Hot Showers

Today, let’s talk about one of the perks of modern life - hot showers.

First, some personal history about how I came to deeply appreciate hot showers.

Some left coast geography. Stanford University is almost the midpoint of the distance between San Francisco and San Jose. It is in the northern half of California (often called Norcal but left coasters). It is next to a town called Palo Alto. The whole area is in a valley which is now known as Silicon Valley.

Post graduation nearly all my friends moved to San Francisco. San Francisco was about 40 minutes north of Stanford and where it seemed like all the young people went. There were bars and nightlife and all things fun. Sadly but not surprisingly, there were no technology jobs in San Francisco at the time (although there is now).

All of my early jobs were 20 minutes south of Stanford in towns like Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Cupertino. At this phase of my career 60 hours weeks were the regular and 70 to 80 were not uncommon. At that number of hours, I could never have survived a 60 minute commute each way from San Francisco. So I decided to stay on the peninsula.

I was living at the time in Menlo Park in an apartment. The property was 15 acres with about a dozen three story buildings. Each building had about 15 apartments. There was a nice pool, a hot tub and a pair of tennis courts. It had covered parking. Not quite as beautiful as Stanford but still nice and the same low slung building vibe.

It was on the first floor and had a big deck where I could keep my BBQ. It was also right next to the pool and had a great covered parking spot. I think I paid $2,100 a month which was a substantial part of my salary but within a normal range to spend on rent in a big city.

The apartment was good but its location was great.

West Menlo Park.

Unbelievable natural weather and beauty. Hiking. Amazing restaurants, grocery stores and farmer markets. Near Stanford, the ocean, San Francisco and two world class airports (this was key as I had a job that required lots of travel).

And as anyone who works in a big city with lots of traffic can attest, it had the most important of all perks - short commutes. West Menlo Park runs right along the one and only uncongested freeway on the San Francisco Bay Area peninsula - I-280. At that time, you could get to San Francisco or San Jose on 280 faster than any other way.

Now while short commutes were important, an equally important thing to me was the quality of the cycling. As good or even better than 280 was the fact that Menlo Park was right on the Portola Loop. The loop is an 11.5 mile bicycle route through Menlo Park, Portola Valley and Woodside. It has a couple different types of hill climbing and only a couple stoplights at the beginning and end of the ride. It’s basically 45-60 minutes of great non-stop bicycling with reasonable safe space between you and the cars right as you step outside your front door. (In this part of California, real cyclists ride year round even in the heavy rain season.)

Connected to the loop are two locally famous cycling climbs - Old La Honda and Kings Mountain. But before I tell you about them first you need some background on climbing on a road bike. Hills are divided into 5 categories based on length, gradient, and where the climb sits in the ride. Category 4 is the easiest: 1 mile at 4–5%. Category 1 is the second hardest: 5-10 miles at 6–8%. The toughest is called “HC” which stands for hors catégorie. Translated from French it means “above category”. (It’s the same “hors” as in “hors d’oeuvres”.) HC climbs are the steepest, longest climbs. Typically above 7%+. The stuff you see in the Tour de France. If you’ve ever run on a treadmill and moved the incline above 0% you understand what the numbers mean.

Old La Honda ran from Portola Road to Skyline road. It climbs 1,290 feet over 3.37 miles. Its average gain is 7.2% with stretches as much as 18%. Too short to be an HC but definitely steep enough. Grueling on the way up and insanely fast on the downhill. If you were a serious cyclist you knew how quickly you could climb it. Its twin ride was a few short miles away - Kings Mountain. Woodside up through Huddart Park to Skyline. It was 4.2 miles long and a gain of 1,549 feet. It averaged 7.0% and had stretches at 16%. For a kid from a flat midwestern state, the climbing was awesome.

I know you’ve now read 800 words and you’re wondering “Did he trick me into reading an article about California and cycling but titling it hot showers?”. Partially. :) But we’re almost there.

After a couple years, $2,100 a month started to feel like I was throwing money into a fireplace. I had squirreled away savings from 4 years of salary and more importantly stock options so I had enough to maybe cover a down payment. I was secure enough in my career and had no plans to leave the area. There were literally thousands of possible jobs within a 30 minute commute each way. So I decided I wanted to buy a home if I could stay very close to where I was.

In 2001, after about two years of looking, bidding and losing, I bought my first home. It was a couple miles away from my apartment on a street named Camino de los Robles. I quickly knew it was THE place because the entry to the Portola Loop was through Sharon Hills Park at a brutal 14% grade.

At this time, 50 year old 3 bedroom 2 bathroom homes were going for nearly $1m dollars. (Yes you read that right).

Now homes in this range were to some degree fixer uppers. They had walls and a roof but they also had their fair share of things you had to look past when buying and fixing shortly after. The house’s furnace and ducting didn’t work so I spent the first couple years sleeping in the room with a wood burning fireplace rather than a bedroom. Only 2 of the 6 burners on the stove top worked.

After a couple years living in the home, it was time to do a larger remodel. The water heater was right at the foot of a chimney that had seen one too many earthquakes so there was going to be a couple months without hot water.

The renovation was done over the summer. The weather is reasonably warm in Menlo Park around that time of year. In July mornings would be about 54 degrees and late afternoons would be in the 80s or low 90s. Now everybody knows that water does not travel down the street and fly into your home through the air. It gets to your house underground. Most suburban streets in the warmer parts of California have their water main 3-4 feet underground. The water travels from the street to your home even closer to the surface, often more like 2 feet underground. The ground temperature that time of year is about 65 degrees.

Is a 65 degree water shower fun? No.

Not unless you’ve just finished a serious workout and definitely not at 7 am in the morning.

Is it unbearable?

Of course not.

Are you going to spend 8 minutes in it?

Haha. No!

(8 minutes by the way is the average length of a shower.)

In the process of replacing my water heater I had grown curious about their history. (As one should if you have a college degree in Science, Technology and Society.)

While there were many connected reasons water heaters took off, not the least of which they are obviously WAY better, in the 1940s mortgage insurance started to require hot water as part of the home’s plumbing to get insurance. Obviously, if you couldn’t get insurance many people couldn’t get a mortgage so that supercharged the growth of hot water in new homes in suburbia.

For those that are regular readers, this is now the second thing about the 1940s that made them way better than the 1930s. For those of you that have forgotten or did not read it, the answer is in another essay I wrote. Hint modern medicine had a huge upgrade.