploaded tonight. I've got wireless internet in the room, so I can use my own computer (which has a nice FTP program on it), so I can get the pictures there as long as the internet connection stays up (it's been a bit spotty, alas). If I get the pix uploaded, I'll post the URL . . .