Livermore

In moving 36.7 miles from Berkeley, CA to Livermore, CA I have traveled back roughly twenty years in time and reentered the 90's.

I took an internship position this Summer at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA mainly because of the CA part - I wanted to come home, if only for a while. In playing out this decision I was also enacting several experiments

1. Work full time
2. Have a stable car that I know won't break down
3. Commute 73.4 miles every day
4. See if Northern California was the place where I wanted to settle down

Number three is an interesting one. I wanted to try living in Berkeley, where I had friends, family, awesome food and a wonderful climbing gym - but work in Livermore, where there are not one but two giant national labs (places I'll probably end up working for in the future). Many people commute to work - I've never been one of them - and I wanted to see if that lifestyle was something I could tolerate. Turns out, no.

After a few weeks of working nine hours and spending another two on the road I said goodbye to the organic produce, the bay, the hippies and the climbing gym and said "Hello Livermore." 

Livermore is the east-most town that could possibly call itself part of the SF Bay Area. It's home to two national labs, more Ph.D.s per capita than any other city in the U.S. and the worlds longest burning lightbulb (it's four watts). 

Despite it's academic demographics and pseudo-proximity to San Francisco, the culture of Livermore is more closely related to agricultural, inland California. Having lived in academic, liberal, and artsy-fartsy neighborhoods most of my life this was somewhat of a stark change for me. In asking for the best place to get decent produce I received a compare/contrast of the various Safeways in town (I have the luxury of living next to the newer 24/7 Mega-Safeway with it's own gas pump). The cars here are huge and, I kid you not, my housemate just got "The Internet." She even asked me if I had ever heard of Limewire (really it's better if this is a reference lost on you). 

Taking food as an example people here lose weight by buying individual frozen "lean" meals and I've oft-overheard conversations about calorie counting. Now, the hippie food movement has it's share of ludicrousness - seemingly incompatible trends grow and decay on a yearly basis - it just seems like it took sooooo long for this information to cross the 36.7 miles from Berkeley, the maelstrom of this hippie-food-revolution to Livermore. 

In fact, we can compute the speed at which information travels to be roughly 

36.7 miles / 20 years = 8 meters per day

All that being said, Livermore is actually a lovely place. It's filled with houses, cars, strip malls and chain-bistros yes but it's also filled with a kind people that strike me as completely unpretentious. This quality was perhaps absent in my past artsy-fartsy hangouts and it's quite refreshing. In addition we're surrounded by California wild, smooth hills with dry grasses, windmills, and numerous regional parks within a stone's throw's distance. Yosemite is three hours away and the bay, when I want it, is still accessible. Also, I forgot to mention that it's hot and sunny here every day without a trace of humidity. I wake up happily at 6:20 to the sunrise and take a brisk morning walk in shorts and a t-shirt. I have yet to experience a cloudy day or drop of rain. 

Would I settle down here? Probably not, but I am really enjoying myself. I can't remember a time in the past few years when I've been in such a consistently good mood.