Silicon Valley Trip Day 1
What a great start to the Silicon Valley trip sponsored by the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Woke up at 3am and met the rest of the ARI team (Greg, Win, Jared, and Jordan) at Greg’s house. Sapana was driving the van to get us to the airport. We made it with plenty of time to spare, saw everyone else trickle in. The flights were fine, didn’t sleep much because I wanted to talk to people. Most of our group (we numbered close to 13) sat in the very back 3 rows of the plane. It was good. Our departure gate in Houston was directly across our arrival gate…a walk of maybe 30 ft. I went with Jordan and others to get a cup of coffee, but Tara and Jessie and Kelly (the girls) were late and boarded the plane last. The turbulence on these flights were especially bad. We landed into San Jose much like what I remember doing just three weeks prior when I came out here for the Int’l Solid State Circuits Society conference. We took a dying bus to the budget car rental place where Dr. Miller and Dr. Walsh got two KIA vans and a Pontiac sedan. ARI took over the white KIA van with Tara at the helm and boy we had fun. Driving down the highway, fun music blaring, everyone happy. As we approached Stanford I remembered everything…turns out the Stanford Terrace hotel was right on the path I walked everyday to the California Avenue train station. The hotel rooms are much nicer than what the exterior may imply. It was beautiful outside…just wonderful weather. Miller and Walsh went and got sandwiches which we ate at the hotel, then I led a group with Tara to go visit Stanford. We walked around campus, saw the engineering buildings, walked the Quad, and went up Hoover Tower. I tried my best to lead the group having been the only person to have visited Stanford before. Everyone was just blown away by it.
We immediately left to go to Tony Blevins house for dinner…he’s an NC State alum who is now a VP at Apple. We must have driven close to 40 minutes out of Stanford but it’s hard to describe the scenery. The mountain ranges dotted with trees, green hilly pastures with horses, views of the ocean. Tara was especially taken aback…commenting on just how wonderful everything was. Even she was telling me I should come to Stanford! Tony actually lives by Half Moon Bay, apparently quite famous. He greeted our group warming, invited us to drinks, then took us on a walk along the golf fairway that is right in his background. We walked up a hill, marveling at this luscious green golf course, then suddenly we are overlooking the bay and the ocean is in front. We continue up the path and see the 18th hole with a large hotel and a bagpipe player strolling along. It was really quite something. Greg, Win, Jordan and I were talking with Tony and he mentioned about going for a walk by the ocean golf course, which was newer. So we walked along talking about golf. Later back at his house we went down to his game room where he had a pool table. Jordan and Eric surprised me with their pool playing prowess. The dinner was kebabs made by Tony himself. I spent most of the dinner chatting with Joseph Fischer. Joe was an NC State alum who works at Apple and was a project lead for the Apple iPod Nano. This guy is a system integrator for the iPod Nano…basically making it happen. Really interesting guy and we talked alot about how product development at Apple works.
We finally left and headed back to the hotel. It had been a long day for all of us. On the way back we came up with questions for the companies and Jessie wrote them down. Jessie had a pad of paper and wrote down a lot of the funny quotes and comments from people. We’re just back at the hotel now, it’s 10pm our time here but it feels like 1am. A lot of us have been up for 22 hours straight and we’re going to bed. Busy day tomorrow…up by 5:45am.
Who knows…maybe my trip to Apple will finally convince me to buy an iPod.
