50th High School Reunion

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Friday started off real early, like 4:00 AM early, as we got ready to catch an early morning flight to San Jose, CA by way of Salt Lake City. As is often my luck, the center seat passenger muffin topped over into my seat for the four and a half hour flight to Salt Lake. That, coupled with the minimalist legroom for someone my height, left me very uncomfortable. The shorter flight to San Jose was not as bad even though the plane was half the size of the first leg. San Jose airport has been completely redone since my last visit. It is now huge, and pretty well lain out. While we did not use it, the parking structure looks to be a vast improvement over the earlier parking arrangement.

We drove to Dinah’s Garden Hotel in Palo Alto and got checked in. We have a nice small room with a view of the pool. We don’t plan to spend much time in it, so size is not an issue. 

View from room

Since I left my sunglasses in the car when we left Orlando we took a drive over to the Stanford Shopping Center. Once I had replacement sunglasses we drove through old haunts on the way to Saratoga and dinner with my brother Bob and his wife Karen.

1970's Menlo Park hangout, the Dutch Goose. Steamers and Anchor Steam Beer!

Home during my elementary and high school years

Parent's home while I was in the Army prior to their move to Europe

Saratoga is a nice quiet community nestled in the hills west of San Jose. We had a great outdoors Italian meal while watching the steady stream of cars heading for the BB King & Robert Cray concert at the Paul Mason vineyard a little further up in the hills.

It was a very long, but rewarding day.

Up at the crack of noon Saturday we drove over to the Los Altos HS campus for a lunch at tour. The culinary arts students at the high school prepared the lunch, and they did an admirable job. The lunch was great, and we got to meet some of the fellow alumni prior to dinner tonight. The tour was interesting. There is a lot that is the same, just upgraded and cared for, but there is a lot that is new such as a large theater and two-story math and sciences building. There is a dedicated auto shop where it was once an adjunct to the metal shop. There is no longer a woodshop, but there is a magnificent commercial kitchen supporting the before mentioned culinary curriculum. Another two-story classroom building is under construction for the language department and other classes. Our original library was not much bigger than a classroom. Now they have a very nice large modern library with plenty of digital resources. The classrooms are also updated with computers and digital chalkboards that allow the teachers to save to disk what ever is presented on the blackboard (actually white, by the way).

Finally a desk that fits the average guy!

A good time was had by all!