Day 2: 7pm Pleasant-on Fremont -- Mitch and Simeon's Excellent Adventure to Berkeley 2/15/08 - 2/19/08

I ran some errands and was precisely on time to my lunch date. My friend just accepted the role of president at http://www.hiperware.com/.

He is very excited about his new job. His wife just created a new store-front indoor party venue called http://www.partybees.com/ and they will open in a few weeks. She is also very excited and spent the whole day interviewing staff members for her new enterprise. It's great to see the enthusiasm of these entrepreneurs. I am bullish on their prospects and wish them both good luck. After lunch he asked if I were interested in travelling somewhere to do some manly thing, just guys. I was pretty surprised and gave it a lot of thought. I don't play golf and he does not enjoy snow camping. I was thinking of places my family would hate that we would both enjoy and came up with Pensacola. But I need to give it more thought.

The drive down 680 to Fremont brought back memories and the foot hills of Mission peak were beckoning me to run along the ridge line again. I visited some more old, close friends. He is now a performing musician, playing local clubs and composing some original guitar pieces. He is learning composition and rehearsing much of the time. His 12-year-old son is now taller than his 6'3" mom and will soon pass his very-tall dad in height. He is the star of his basketball team as one might imagine.

I spent a long time talking to everyone and headed back up North around 6:30pm. Simeon "texted" (sent a SMS message) that he would be debating until 10pm.

We got back from Thai dinner at 1045pm. Over dinner, Simeon explained his debate rounds. After breakfast he had only water and chocolate (no lunch or dinner until 10pm) and was not hungry for dinner. Simeon won his first three rounds easily in the morning and was paired against the Stanford tournament champion (National champ from Texas) in the fourth round. The kid was the most charismatic, "magical" opponent Simeon has encountered. The judges had English language problems so both debaters slowed the debate down to a crawl, speaking slowly, carefully, and enunciating each syllable of each ultra-terse phrase. Simeon said the entire round was surreal and he was crushed by the champ. He will probably advance to the finals (he won all later rounds) and we may be here until Monday night, sigh. Simeon took some time between rounds to explore the facilities at Berkeley. The EECS department has older class rooms and facilities while the history department buildings are newly-renovated. There are power and Ethernet for laptops everywhere, in all class rooms of the campus.

I really love the clear skies, sunshine and overall atmosphere of this "bay area" and miss it dearly.