Tour de San Francisco

Look forward to catching just a glimpse of the T-Mobile International pro cycling race (link here and here) taking part in downtown San Francisco this Sunday. All of the headliners will be participating including Lance Armstrong and his U.S. Postal team, Bobby Julich, Levi Leipheimer, etc. Should be awesome actually seeing them live and up close, especially as they tackle the punishing Taylor Street climb.

It's Like Africa Hot

This late summer heat wave in the Bay Area has been an unwelcome surprise. I heard from a colleague that it was a sweltering ninety degrees in the Outer Sunset District of San Francisco the past few days. That is astounding for an area that is typically blanketed in fog and never gets much warmer than the upper sixties. Another colleague who is on maternity leave and has been working from home out in Pleasanton has had her air conditioning system going round-the-clock, with the plus one hundred degree highs baking her roof. What is up with the weather? If it gets any hotter, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) may just rise from his grave and take back his quip, "the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco". A more apropos quote is the one from the Matthew Broderick character in the film remake of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues: "It's like Africa hot".

Cal 56, Air Force 14

Cal won its season opener convincingly and made a strong argument for all of the preseason hype as well as the top 15 national rankings from both the AP and ESPN polls. Rodgers and Arrington both looked solid as did the offensive line. And freshman tailback Lynch is clearly the real deal. I had the live stream of the game playing on my wi-fi enabled laptop at a Starbucks in the Santana Row shopping district of San Jose, and the neighboring cafe patron turned out to be a Cal grad as well. He pulled his chair alongside my laptop, and we formed an impromptu Cal rooting section. Good times.