Driving out of Silicon Valley to the Pacific Ocean

As I called out in presenting at hadoop summit (archiving evolving databases in hive), I was lucky enough to go out to San Jose to speak at an industry conference, but I was UNlucky enough to be catching the Thursday night red-eye back home. 

Like I always try to do, I turned lemons into lemonade.  I had a few extra hours before needing to get up to the SFO airport, I had my hands on a cool Dodge Challenger, and I was lucky enough to find another conference-goer, Frank Romano, who was catching another red-eye home and as excited as I was to make the most out of a very beautiful California day.

As the next two images from the top of my hotel indicate, San Jose has nice views looking to the ridge line in the east.

The ridge line to the west looked just as pretty, but we knew on the other side was the mighty Pacific Ocean and we had to see it.  A whole lot of twists & turns finally got us to the top and the view back into the valley was awesome!

We raced down the other side to finally arrive at Pomponio State Park along California's Highway 1 for another great view.

Being just south of San Francisco, you can understand the foggy skies. 

I also captured the sounds of the ocean for Gretchen in the following video as she loves to hear the waves rolling in.

Frank and I stopped in Pacifica at a restaurant called Moonraker for some delicious seafood.  This was the view from just outside.

What a great couple of hours and if you are feeling the slightest bit jealous, I'll let you know that I had an absolutely miserable flight home!