California Trip - Final Day

The first time I visited San Jose was when I worked at IBM in Fishkill New York back in 1992. I was sent to a three week training course at a company named MegaTest. MegaTest has since been bought by Teradyne but I wanted to see if I could find the same building where the classes were held. I was able to determine the address of the building and it was still there, but I didn’t really recognize it since the trees were taller and the other vegetation was very different. It was still cool to find it. Lots of memories from spending all that time away from home and exploring the west coast.

Nearby is a Fry’s Electronics store which we visited just for the experience. If you read the reviews of customers you’ll see the same types of complaints that you’d see from Best Buy or the long defunct Circuit City. But, we weren’t going to buy anything, we just wanted to see the enormity of the store and its wide range of products. Inside the store it had a kind of Mayan decor which I couldn’t really figure out and I didn’t take the time to try. Our real plan for our last day was to visit the Lick Observatory which didn’t open until noon. We were just killing time.

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After stopping at a Subway (our second transgression from unique bay area restaurants) to grab some sandwiches we started the hour plus drive to the mountain. Twisty does not begin to describe the road that leads up the mountain to the observatory. Many curves had no guardrails to prevent you from driving off to oblivion, but the Nissan Sentra handled itself well, even though the power steering was whining in protest after about 10 miles of constant left and right turns. I suspected inadequate cooling of the power steering fluid to handle the abuse we were giving it.

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We arrived at the observatory at the summit of 4200 foot high Mt. Hamilton and had our lunch before going in. We were given a tour of the Great 36 inch Refractor telescope that was completed in January of 1888. The 36 inch lens was ground and polished in Boston! The fantastic observation room has a floor that raises and lowers to allow the telescope to be used from any angle including straight up. This is another incredible piece of engineering especially given that it’s 125 years old. We also saw the 3 meter reflector telescope that was completed relatively recently in 1960. Both of these telescopes have been used in major discoveries including several new moons of Jupiter and several extrasolar planets.

We wrapped up the visit at the observatory and headed back down the serpentine road to the base of the mountain and then back to San Jose. We got to the airport with plenty of time to have dinner and start the long flight back, first to Phoenix and then a red-eye back to Boston. It was another great trip together as were the first two and we are already thinking of Canada for next year. It is great to travel with my son and we hope to continue it for many years.

 

Posted on September 13, 2013 and filed under Personal.