Stanford Stories II – Water for the Bay Area

My second week at Stanford flew by. After moving into my cozy apartment with a small garden, I finished a project with one of our summer students. Since I arrived here, it has been constant 27 – 29°C or 80 – 85°F for my American friends. By the way, a handy trick to quickly convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius is to take the temperature in °F “subtract 30 and divide by 2” (to be more accurate, you can subtract 32 and multiply with 0.56 😉

We even got a few drops of rain here at Stanford on Wednesday afternoon, which is very unusual between April and November. This actually made me wonder where all the water that is consumed in the Silicon Valley – ca. 440 liter (116 gallons) per person per day and a population of ca. 3 million people – originates from. The answer to that question is quite astonishing. Most of the water for the Silicon Valley is coming via an 269 km long aqueduct from the “Hetch Hetchy” reservoir in Yosemite Valley.

In 1934, to commemorate the completion of the aqueduct, the San Francisco water department build the Pulgas water temple at the end of the aqueduct. I discovered this picturesque neoclassical temple with its Corinthian columns and a dazzling turquoise pool during my Saturday morning bike ride along Cañada Road.

Now it is time to continue my hunt for an even better second hand road or gravel bike such that I can do even longer rides to discover many more of those places. Yesterday evening we met with other visiting students and postdocs and one of them put in a Stanford hiking and cycling group. So I am sure that there will be many more adventures, blog posts and photos to come.