Run #9: Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Center for Clinical Sciences Research (CCSR), Center for Educational Research at Stanford (CERAS)

Only three buildings today, and, yes, I'm a day late again, so really it was yesterday.

This whole crazy adventure began because we felt like we were doing the same routes over and over again, so we figured going to obscure buildings would solve that problem.  It is sort of better, but we're finding we're running along the same streets and paths.  It seems like a lot of the time we're going from "this side" to "that side", and there are only so many ways to get there.  We seem to run down Santa Teresa almost every time, or at least it feels like that.

So, today we started off with another run up the hill by the golf course.  To get there, we avoided Santa Teresa and ran straight through the middle of a dry Lake Lagunita.  It may not have been a well thought-out plan, as Ira sort of tripped on the uneven ground at the beginning and hurt himself a bit, so we had to pause for a stretching break.

Our weird route did take us right by this object, which we had seen from afar on our previous run.

Does anyone have any idea what this is?  It looks like some sort of "cage", but we can't figure out what kind of animal you could keep inside.  Birds or small mammals could get through the gaps in the mesh, and a larger animal could either gnaw through the mesh or scurry under it.  And we couldn't figure out why a person would be in there, since it doesn't provide any shade or anything.  Weird.

Eventually, we got to our first stop, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences.  It is way at the top of the golf course hill, and we'd actually been there before when we were confused  by the location of our first stop on this whole adventure: 30 Alta Road.  (Oh, the good old days, when we really didn't know what we were doing.)  As always, a pretty view, and we won't be back up this hill for a while.

Our next stop was the Center for Clinical Sciences Research (CCSR), which is in the Med School.  I got mixed up and was looking for the building on the left side of the path, but it is actually on the right, so we had to stop and check my phone.  (My bad!)  I think this would probably get my vote for the coolest looking building on campus anywhere, especially if there was a "New Architecture" category, since it is tough to beat the a classic like Memorial Church.  I always think they should film some science fiction movie here, since it looks so futuristic.  Lots of glass and cool angles.  I'm such a fan I'm posting two pictures.

Our last location was the Center for Educational Research at Stanford (CERAS).  This is really close to Wilbur Field, and we almost thought about saving it for our next run.  However, we felt silly about having a run with only two stops, so we checked it off the list.  Ira's office is in this building, and we actually started here because I left my backpack in his office.  Not much to say, and Ira spends so much time in this building that I'll leave any historical anecdotes for the peanut gallery.

Oh, and we had some good conversations on the run, including KMo's trip to the Genius Bar to fix his MacBook Air, the fact that Stanford is favored by way to many points over UC Davis, and high school students mis-using twitter.  And a few other things I can't remember now.

Distance: 4.1 miles (note to mathematicians out there - I will always be rounding down, although I'm not sure why; maybe I don't trust the accuracy of Ira's pedometer).  We're at 42.5 miles total.