The Exploratorium

We first stopped to get some lunch. As I think I've mentioned before, Hobees is a favorite brunch spot for many folks I know in the Bay Area, and Trish had never been. When Tracy visited last November we tried and failed to find a Hobees which was supposedly located near me. I later found it, in a different part of the dying mall on Winchester Blvd across from the Winchester Mystery House, which also contained the Togo's we ate at. So I figured I'd take Trish there.

Well, it turns out that the dying mall has died; almost all the store fronts were vacant, buildings were being demolished, and most of the mall was fenced off. The Hobees building is gone, and the Togo's front is vacant. Bummer! Well, maybe they'll build something better there. (There's also a huge amount of demolition going on in downtown Campbell right now, and maybe they're going to try to revitalize what it otherwise a pretty boring downtown, possibly in anticipation of light rail from San Jose being built to here in a few years.)

So instead we headed off to the Cupertino Hobees, and we apparently got there early enough to completely beat the brunch rush; I think it's the first time I've ever been to Hobees and not had to wait. I tried the hash browns (which were fine, but not as yummy as they appear), and Trish had eggs and their famous blueberry coffee cake. And then off we went.

Halfway there, I asked Trish if she'd even gone to the city along the ocean. When she said she hadn't, I took us over Half Moon Bay Drive (stopping at the top to take in the view) and we went up Route 1, past Half Moon Bay and Moss Beach, and along the bluffs south of Pacifica. Trish seemed duly impressed. It's a nice drive. I blew it and missed the turnoff for the drive along the Great Highway, though.

We decided to go to the Exploratorium, an educational museum in San Francisco at the edge of the Presidio (and therefore quite close to the Golden Gate Bridge). It's built in the Palace of Fine Arts, which opened in 1915 and has external architecture with a strong Victorian feel. (I remarked that it seemed like it wanted to appear not merely Roman, but almost like a Roman ruin, with non-functional walls surrounding the domed amphitheatre outside the main building. Weird.)

The Exploratorium itself fills the semicircular main building. The interior very much feels like early-century construction, with a huge open space, the potential for ample windows to let in light from the outside, and metal support beams across the ceiling. Very evocative of many photos in Stewart Brand's book How Buildings Learn. Quite a contrast to the ornate exterior - all the more so because little effort has been made to decorate the interior. The building's contents are placed throughout the hall with friendly signs nearby, but the walls are largely left bare, the chamber is not generally partitioned into separate rooms, and only a few exhibits have their own walls and/or surrounding decor. Were it not for the attentiveness of the staff and the sophistication of the exhibits, one might conclude that this was a museum fallen on hard financial times. (In fact, I think it's doing fine.)

The Exploratorium contains scores of exhibits illustrating the properties of nature: Biology, chemistry, physics, etc. Some exhibits are works of art (such as the whirlpool column in the photo below), while most are exhibits with which the visitor can interact. The interactive exhibits have signs next to them with several sections, usually labelled "To Do and See", "What's Going On Here?" and "So What?" - a friendly, informative approach.

Along with the static exhibits, there was also a presentation involving a woman dissecting a cow eye. Yeah, I know: Yuck! A cow's eye is a little larger than a golf ball, it appears. She removed the fat from around the eye (pieces of the eye were passed around for people to touch and examine), empties the vitreous humor from the eye, removed some gelatinous stuff from the eye, removed the cornea, and showed us various other things about the eye. Yes, it was pretty gross, but also pretty interesting. Before the show, she came out and yelled "Cow eye dissection!" and people from all directions descended on the booth.

I brought my digicam to the show (and tried to keep it away from the magnetic exhibits!), so here are some photos I took:

	A view of the hall from the main entrance. (80k) Not sure who this kid is looking at the camera. Some of my photos came out kind of blurry; I'm not the world's greatest photographer, I suppose. The electronic, magnetic and aural exhibits are mostly upstairs, while downstairs has the biological, chemical and mechanical exhibits.
	A spinning wheel on which you can spin metal discs. (60k) It was interesting to see some of the peculiar steady-states the discs could achieve (other than spinning in place at the same speed as the wheel).
	Soap film painting. (92k) You can create a large sheet of soap film and blow into it to distort it. I presume there's some "painting" aspect here which we didn't see.
	Suspending an inflatable ball above a column of air. (44k)
	Creating huge soap tubes. (88k)
	Trish took a photo of me making a soap tube and pulling it over my head. (72k) You can stretch these things for six or eight feet before they lose cohesion.
	The far end of the hall. (80k) The light columns above display fish swimming from right to left if you look at it correctly, but you can't really capture this in a photo. I want one of those things!
	The whirlpool exhibit (36k), unfortunately a blurry photo.
	The great dome and a wall in front of it. (92k) Part of the Palace of Fine Arts, these don't seem to be used except for walking around in. Some folks were taking wedding photos when we were there, and there's a nice pond to the left, in which it was bath time for the ducks. A row of homes faces the pond; I bet they're pricy!
	A straight-on view of the dome (88k), with people for scale.

One of the exhibits was a collection of pieces about the human body: Fingerprints reading, the skeleton of a child which was deformed by tuberculosis, sets of the "Visible Man" and "Visible Woman" models from my childhood, a set of photos (possibly fictional) about a 19th-century doctor who performed "auto-dissection" for others (yes, it's exactly what you think it is). Plus, a screen with a composite photo of visitors to the Exploratorium (which basically looks like a mid-20s olive-skinned female with short hair). You can add yourself to their database, and it will also provide a "reading" of your face based on traditional (presumably western) interpretations of facial features. Here's mine:

Seems pretty accurate, huh? smirk

A sign at the front desk says you should allow 2 hours to see everything. We were there more than two hours and finally left because it was getting late and we were tired! Plus, I was developing a headache and figured I needed something to drink. So if you go and want to see it all, it's probably best to allow an afternoon.

By the way, if you've ever been to Boston's Museum of Science, the Exploratorium is way cooler, in my opinion. Although I should qualify that by saying that it's been more than ten years since I was last to the Museum of Science.

We bought cookies from the coffee shop at the front of the museum and walked around for a bit. Then we headed off to drive through the Presidio and go to one of my favorite spots to view the Ocean in the city. Then we started heading back via the Great Highway and then to I-280. My headache was really killing me, so I took some aspirin (actually I think it was Acetomenophen, i.e. Tylenol-equivalent). Halfway back I found that my headache was just not going away, and I was losing my concentration. I pulled over to the Park-and-Ride lot at Woodside Road, and rested for a while. I just wasn't feeling any better, so Trish drove the rest of the way home. (Good thing I wasn't with Subrata, who can't drive stick shift!)

I was really feeling awful: Splitting headache, nausea, and sweating. It had come on pretty quickly, all things considered. We got back to my apartment a little after 7:00 and I collapsed into bed. Trish was nice enough to feed the cats and make sure I'd be okay before she departed. But I was completely out of it. After she left I turned on the radio, called Lucy to cancel our plans for the evening, and fell asleep. I woke up around 10:30 and took out my lenses, cleaned my teeth and turned everything off. And then went back to sleep. My headache was better, but still really annoying.

Boy, did I feel terrible. What a bummer. It sure was nice of Trish to look after me for a little while, though.