Report from Davis

Guten Tag, all. Today we are in Davis. We left Palo Alto in the morning and traverssed the same portion of 580 four times before Eric figured out freeway directions and we were on our way. We finished up our 100 mile drive just in time for the 2:00 tour that Eric had made an appointment for. It was 90 degrees in Davis, but it didn't seem too bad at the time.. Later it started to feel more humid which wasn't thta nice, but it was okay. He noted that the people seemed to be more helpful than usual here in terms of getting where we needed to be, parking, information, etc, and it seemed to be true. The tour was the longest of all the tours we have had so far, and it seemed like we saw a fair amount of the campus at UC Davis. The tourguide didn't seem much interested in Engineering, though, as we got to hear about all of the bio and ag buildings, with only a cursory "and over there is engineering." hmm.. Estimated cost of one year at UC Davis: $13,000.00. The campus seems quite nice, flat, and very bicycle friendly. The school seems to be centered upon agricultural type studies but rumor has it that ther are good computer science and engineering departments as well.After the tour, we made an emergengy (Sharon was getting hungry..) run to Carl's Jr on campus and then we went to find Ben. Well, he wasn't in his office, so we made our way back to the car and went to the Ben-Bev-Chelsea-Holly house. Sharon found the pets (Addie the dog and Margaret the calico cat) and swings and rope swing very entertaining.. a very good thing! After dinner we went over to see Mike, Sherri, Linnea, and Sylvan. Linnea was quite talkative and hyper and Sylvan managed to sleep through some very loud dog barking. After this we went back to the other Ransom house and set out from there on bicycles to see cool stuff at UCD with Ben at about 9pm. Davis apparently has the largest per-capita Bicycle population of anywhere in the US and this is easily apparent in the wide and plentiful bike roads, paths, and lanes. The UCDavis campus itself is closed to automotive traffic and the roads (complete with "roundabout" traffic circles) are primarily reserved for bicycle traffic - and apparently there is a LOT of it during the year. Bicycles must obey the 15 mph bicycle speed limit, stop at stop signs, use a headlight at night, and obey other traffic laws. The neatest thing we saw there was the "anechoic chamber" (or soemthing to that effect) which was a room where the walls were covered with fiberglass in wierd shapes having the effect of completely eliminating echos. It was very strange. Anyways, I'm going to sleep now, more later.