Thursday, August 27, 2009

Away: Day 2 - San Jose, Santa Clara and Mountain View

We had a hard time sleeping due to all of the traffic noise from staying in the cheap motel. Granted, it was clean, it has a good wireless internet connection, and a free meatless continental breakfast that at least my son seemed interested in, but after stepping out into the morning air and being pummeled with the stench garlic in the air you just couldn't seem to get away from, it was time to go.

Driving to San Jose 40 miles north of Gilroy in rush hour traffic was not my idea of fun, but I did it anyway. 101 N to 82 takes you straight into downtown San Jose. Check-in is at 3PM and the museum my son wants to go to doesn't open until noon, so we definitely have some time to kill. What to do? Well, I'm hungry and thirsty since I haven't ate breakfast yet, so we find a bagel shop in Mountain View.

They end up having a couple of local rags and my son finds out that Intel has their own museum in the area and it opens at 10AM. O.K., plans are now forming up nicely. I finish my bagels, banana and apple juice and we head on over to Intel thanks to the GPS. From where we parked, I didn't see the front of the museum entrance, so I just followed to where everyone else was walking. Turns out that was an employee entrance where a guard it.

The Intel Museum, located in Santa Clara in the same general area, turns out to be located in the back of the Intel company store and is an homage to the founders of the company for starters. The rest of the museum is about their advertising, their processes and their technological advances to the computer industry. Yeah, Intel! I had enough corporate controlled shenanigans for the day. Get me out of here.

We then drove back to Mountain View where the Computer History Museum is located. We got there just about the same time they opened. We went through the visual storage room which took almost 2 hours. It's a graveyard of all things computer. All things. Think of every major computer name and brand you can - now. Yup, they have it. Amazing place. My dad would of loved to see the Difference Engine No. 2. An engineering wonder. It was the first mechanical adding machine ever made. It's about as big as maybe three refrigerators pushed together.

After going though yet another display, I was tired, my son was hungry, so we decided to drive back to San Jose to have lunch. I drove around trying to orient myself to the hotel location, but I was having a hard time doing that. I finally decided to park and get out and walk. Everything is so close, so why not? I ended up parking under the federal courts building two blocks away.

From the local rag he picked up earlier, he saw a restaurant he wanted to try, but after we read their lunch menu posted on the outside of the building, we decided it didn't sound too good. I peeked my head around the corner of the building to find a noodle house. It ended up being a thai place which was fine. They has good basic food which I was very happy to discover so I didn't get sick on it. My son had beef with egg noodles and yellow curry which was supposed to be medium heat, but he was sweating practically all the way through the meal and drank two Mexican Cokes and an ice water before he gave up.

Later, we checked into the hotel and found it to be very nice. It was Thursday night and my son decided to get lost for awhile and do something he wanted to do as I went to the city park near the hotel to listen to some live Beatles music with about 3000 of newest friends from San Jose.

We were still full from lunch, so we skipped dinner. I was running on empty energy-wise at this point from all the go-go-going since Tuesday night, so after the concert was over, I enjoyed the comfortable feather bed in the hotel room and kicked back for awhile. I sent Stephen out for a soda after he got back from the card shop. I had no idea where the nearest convenience store was but for some strange reason, he did and it came in handy. He got me a Pepsi.

No comments: