Today was the annual Bay to Breakers race that runs across San Francisco – starting on the east side on Embarcadero (next to the San Francisco Bay), cutting across the city and the Golden Gate Park, and coming out to meet the Pacific Ocean. The Mozilla people planned to meet at Cupid’s Span to prepare for the race and pass out Firefox swag, and I found some of them at the Mountain View Caltrain station at 6am.

Sunny day in SF from Cupid’s Span

The train was packed with a ton of people – some of which were race participants, but the majority were going for the “parade.” The latter group had all sorts of costumes dressing up like superheros or McDonald products (fries, milkshakes, Hamburglar). Quite a few people brought refreshments (some loaded up with shopping carts), but these drinks aren’t the ones that help them go faster in the race.. not that they were worried about getting to the finish line in the first place. 😉

By the time we got to San Francisco, there was a huge crowd, so I walked towards the starting point with some UIUC friends hoping to eventually find the Mozilla people later. We made a quick stop to grab some drinks and breakfast, but by the time we finished, the race had started promptly at 8am, so the Mozilla people were nowhere to be found at the meeting spot.

So I decided to take some detours through the city following one street off of the main parade to later catch up with Team UIUC. The nice part about not getting lost in the crowd is that I could take stops and examine the various decorations around the city. Also interesting to note was that as I ran down the street parallel to the main race, there were extremely long lines of cars going in the other direction – seems like the only way to downtown San Francisco from south of the race was going to the Bay and up Embarcadero.

Art at the Child Development Center

1 hour 41 minutes in and not even halfway

Highest intersection of the race (3mi mark)

I soon caught up to my friends, and we witnessed all sorts of interesting sights to see (and some you don’t want to see). The entrance to the Golden Gate Park is near the 4 mile mark, and this is where many people left the race to party party party with plenty of drinks and music and crazy outfits to go around.

Arrr matey.. one of the many floats

Team UIUC finished the race with a time just over 3 hours – not that we began at 8am or the starting line..

Windy end of the race (but still sunny)

It’s been just under 4 years since high school graduation, and it’s already time to officially end the undergraduate program by getting my B.S. degree in Computer Science. Things have gone by especially fast this last semester with all the work in gathering data and writing the M.S. thesis – one of the opportunities provided by the combined M.S./B.S. program in C.S. There’s always stuff happening like moving into the house off-campus 2 years back and starting Teaching Assistantships 3 semesters ago, so being very busy seems to make time go by much faster.

Shaking hands with the Engineering Dean

But graduating doesn’t seem to change too much – I’ll be back at UIUC for the Ph.D. program in Computer Science for Fall 2007. Well, one difference is that I’ll need to take several classes each semester again and not just one like last semester, but learning is fun and I’m sure I’ll be making plenty more trips to Siebel Center for classes and research.

Entrance to Siebel Center for Computer Science

On a side note to potential Master’s students, your gown gets extra wings on both sides and a “hood” that comes with an extra tail at the bottom. These are the rewards for your extra effort (and $12 more for the rental fee). Note: I don’t think the wings and tail will help you fly. 😉

Additional fancy stuff for Master’s graduates