Driving down to and returning from my second interview at Yahoo!, back in February, I was weighing the merits of employment against those of a Masters education, juxtaposed against the realities of working 50 miles from home and studying 3000 miles from home. Lounging most heavy in my mind were the changes that would manifest transitioning from the 9-4 life of a student living 300 yards from campus and that of a full-time designer working 9 hours bracketed by a combined four-hour commutes

Amidst the downsides, I did see one bright spot that I held to: The Parallax View.

Parallax, the difference between two views of the same scene perceived from slightly seperated points in space, is what gives us stereoscopic vision and a perception of depth. Two simultaneous viewpoints give your brain the information it needs to construct a better picture of the world around it. Similarly, living in Berkeley (northeast SF Bay) and working in Sunnyvale (South Bay) gives me a better perspective on the bay area as a whole.

History: Back in 1994, when Karen and I moved out of our El Cerrito apartment, me to regress back into the dorms (Clark Kerr, building 9 single-in-a-suite) and her to a shared apartment deep in silicon Santa Clara to intern at IBM, the 50 miles between Berkeley and Santa Clara seemed like the voids of the Baja peninsula, ill-defined and forboding. It was a big deal to drive down now and then to see my best friend, or to take BART->bus->lightrail->bus for the same journey. In retrospect it's hard (and a bit depressing) to believe we didn't see each other more often, but from a single-point perspective from a small Berkeley dorm room and a car bearing a moniker of 'deathtrap' and a hood secured with a chain and padlock, the South Bay seemed far, far away.

Later, as more of my friends moved to the South Bay, or at least south of Berkeley, that world started to seem a little closer. For the better part of a year Ammy and I would split the distance for dinner meeting at Hobee's in Fremont. Even then, the measure from Berkeley to Fremont seemed only a bit shorter than the full drive to Santa Clara.

After living with Karen I began a long tradition of getting close to the geographically remote: Liz/Fair Oaks/95 miles/79 minutes, Dana/Davis/63 miles/60 minutes, Crystal/Vallejo/24 miles/30 minutes, Emily/Pleasanton/37 miles/32 minutes. Yet even pushing down the interstate asphalt that lay between the point-source of home and the point-destination of a significant other did little to make the Bay Area seem any closer or more accessable. I'm not sure whether that's because visiting a girlfriend is different than going to a party in The City, or because all of the above lived east of me, and thus represented an exodus from, and not an exploration of, the Bay Area.

Zipping back to the now, driving (or taking the train, as I am at this moment) to and from Sunnyvale on a daily basis has done a lot towards bringing a sense of depth and perspective to my own personal Bay Area geography, consequently bringing the more distant reaches closer to home.

With one foot at each pole of the Bay, suddenly diverting to Mountain View, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Hayward, or Alameda after work isn't nearly the arduous journey that it once was for the Berkeley-laden student.

Of course, all this space comes at the expense of time. As it is when I take the train I leave home at 7 am and get back at around 7:30 pm, so any extra-vehicular activity seriously cuts in to the four personal hours before my own self-mandated bedtime, but as long as I have waystations closer to work where I can bide the night and shortcut the sixthday transit, the Bay has come into my grasp. Like the sojourner gunning down Baja with a second tank of gas in the back to bridge the gap, so I now have both the perspective and the pit-stop to fully explore my decade-home, a palace with too many rooms that I rarely think of and never visit. (Do you get the gist of the post now?)