I visited my parents in Palo Alto in early December. This time I took the shuttle service from the airport. It was very nice.
On the day of my return, the shuttle van picked me up at 7:30 am, and went to a hotel on El Camino not far from Page Mill to pick up another passenger. This person was a mathematician, attending a conference at Fry Electronics. I used to look forward to visiting Fry's. It is a big store with all kinds of geeky stuff. And the service was always nice. As it turned out, there is a Mr. Fry. And he was a mathematician. He now hosts a week-long conference every week, and invite mathematicians from all over the world to attend. Each week's conference has a particular topic. Guests arrive on Sunday. The conference is from Monday to Friday. On Saturday the guests go home.
I had never heard of this. Quite interesting. It seems that this shuttle service company is contracted to provide airport transfers for Mr. Fry's guests.
We went back on Oregon Expressway but shortly he made a left turn to a side street. Picking up another passenger? I wondered. He slowed down and pointed to a house and said, "That's Steve Jobs' house".
The other day when I was with Andrew to view two apartments, we had about 45 minutes in between the two appointments. He asked me if I would like to go see Jobs' house. I said no. It seemed too intrusive. I'm sure if I lived there I would hate to have strangers driving or walking by all the time. But this shuttle driver did not ask or announce it until we were right in front of the house so I did not feel guilty.
The driver did not stop but slowed down a bit while our van passed in front of the house. It is a big house by "regular" people's standards. The house is very simple but charming, built of stone with tiled (slate?) roof. A very simple, relaxing garden. But there were several vans in the driveway. Our driver told us that the security people showed up only after the death of Steve Jobs. This certainly is very different from Bill Gates' 40 million dollar castle.
The house is on the corner of Waverley and Santa Rita, I think. It happened too fast for me to take notes of the street names. It is really within walking distance from parents' house. For all the years I did not know Steve was there, "within reach".
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