Background
This fine year Connect Live was in San Jose California. Last year I decided to run a 36walk in San Francisco (and another one this year) so I guess that its become a tradition to run a 36walk in the host city of Connect Live. I hope that even if my luck runs out and I don’t get to go again that someone else will take up the mantle of running a 36walk next year. This walk was meet-up number 80 for me which is pretty special. Only one other individual attendee Illankovan at Connect Live had more than me and he had 83 meet-ups so we’re neck and neck in a very close race! Bring on 2020 this race can only be good for the community :).
Using only Street View I planned out the walk and hoped that San Jose had not changed too much from the Street View Imagery. I set up the meeting place as a set of dog statues at a VTA light rail station which turned out to the rainbow cat statues! Fortunately the rest of the meet-up went much better.
You can find the MyMap for this years walk here.
The Walk
The attendees in order of appearance in this video are: Paul, Penny, Christina, George, Valeria, Osama, Traci, Torben, Ludwig, Flavio, Guiseppe, Illankovan, Allehandre, Tu, Adrian, Vandana, Kimberley-Anne,Yasuyo, Jessica, Tan, Dimitru, Anna, Julien, Denise, Alejandra, Steven, Sanya, Luigi, Terri, Yukiko, Mariani, Sonia, Brittany, Anuradha, Ama??, Maria, Manuele, Gagan, Cecelia, Antony, Jesi, Jan
We started off at the San Fernando light rail because it was easy for everyone to find and would work for people already in San Jose and those commuting from San Francisco. We did our groupie shot here after the introductory video in front of the San Jose mural (the first of many we’d see) then headed off to see the Veterans Memorial (since it was Veterans Day) followed by some art works then Monopoly In The Park before heading over the Children’s Bridge to look at some more Street Art. Somehow we skipped Forager for our beer stop (which was fortunate given the closing party was here) then had a coffee/water break before visiting Quetzalcoatl and the Plaza de Cesar Chavez then more Street Art before an ice cream break at Cream. We had plans to do more but everyone seemed quite tired so we headed off to Original Gravity for beer before walking to Pizza My Heart to join Manuele’s Pizza Meet-up.
Those beers certainly went down well at Original Gravity!
We had plenty of time for a relaxed walk and socialising along the route. Judging by instagram a couple of other Local Guides were following us along the route but didn’t join in, which is a little weird but each to their own.
You can find the shared album here.
Accessibility
The entire walk and all destinations were accessible. There were accessible bathrooms in Original Gravity.
Thanks for reading my recap and I look forward to your feedback on this post.
Paul