The last stop on the first US leg of my journey took me to my favorite major American City: San Francisco. A business, cultural, entertainment, and dining hub of Northern California, the San Francisco Bay Area is famous for its streetcars, liberals, universities (Stanford, Berkley, UCSF), and Silicon Valley with its many dotcom giants. (not to mention the year-round pleasant weather). I helped my good friend Jacek move into Stanford (where he’ll be attending law school, tossing around a frisbee, and, I imagine, attending law school. Good luck my friend, all my best.) We spent two days exploring Palo Alto and the Stanford campus, and I toured both the business school and the law school. (possible prospective schools, for a later date in my life…a much later date…) I’ve always have had a fascination with Stanford in its combination of old world class with new age entrepreneurial spirit and its ability to draw some of the world’s best scholars, students, and practitioners (including Jacek and the University of Iowa’s good friend, Bob Bowlsby, Stanford’s new Athletic Director. Hey Bob!).

After leaving Jacek to the palm trees and grassy knolls of Stanford, I headed downtown to meet with Amy from Airtreks to discuss possible round-the-world ticket routing for the second leg of my trip (starting in May 2007). No decisions yet, but Amy was extremely helpful and gave me a lot to think about as the travels move forward. Afterward, I met up with my my friend Alex, entrepreneur and social advocate, who recently moved from Iowa City to San Francisco with his start-up Payrent.com. Check out his blog www.alexlavidge.com.

After an all too brief cup of coffee, I drove down to San Jose (about 1 hour south) to catch up with Katie Coates, an Iowa City/Cedar Rapids native and my guardian angel for the summer. She was on a four week assignment in San Jose for her engineering job at Rockwell Collins in Iowa City. Katie, I’m glad we were able to connect 700 miles from home, thanks for seeing me off my final night in the States. Come to Hong Kong, I owe you dinner.

Jacek, Alex and Katie, thanks for making my San Francisco stop so memorable. Now only a 14 hour flight between me and China.

I’ve posted some photos from San Francisco (see link below). Since I didn’t have enough time to get all the way around the city, I’ve included a few extra photos I took from a visit two years ago with my family. As with all the photo galleries for this trip, my goal is capture what the place feels like, or at least, what it felt like to me.