Santa Barbara: 07:14am - July 17th.....the kids are on the back seat, the luggage is in the trunk (although I'm still thinking that we may have got that the wrong way round)...and we're all feeling a little apprehensive as we finally leave SB on a 25 day trek across the US. I'm still waiting for the moaning, screaming and bickering to start....but for now Elizabeth is asleep on the front seat, so we're good to go....We've been getting some very amusing emails - this one from Bob in Melbourne, Australia :
This is simply the funniest thing I have heard ! Sponsorship for a car ride with nice colleges / meals along the way ! Brilliant and so Sugarmanesque ! What next ? Sponsored Liz Rodeo Drive shopathon ? It's so brilliant I can't but resist tipping some money in ! All power to your SUV mate, will call soon to discuss...
....from Louis in Greenwich, Connecticut:
The Chevy looks good. I am surprised that you are not driving the Aston and have Liz follow along later with the boys and lugguage !!!
...and from Robert in Santa Barbara:
We will be looking foward to reading your blogs and hope we don't read in our local newspaper -"wife murdered by male members of family - cause of death, stopping too many times to pee".
Thank god this was not an invite for another birthday trip for friends.
It took around 4.5 hours to reach Palo Alto and we had lunch at a great old-style restaurant called MacArthur Park, which is virtually opposite the Stanford campus. We then took the university tour which was extremely impressive...
We were taken around in a group by a senior student called Ariel who happened to be in the same class as the sister of Harley's best friend at Cate School. There is obviously still a lot of development going on at Stanford - we saw a lot of dorms and a Political Science building being constructed although their programs have almost certainly been affected by the recession like most other colleges. Anyway, we were very impressed with the look and feel of the place and Harley certainly seemed to like it. If anyone wants to ask Liz or I anything about this (or any of the other colleges) on our trip, please don't hesitate to email us (gary@hub-media.net or elizabeth@hub-media.net)
So you've acquired a reputation as one of the leading universities in the world....now are you going to jeopardise everything by admitting one of the three characters in the last picture ???
After the Stanford visit, we sat in traffic for almost two hours before we finally reached San Francisco, but more on that tomorrow...
