Saket Vora

What a day!

Woke up early this morning and was with Luke at the Caltrain station at 10:15am. We meet up with Nick Steinmetz and Nick Weiler (see why I wrote their last names?), the two we were supposed to be rooming with. They brought a friend, Jordan, from the neuroscience program. Last night, Nick W. told me about this Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and invited us to come. Though I only recognize three artists on the schedule and have never heard of any of them before, so I said what the heck. I could do a lot worse than spend a beautiful day in SF with cool people.

Due to problems with trains, we finally make it to Golden Gate State Park at around 12:30pm. This music festival is free and there are people everywhere, and many look like what you’d expect to see a bluegrass festival. There was a bring-your-own-alcohol-we-don’t-care policy too. We meandered over to the 5th stage where Bela Fleck and the Flecktones were gonna play at 4pm. Unfurled some blankets and enjoyed some of the food we brought with us. Nick S., who is from Kentucky, was very proud of his bourbon. Luke and Nick W. enjoyed some wine. Jim Prine was on stage. Nick S. knows a lot about bluegrass so he was telling us about the artists and stuff. The topic changed a lot, going into different musical genres, neuroscience, philosophy, etc. 20 and 30-something year old yuppies passing around pot, long haired hippies, wine and cheese and blankets, sunshine and breeze, the easy sounds of bluegrass wafting over from the stage, punctuated by the Blue Angels flying in formation overhead. In a word — San Francisco. (Ok two).

Just before Bela Fleck took the stage, we met up with several of Nick S’s friends who go to Berkeley. One of them, Joe, looked 98% like my friend Keith Dowd did in high school. It was so eerie. Together we walked down to get closer to the band, and spent the next three hours listening to first Bela Fleck and then Los Lobos. I had heard about Bela Fleck before, but this was my first time listening. It was great — jazz with bluegrass, musically interesting, and nice.

It was getting dark as we left the park and found ourselves quite hungry. We found a Thai restaurant that had garnered numerous accolades but for our group of 10 people, we had to wait nearly an hour. Its a family run restaurant and even ordering our food was quite an adventure. The food though was excellent. We finally got out of the restaurant at around 10pm, and tried catching the Muni (subway/tram) to get us back to Caltrain station. We chased the Muni for four blocks, made it to the stop, knocked on the door, but the driver said “no” and drove off. We had to wait another 30 minutes for the next Muni. I called up Nader and he told me there was no 11pm train back to Palo Alto; the next one is at 12am. Oh well. We finally make it back to the Caltrain station, kill some time by walking a few blocks to a cafe/diner, and finally make it back to Palo Alto at around 1:10am.

I had a wonderful time and I’m so glad Nick told us about it.

To top all that, Stanford beat USC. As we were waiting for dinner, I got a text message from my Dad. I thought the game was at 7pm so I was confused. I called him up and asked him about it. Still incredulous, I called up my trusted sports advisor Mike and he confirmed it — Stanford beat USC 24-23. I excitedly told the group and they were still skeptical, so I called Nader and he also confirmed it.

How unreal is that.

• We lost last game 41-3 against #24 Arizona State.
• We lost the 2nd to last game 53-21 to #14 Oregon.
• Our starting QB had a seizure and sat out
• The new QB had thrown only three passes in his college career for 1 completion.
• We were playing AT USC.
• USC is ranked #2 in the country
• The odds were 41 points in favor of USC.
• Stanford is last place in the PAC-10
• We haven’t beat USC since 2001.

And yet…we do it. Read the game re-cap linked above. Incredible — the QB made two HUGE 4th and long plays…including a 4th-and-20 where he had to make his own call and later a 4th-and-9 in the redzone where he threw the TD pass that put Stanford ahead with just 40 seconds left in the game.

The defense won it though — 4 interceptions, 4 sacks, 1 blocked point after, <100 rushing yards allowed. Outstanding performance.

Need to do some grocery shopping tomorrow then work on HW tomorrow. I have a moon meeting at 2pm too.