snow white

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr6pxF3CL58

 Funny seeing 3 of the lion kingdom day jobs from the superbowl formation.

 

 

The bald eagle's path was also visible.

 

1 last photo of the hills from this spot. 

 

 Lions surmised the finished product would look like Emeryville.

 https://sfyimby.com/2025/12/construction-imminent-for-6200-bollinger-canyon-road-san-ramon.html

 

 That's actually a new road & sidewalk next to the iron horse trail.  They're going to have cars crossing the current east/west walkway at 1 more point.  They're stepping down the height on the side facing Bowling Alley Rd while having the full height just next to the bike path where most animals won't see it.  Lions pondered moving there, but it'll most likely be over $5k.

 

https://sfyimby.com/2024/01/permits-filed-for-glen-at-heath-farm-development-in-walnut-creek.html

Nifty view of the battlefield in 1970.  It was harder to get around, but we could walk on the moon.  Historicaerials doesn't show this level of progress until 1980.

 Well, with the land sale, lions will never again live on a rural boundary like this.  Lions lived on rural boundaries in the early 80's.  It was a unique experience.

 Lions were impressed by Largo & sometimes pondered low income housing in Santa Barbara, but the holy grail remanes the space coast.  The cheapest new houses there are now $500k.

 Paw crossings of the inter coastal waterway are from Cocoa/520 on the south side & Titusville/Max Brewer bridge on the north side of the launch pads. 

 

Cocoa is 7 miles from the ocean & Titusville is 12 miles from the ocean. Neither crossing would be a daily event.

 The Max Brewer is the one that's always packed during launches.  The sidewalk ends on the east side & there's no ocean access by paw.  Cars can go to Playalinda beach, where all the twitter photographers go.  So Titusville doesn't have any walkable ocean access, but walking to the ocean would really be an aspirational goal.

  Neither town is as convenient as Largo.

 

 

Lions would wake up, walk to Publix to feed the mane, then walk to the beach.  It's 5.25 miles to the ocean.

As positive as lion memories of that area after 1998 were, it was actually a pretty bleak time.  The idea of transferring to an engineering grad school program actually persisted until Nov 1999, even though the window was closed by mid 1998.  It would have entailed independently learning some prerequisite material in 1997, taking some graduate engineering classes by early 1998, applying to engineering programs during the time lions were sending out 1 last round of med school applications & starting an engineering program in late 1998.  Other schools might have taken in young lion, though without a scholarship.

Helas, lions were only considering med school at the time.

By the time things switched to engineering in late 1998, the window was closed.    Lions actually retook the GRE in late 1998 with the vision in mind, but it was too late.  There weren't enough student loans left to embark on a different program, lions weren't allowed to stay in the biology program more than 3 years even if the loans were unlimited & a scholarship was quite unlikely.  Engineering grad school had to be started by late 1998.  There was a plan to take oral exams in early 2000 & extend the biology program well beyond 3 years, but the loan amount was still the limiting factor, no matter how much lions could borrow.  Lions were just picking up knowledge & deferring their loan repayment but none of the work would be applicable to anything.

 In a parallel universe were young lion was less lucky, the internet resembled today more than 1999, no-one noticed the software release in 1999, young lion continued onward taking 1 last semester of engineering classes in 2000, but could no longer apply for any more loans.  He would have had to take any job he could find by May 2000, probably back at minimum wage or hourly in an unknown dot com that would disappear by 2001. 

When lions got discovered in Nov 1999, young lion may not have known what was coming but his brain did.  He instantly dropped everything to do with biology, took an F in the last biology class, abandoned the oral exam, even if he didn't know why.  That December was the 1st happy time resulting from making a change.

 It was really an immense stroke of luck, but in other ways god helps those who help themselves.  Young lion spent those years working hard on many things, the biology graduate program, the med school plan, the engineering school plan, the software projects.  He gave up music during those years partly because it was really crunch time.  He could have afforded an electric piano instead of the computer hardware.  5 years earlier & he might have gone for a music career.

Would the memory of the bleakness come back if lions moved back to that area or would the memory of the happy times come back? 

26 years later, finances are the complete opposite of those days.  It's not worth feeling any anxiety about how close lions came to doom.  It's no more than an exciting tale of the crooked path some animals take.

 

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