kevin_standlee | Long Walk in Redwood Shores

I had a routine dental appointment yesterday at my dentist who I originally picked because his office was a short walk around the lagoon from my office at One Lagoon Drive in Redwood Shores. It's a bit longer trip now. To avoid having to fight my way through traffic, I took VTA light rail and Caltrain up to Belmont and walked the roughly 1500 m to the office, giving me a chance to have a look at the old office.

Here's the building at One Lagoon where Menlo Logistics rented half of the third floor from (at that time) sister company Emery. It was the second building where Menlo had a separate corporate headquarters; the original was in Menlo Park (thus the name). I was originally hired to work at the Menlo Park office (the building no longer exists). Later, after parent company CNF (later Con-Way) sold Emery to UPS (thus undoing the "virtual merger"), Menlo moved up to San Mateo and shared space in the Con-Way headquarters there. I moved on to a customer account before Menlo moved up to what turned out to be its final headquarters in San Francisco before XPO bought Con-Way and moved the renamed XPO Logistics headquarters to North Carolina. I reckon I was fortunate to find a posting before the merger/move, and that eventually led to my being able to work from home most of the time.

Here's the current tenant. Neither Emery Worldwide nor Menlo Logistics ever had their names on the building itself; however, during a period when our mutual parent company did a "virtual merger" (technically, the two companies formed an LLC), the resultant "Menlo Worldwide" logo was on the concrete pedestal sign outside the building. Attempts to mold the logo into the concrete did not go well. I could still today see the metal plate that covered up the failed sculpture.

It's a pretty nice walk along the lagoon, which was one part of the Marine World/Africa USA park before they moved to Vallejo. I never was here in the old Marine World days, so I don't know what it looked like, but the lagoon itself is very visible when sitting on the left side of an aircraft landing at SFO, as it's complete artificial — all of Redwood Shores is landfill — and is diamond-shaped, standing out from the meanders of the remaining wetlands.

My dental cleaning and exam was routine. Because they did a fluoride application, I had to kill some time before I could eat, and the place I wanted to eat was in the Belmont area nearby, so I took a walk to enjoy the area and also explore something I'd never actually visited during the years I worked here.

Very little of the Bay Area's original wetlands remain, but a small remnant is preserved here at Belmont Slough, easily visible from the walking trail that encircles the Oracle Towers. I watched the birds making their way through the tide pools, ocassionally striking something and gulping it down.

I never had gone over to the north side of the slough before, so I crossed the pedestrian bridge over the slough to the sports field complex.

After a few wrong turns (there isn't much signage), I found myself on the bike/pedestrian bridge over US-101. The mass of traffic here confirmed to me that I did the right thing in not driving. It would have been considerably faster to drive to the dentist than it was to take the light rail/train/walk, but by the time I was done, I would have been creeping through this mess for a long time, and I hate sitting in traffic, even if it still takes longer to take the train.

Eventually (including fielding a phone call from Lisa), I found myself at El Metate, which remains my favorite taqueria. I had a leisurely dinner before walking to the Belmont train station, where I had only a short wait before catching the last limited-stop train of the evening that took me back to Mountain View to take light rail back to the RV.

I logged more than 17,000 steps on my pedometer yesterday, so I only felt slightly guilty about the burrito.