Vacation in California, part 2

Adelaida peruses an advertisement at the reunion breakfast

Friday morning of our California vacation marked a change in focus, from relaxing with close friends to reunion-related activities. We walked to campus for a reunion breakfast, where we happened to sit at a table with a Class of 1970 graduate who was both in Page House and from Loveland, CO! He and Dale talk for quite a while about Loveland and how it has changed in the past thirty years, and he had actually gone to high school with Dale's dad. Small world!

Caltech is a very dynamic campus, so one of the first things offered Friday morning was an architectural overview of the campus, with a focus on new buildings (several buildings were new to us, ten years removed from Caltech, while almost every building was new to the Techers who graduated in 1940 and 1945!). The session started with a talk about the different buildings, then dispersed into small groups for an architectural tour. Please remember that Adelaida was about ten hours behind on sleep at this point, so took a nice long nap on my shoulder during the talk! Our architectural tour group was small -- the tour guide, Dale, me, Adelaida, and our good friend from college Karen, who we hadn't seen in ten years but our friendship picked up right where we left it ten years ago!

Here are some of the things we saw on our campus tour and later that day.

The old oak tree in front of Parsons-Gates is not only protected by pillars and wires, but now also by a fence!


A beaver was designed into the tilework on the new Dabney Hall floors.


Adelaida tours the campus on Dale's shoulders. (Her shirt says "Daddy's Girl".)


Something that struck me when viewing these pictures was the lack of people in them. We toured the campus on a Friday mid-morning (11-12), and saw almost no one other than our small group. In fact, the only picture of the campus I took with another human being in it was the one below, with one person walking along the north edge of the reflecting pool.


One of the more disappointing things I saw on campus was this mural in Page. It was painted over Starry Night, one of my favorite wall paintings in Page House!


After that stroll down memory lane, we headed over to the athletic facilities to find trophies with Dale's name on them (yes, really!) and see Julie. On the way to the gym, we stopped at Throop Garden, which has become overrun with turtles since we left.

Lots of turtles! Adelaida touched one, but mostly just watched them.


This is the Caltech Athlete of the Year trophy, with Dale's name engraved for 1998-1999. Yes, I dated a collegiate athletic superstar!


We met up with Grant and Anara for a late lunch, and I took this cute picture of the men and the girls. Again, there are no signs of life on campus, except our group!


Karen and Ron joined us for lunch, after which we gathered at our hotel to chat and swim.

More about this trip later!