Being that I was on the schedule of a HS teacher, I was up early and decided to head out to Half Moon Bay. The morning was relatively clear for being in the bay area and I headed out to sit at the cliffs above the beach and relax. As I watched the birds fly along the waves, I started to notice a small pod of dolphins not far off the coast. After wandering around the beach, I decided it was a perfect morning for a bike ride so I went and grabbed my bike out of the car for the 1st time on the trip. With the exception of the horse manure in certain sections, it was a very nice ride.
After Half Moon Bay, I headed over to meet Lou for lunch and then grabbed some coffee at Red Rock Coffee while I waited for Tommy to finish work. Tommy works for a small tech company and for those who haven't experienced what a tech company atmosphere is like, let me run you through what it's like. When Tommy is done with work, I meet him at his office, the 3rd floor of a pretty basic office building in Mountain View. With the exception of some conference rooms and an office or two, everyone works in one big room, seperated into their own areas, or sharing that area with someone else (two desks pushed together). Hanging from the walls are silly sayings, or ongoing office games they have going on. As an outsider, if you didn't notice the handful of people sitting at their computers, you would swear no work is getting done. People are working together, interacting, and the mood is definitely light.
I walk into the server room where the servers take up about 1/20 of the space of the room, while there sit 2 nice Foosball tables in the center of the room. We play some games of foosball (I get my ass handed to me as the other guys had quite a bit of experience under their belt as they not only play a lot now, but also played a lot at their last tech jobs) while the techs run some diagnostics on the servers. Tommy and I head off to leave but before we do, he goes to pick up some food. They get food fully catered once or twice a week (before the recession, all lunches were outside of work and paid for by the company). On the counter of the kitchen area is a brand new espresso machine with instructions on how to make different espresso drinks (before the recession it was a tab at Red Rock picked up by the company for all employees). All-in-all, after my last job, it felt like a giant play ground for adults. From my understanding, this is pretty normal, and for bigger companies like google, it is to an MUCH larger extreme. If you don't believe me, ask Dee.
After picking up Tommy, we went back to San Jose where we hopped on our bikes (like we used to do back just about as long as I can remember) and rode and checked out the local rose gardens and met some exchange students in town for the summer to work and learn English. They were really friendly and interested in talking with us, though I am pretty sure they were most interested in Tommy due to his impressive hair. After the rose gardens, we ate and drank, then rode some more, then drank some more, then rode some more (being completely safe of course), and then drank some more. We went to a place called Trials Pub where they had 3 different beers on Cask that you could buy by the pitcher, it was phenomenal. It felt good to be back on the bike and it felt good to be doing what I used to do (before the accident). Felt like things were beginning to get back to normal, even with so many changes going on.
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