That’s what it felt like when I worked in Bill Uttal’s Perception Laboratory at the Naval Ocean Systems Center–Hawaii, during the summers of 1986-1988. I’ll never forget the wonderful and productive lab where I worked, the taste of Hawaiian plate lunch (bbq+macaroni salad) after a day at the beach, the feel of 70 degree warm ocean water, or the massive helicopters that flew from the Kaneohe MCAS. I rode my bike to work and back. Here is the route.
Last week, I started to ride my bike to work again. From 2000-2005, I rode to work every day on which it was not raining. Initially, until 2002, I used the Caltrain, which has a bike car, to ride to Palo Alto from Sunnyvale, and from there bike the remaining 4 miles to my office at Agilent Labs. From 2002-2005, I biked directly from my home in Santa Clara to my office, also in Santa Clara, a distance of 3 miles. Since then, my office moved across a major highway, the US 101. I stopped biking, and bought a car, my 3rd Honda Civic in 20 years. After a year of stop-and-go commuting, watching the price of gas reach $3.50, it finally dawned on me that my drive in was only 6 miles. I scouted out various bikeable routes to work and found this one. I cross under the 101 on the Lafayette street overpass. This takes longer but is a lot safer than the Trimble Rd overpass just to the east. My ride takes about 40 minutes, regardless of traffic 