29 Wednesday
While waiting for the others to wake in the morning, I went for a walk around the block to check out where the 'Seven Eleven' was. (What we would call a superette). It took about 10 minutes to complete the walk which was quite pleasant. The morning low cloud cleared away much earlier this morning and it felt a lot warmer, a promise of a hot day. When Russell and Novey had left for work at about 9:30am, Sally and I went for a walk along Rock St to the local 'middle school' which Novey says takes 10-14 year olds. Its quite a modern looking school with clean open plan single story buildings, large playing fields and sports grounds running away from Rock St and bounding a parallel road. (We later realised that this was Middle Field Rd). I noticed quite a few Magnolia Trees (Grande Flora) growing around the neighboorhood and a fair number of mature trees of different varieties. We wondered when they had been established, 40-50 years ago? Difficult to tell, but later I saw a book detailing the history of Mountain View, but didn't get a chance to read it. After a quick sandwich for lunch we set off along f/w 101 southwest connecting at the interchange to f/w 85 south and then f/w 280 east to Cupertino Shopping Mall. We got there ok without getting lost, but Sally was a nervous wreck by the time we arrived finding it difficult to keep track of where we were on a large scale book map that we had borrowed from Russell.

The virtually empty Cupertino Shopping Mall

Spacious and pleasant malls - the victims of dot com meltdown

The mall itself we found to be mostly clothing shops and not patronised very well. Novey said that the big shopping days are Saturday and Sunday. Bought a shirt and some tee shirts, had a cold coffee drink and walked the streets for a bit. It was very hot and later we saw the TV reported temperatures to be in the 90s (about 32 degree C). Noted the wide streets with large mature trees growing near the sidewalk making the area rather attractive. After a debate about the correct way to make a U turn in Wolfe St at the traffic lights we retraced our path back up the freeway to Rock St again. Later in the afternoon, Novey's friend Lisa and her boyfriend arrived from New York and after an introduction and 10 minutes of conversation, we all went to one of Russell and Novey's favourite Thai restaurants in downtown Mountain View for our evening meal. After the meal we went for a walk up and down the main St of downtown Mountain View before heading back home again. Novey's parents arrive tomorrow.