On Sunday 29th Wendy and Kenny invited us to join them for a “little” walk. Wendy is a dear friend of mine from Harvard. We lived in the same house on campus and she put up with me as a roommate one summer in Boston. She’s an MD-PhD student at Stanford, and Kenny, her boyfriend, is a hotshot investment banker! What was supposed to be a 4-5 mile hike, turned into an 11.5 mile one! I’m relieved to know that contrary to all prior experience, Wendy is not always right In the end, we didn’t mind the length of the hike one bit, since the scenery and company were so pleasant! Big Basin is the oldest State Park in California. It’s filled with Coast Redwood trees, but not the Giant Sequoia variety, which grows more inland. Most of the Redwoods were charred inside – apparently they have fire retardant bark which allows them to survive forest fires. We’ll think twice before accepting another hiking invitation from these two, but the day was great!

With Corey’s birthday already passed, and Dad’s just around the corner, we decided it was time for a trip to Ventura. The timing could not have been better, since my family’s most recent purchase has made the 5 hour drive to Ventura a lot less painful …2 smoking hot fast and furious wave runners!!! We drove down the coast late on Friday night with Severin to keep us company. Dinner was at In-N-Out, a tradition to be upheld on all future trips down South. We dropped Severin off in Santa Barbara for a wild and crazy weekend (see his blog for details) and continued down to Ventura. It was great to be together the five of us for the first time in a long while, and the waverunners were awesome! We drove them up the coast to Santa Barbara (about a 3 hour drive) – Corey, Noe, and I on one, and Mom and Dad on the other, all in our sexy wetsuits. We were screaming at 40mph, but the throttle was only halfway in! It’s so much more fun than just riding them on a lake- the waves are totally unpredictable. Santa Barbara is one of those beautiful people places, so you can imagine how it felt to arrive there after getting pounded in the face by waves for three hours smelling like sea kelp We all had dinner together at the harbor. Most of you know or can at least imagine how good a fondue tastes after snowboarding/skiing all day – guacamole and chips after waverunnering – it’s the same effect! Sunday was more low key, but great too. We had a birthday brunch at home and then flew kites on the beach before leaving. The drive down and back is actually more manageable than we thought it would be. It goes surprisingly fast, especially with things like In-n-Out and Severin’s stories of UC Santa Barbara parties along the way. Below some pics. Hope to do it again soon!

On the same floor as my office at Google we have a small kitchen with lots of different drinks, fruits, a real espresso machine, …. Next to the kitchen is the pool table, and next to the pool table is this ball pool for kids. You wouldn’t believe how many Googlers play in that ball pool! Of course I had to try it out as well.

At one of the first lunch breaks I had at the main cafeteria at Google another intern, Benjamin, took this picture of me. You recognize those umbrellas from Google Maps if you turn on the Satelite view: View of Google.

Ten days ago a bunch of other Google interns dragged me to a paintball place. We shot at each other for three hours in the beating sun. After that first paintball experience I have enough for a couple of years. It’s too close to a real shooting if you ask me. I don’t want to sound like a wussy but when you get hit by a paintball it hurts! I ended up with a douzen brouzes or so – I probably need to work on my dodging techniques.

I started working at Google on Tuesday . It’s simply awesome! I am sure that everything you have heard so far about Google is a pure understatement of how cool and exciting it is to work there!Anyway, as a Noogler (new Googler) I haven’t quite started working yet since there is a lot to read (to get up to speed) and classes to attend. But I already have my own office space with balloons for my first day .

There is one thing though that is really frustrating! I can’t talk about anything that I learn or do at Google with non-Googlers. As much as I would like to share all the (really) cool stuff (-|||-) I learn about, but I can’t .Food is great! People are really cool and interesting. I have started biking to work. I haven’t yet tried out the Volley Ball court in front of my office . Please come visit so that I can invite you to the delicious Google restaurant!

Today we decided to try out kite flying on Californian beaches. We drove to San Francisco to the ultimate kite store. See for yourself!

We bought a flexifoil kite which is good practice for future kite surfing . We almost got their biggest kite which had a span of 2.6m but chose to take the cheaper, more reasonably sized one to start (~2m). Our kite came with a great bag and two different kinds of handles to fly it: a bar (like the one used for kite surfing) or two separate wrist bands.

After a quick lunch on the Half Moon Bay beach (nicest beach in our area) we launched. It was awesome! Wind was great and after just about 5 min of training we were competing to see who could do the most loops in a row. Score: Amanda – 12, Noé – 15!

 Short movie will follow soon ! As you can see we had a good time . 

Today, Sunday, we rented three mountain bikes and headed off for a first ride in the close foothills. Three? Yes, I forgot to tell you that Severin is staying with us for a couple of days. Severin studies (or studied) computer science with me at ETH. He just started a six month internship at Stanford. As I said, we rented three great, professional looking, full suspension mountain bikes from the bike store next door. With only little difficulty we managed to load all three bikes into our car. And off we were.

After approximately 40 minutes of driving on windy, very swiss mountain-road reminding, full of crazy, dangerous race bikers road we arrived at Windy Hill Open Space. That’s a natural park open to pedestrians, horses and bikes on some trails. After a very short glimpse at the map we were on our bikes hitting the pedals. After roughly 20 minutes of steep decent we started to wonder if we should go back up before losing all the energy and motivation required to climb up the 270 meters of incline. So we went back up to the car.

Since we weren’t worn out yet after the steep way back up to the car, we stacked the three bikes back into the trunk and drove to another spot called Russian Ridge. This time we (tried to) read the map more carefully to find a nice loop with decent slopes. The scenery at that second spot was gorgeous. The views were just fabulous. This second trail was much better than the first one, although we still managed to reach a dead end and were obliged to retrace our steps

If you are still reading, you might also spend some time looking at the actual route on Google Maps here.

After that first mountain bike ride we all were quite dead, but Amanda, Severin an I all loved it very much. You are likely to here more about mountain biking in California in the future . On the way home we stopped for a little treat at the local Jamba Juice.

I will start to work at Google in two days .
In the mean time I bought a new bike to commute everyday.

Google Maps has a cool feature that enables you to draw your own maps. Today I spent some time doing my own bike commuting map. Check it out. Also if you like bikes, checkout my new bike .

I’ll let you know how this route is in reality apart from the virtual world of the internet.

After two long flights (Zurich – Atlanta, Atlanta – San Francisco) I finally arrived exhausted in SFO where Amanda was waiting for me in our “new” car. Amanda’s parents kindly gave us their “old” red Volvo 850 which is the perfect car for us (today we just used it to carry three mountain bikes – they fit!).

Our apartment has 2 rooms (bedroom and living room) – the right size for us. We also have a patio that is big enough for us to eat with two friends. It’s great!

Palo Alto is really nice, Stanford campus is even nicer! The main street in Palo Alto is called University Avenue. On both sides of the street there are mostly nice little restaurants and Apple Stores (the new iPhone is awesome, I can’t believe it!). It’s the first time I see such large side walks for pedestrians in the US – I missed that everywhere else. There are also nice trees along the street. If you go west on University Avenue you will enter Stanford Campus where the street changes name and becomes Palm drive. That comes from the fact that there are huge palm trees on each side of the road. I tell you, Stanford is vacation all year long!

The weather is nice every day. It’s unbelievable!

I think you get it: I’m doing fine. Amanda says hi! I hope you are booking flights to come see us!

Links:
Our apartment building using Google Street View
Our address using Google Maps

If you are sending us mail, please address letters to

Amanda & Noé Lutz
63 Abrams Court Apt #113
Stanford,  CA 94305
USA