Monday, April 07, 2008

Don't Blink!

On a grim note, someone used CalTrain to end their life this morning. At least thanks to the rider-run CalTrain Twitter Feed I knew what was up before I left the house, and was able to avoid the hassle of a disrupted train service and bike the whole way.

The most direct route takes me across Stanford, where I passed this statue of a weeping angel.

If you are a fan of Doctor Who, this may creep you out a bit and remind of you a bit of this episode.

There is an interesting history to this statue. I'm going on scattered memory here, but I believe it was originally a memorial to the Stanfords' son, who died young, and for whom the university is named (that's why it's Leland Stanford Junior University). It was originally under a dome, which collapsed in the 1906 earthquake. It was decided to leave it without the dome, letting it in part become a memorial to victims of the earthquake.

3 comments:

Yokota Fritz said...

Depending on the train you were on the delay really wasn't that much. I was on NB #231 (the same one as SFist Dan, who reported on the fatality), bailed at Mountain View to ride my bike to Menlo, then five minutes later the train screams past me. The train then made an unscheduled stop at Palo Alto, where it waited to get through the single tracking.

Susan said...

You need to set up your blog so you don't get spam! Just go in your control panel and turn on the word verification (or something like that).

Nick said...

Done!