my first bay area digs - overview of location

Menlo Park, CA 94025

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If you switch to satellite view, it's the building on the south west corner of Waverly and Linfield. My apartment is the top floor end unit on the right side, with a view of Linfield street, and runs the full length of that piece of the building. There are only 5 units total: one up and one down on each end, and a two story unit in the middle of the U. The extension to the west of the left side is the carport. Notice the big trees to the east and west of my apartment.

If you switch back to map view, look about 1.5 miles further south on the map and you'll see Stanford's campus: south of the Stanford shopping center (built on Stanford owned land) and south of the Stanford University Medical Center.

My office will be in Meyer Library (here is a map of all the libraries on campus, which is a better way to view Meyer in context of the campus), which houses student oriented computing (academic, student residential), a cataloging group and part of my group -- Digital Library Systems and Services. Oh, and the East Asia Library. Meyer is right next to Green Library - the main branch of Stanford U Libraries. The other part of the DLSS group is in offices at Page Mill Road - an outpost short bike ride away. (Once I had an address, I asked to be in Meyer, since it's significantly closer to my apartment.)

For those that don't know, University Ave is the pedestrian friendly main drag of Palo Alto: lots of chichi shops and good restaurants. My apartment is close to University ave, and also close to the Menlo Park Library. It's about a mile away from both the Menlo Park and the Palo Alto Caltrain stations. There's a creek that runs between Willow Road (Creek Drive, even) and Palo Alto avenue, with two bike only bridges. The intersection between Sand Hill Road and El Camino Real only allows bicycles to go straight across. So it's a bike friendly area. (Stanford has so many bikes that bike crashes happen frequently -- I'll be careful.)

As far as driving goes, it's about equidistant from 101 and from 280, and it's in line with the Dunbarton bridge across the bay to Fremont, where I already have a new pal.

Certainly a location I can live with for at least a year, while I get my bearings in the area and sort out my living location priorities.