For some reason I was struck, while surfing some map site, that my apartment is due west of Daly City, California – by… I’m not sure, maybe 8000 km?
Why is this striking? Well, Daly City (and San Francisco, just to the north, and the redwood forests of San Mateo County, to the south) were fixtures of my childhood, and probably I still conjure images from those places on a near-daily basis, as my brain churns its always-evolving autobiography.
I grew up in Humboldt, of course – about 300 miles north, at 40 degrees latitude.
But my family made frequent road trips to the area just south of San Francisco that is now known as Silicon Valley. In the 1970s, during these family trips, it wasn’t yet known in the popular culture as Silicon Valley, although it already was – Apple was already operating, HP was there (and I think my parents knew some people who worked there), NASA-Ames was churning out high tech projects, etc.
I have very vivid memories of the stretch of highway 1 between the Golden Gate and Daly City, as it progresses down 19th Avenue, and crosses the city boundary from San Francisco at its southwest corner into the eerie, colorful ticky-tacky suburban homes of Daly City. To a hippie kid from the “sticks” such as myself, I was rapt by the idea of the City (which was, exclusively, San Francisco during my early years).
Anyway, I guess what’s striking is that I make my home at the exact same latitude, on the opposite side of the Pacific. What would my 8-year-old self have made of the idea that at 50 I would be living so far away?
[daily log: walking, 1 km]