Weekend afternoon at UC Berkeley

26 July 2009

Yesterday afternoon, I took a leisurely paced 33-mile bike ride along another of my favorite routes.
(1) College Avenue to UC Berkeley.
(2) Up Spruce (I usually go up Euclid) to the northwest corner of Tilden Park.
(3) Through Tilden Park to Inspiration Point.
(4) Down Wildcat Canyon Road.
(5) South on Camino Pablo and Moraga Way through Orinda and to Moraga.
(6) West on Canyon Road.
(7) North on Pinehurst Road through Canyon and up to the hill crest at Skyline Drive
(8) North on Skyline, past the intersection with Grizzly Peak Blvd, and then down Old Tunnel Road.
(9) Home via the frontage road on Hwy 24 and past Lake Temescal.

The ride has two significant climbs. Except on College Avenue and Camino Pablo/Moraga Way, the traffic is light. There are not too many traffic lights and not even many stop signs. The scenery is varied and interesting.

I made the pace leisurely by taking my camera and stopping whenever I saw something that seemed worth photographing. I took almost 50 photos. Of these, the best were from the UC Berkeley campus and I've posted a few here. At the top is a detail of the Sather Gate, which is located at the north end of Sproul Plaza. "Fiat Lux" ("let there be light") is the university's motto. This arch was recently restored to strengthen it from the corrosion.



The second photo shows in the background Sproul Hall, which is the main administration building for the campus. The fountain in the foreground is officially named "Ludwig's Fountain" and it is named after a dog! Here is the story, quoted from a website describing Bear Traditions (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/calhistory/traditions.html):
"A Short-Hair Pointer named Ludwig became Cal's unofficial mascot in 1960. Right after the new Student Union building was completed, he would spend his days hanging around the Dining Commons but then quickly found the fountain. He became famous for spending his days playing with students around the fountain and leaving for home promptly at 5:30pm. He was so popular, in fact, that the Regents named the fountain after him in 1961!"



The third photo is taken from a large open space north of the main campus library. You can see from the scaffolding at the top of the tower that the Campanile is currently undergoing restoration. There is a running joke around campus that "UC" doesn't mean "University of California" so much as it means "Under Construction."

The final photo shows one of the many bear statues on the campus, this one on Lower Sproul Plaza, a gift from the Class of 1929. This bear is easily overlooked because it rests on a column high above the ground level.