OFF WE GO !

The view from the covered patio here on Mockingbird Lane in Palo Alto overlooks a tree-covered valley and hazy, distant, forested hills. Aside from the persistent construction noise nearby, all is quiet, sunny and serene.
 

We're relaxing a bit after our twelve hour travel marathon taking us from Shaker Heights early this morning to the Akron-Canton Airport for a 6:15 AM FRONTIER airline flight to San Francisco via Denver, Colorado. Actually, the whole trip so far has seemed much more tolerable than often is the case, likely because we weren't headed overseas as has often been true in the past; the five or six hours spent in the air seemed a piece of cake compared to other (long, long, long) flights we've taken previously!

All along the way, moreover, we've remarked on the general level of civility and general good humor encountered everywhere, from the genial shuttle bus driver at our departure airport to the counter help at the car rental location here in the Bay Area. That, too, surely has lowered the potential travel anxiety level considerably.

The time here on the West Coast is just a bit before 2:00 PM in the afternoon; but, of course, it seems more like late afternoon to us. Nonetheless we're settling in nicely. We're fortunate in that the area is somewhat familiar, even after nearly fifty years away, and that our hostess won't be back until tomorrow evening. We're pretty much on our own 'til then with very little on our agenda – which makes the adjustment process even less stressful.

Within an hour and a half of our arrival (and after picking up our rental car), we stopped for an early (and leisurely) lunch in downtown Palo Alto at La Strada, an Italian restaurant on University Avenue, which we enjoyed immensely – nothing beats alfresco dining, believe me! The entire downtown area struck us as VERY different from the cityscape we recall from our Stanford days: much more upscale and prosperous than remembered, with lots of dining options unimaginable “back in the day”.

That observation allows us, appropriately enough, to introduce a major theme for this particular travel experience. The principle reason for this trip, of course, is to attend our niece's wedding, coming up in Santa Monica ten days from now. However, we're also reconnecting with lots of good friends who all happen to be living in the Bay Area currently, friends (and family) who have been a part of our lives for decades.

Some of these connections go back to growing up years in Massachusetts and Illinois; some, to Peace Corps days. Other friendships date from our time at Stanford in the late 1960s. We'll even be visiting with folks from our years in Shaker Heights who have migrated out here to the West Coast. In fact, we're pretty much visiting with friends and family from each and every stage of our collective lives together and even earlier.

Although we generally have kept up over all these years, we haven't visited with many of these folks since at least 2006, many even longer ago than that. Hence the notion of a “reboot”, not unlike the one we experienced when we went back to Surat Thani and Bangkok, Thailand, in 2003. Then, that sense of what the country and the culture were like when we lived there in the 1960s was quickly replaced by a sense of the reality of contemporary life in the early twenty-first century, not unlike the transformation we're likely to be encountering here in California over the days ahead.

As we go along, we'll try to tie everything together for you as this recasting of our own personal history takes place. We hope you will enjoy this ride “Back to the Past” with us as we experience the inevitable “real life” transformation of Past into Present as it takes place in real time.

And so begins another Makela travel adventure ...