{"id":24429,"date":"2023-11-19T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T08:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=24429"},"modified":"2023-11-18T12:40:34","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T20:40:34","slug":"filoli-xi-biden-and-moto-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/11\/19\/filoli-xi-biden-and-moto-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Filoli, Xi, Biden, and Moto Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

You probably know about the meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping last week.\u00a0 What you might not know about is Woodside, California, and the Filoli estate where they met.\u00a0 As always, we want our ExNotes readers to be knowledgeable and up to date, and that’s the focus of this article.\u00a0 I’ve actually been to and photographed the Filoli estate and mansion, and I’ve written a bit about Woodside before.<\/p>\n

The Filoli mansion was built in 1917 for William Bourn II, who by any measure was a wealthy guy.\u00a0 He owned one of California’s richest gold mines and was president of the Spring Valley Water Company that served San Francisco and its surrounding areas.\u00a0 If you are wondering about the name, it’s formed by the first two letters of each word from of Bourn’s motto: Fight for a just cause;\u00a0Love your fellow man;\u00a0Live a good life.<\/p>\n

The Filoli mansion and its gardens occupy 16 acres; the entire estate covers 654 acres and extends to the Crystal Springs Reservoir (which still provides water to San Francisco).\u00a0 If you drive south on the 280 freeway from San Francisco (it follows the San Cruz Mountain range), you can see the reservoir on the right.<\/p>\n

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Big mansions are expensive to maintain and hard to keep up.\u00a0 That’s why a lot of the big ones have been donated by the families that owned them to the state or other organizations and opened to the public for tours.\u00a0 It’s what the Hearst family did with Hearst Castle further south, and it is what happened to the Filoli mansion.\u00a0 The Filoli mansion and surrounding grounds are now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.\u00a0 For a modest fee you can visit and walk through the same rooms and gardens as Xi and Biden.\u00a0 It’s cool.\u00a0 I did it in 2019 and here are a few Filoli photos from that visit.<\/p>\n

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A bit more about the town of Woodside:\u00a0 Woodside is one of the wealthiest places in America.\u00a0 A partial list of the big names who live or have lived in Woodside include Charles Schwab (yes, that Charles Schwab), Steve Jobs, Michelle Pfeiffer (the classiest actress ever), Joan Baez, Nolan Bushnell (the founder of Atari and the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain), Scott Cook (the founder of Intuit), Carl Djerassi (a novelist and the guy who developed the birth control pill), Larry Ellison (the CEO of Oracle Corporation), James Folger (as in need a cup of coffee?), Kazuo Hirai (the CEO of Sony), Mike Markkula (the second Apple CEO), Gordon E. Moore (Intel\u2019s co-founder and originator of Moore\u2019s Law), Prince Vasili Alexandrovich (the nephew of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia), Shirley Temple, John Thompson (Symantec\u2019s CEO), and Nick Woodman (founder and CEO of GoPro).\u00a0 Woodside is within commuting distance of Silicon Valley, so it\u2019s understandable, I guess, why so many high-rolling Silicon Valley types call it home.<\/p>\n

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This is an interesting and beautiful area.\u00a0 \u00a0The Pacific Ocean is just on the other side of the San Cruz range, and a circumnavigation of these mountains makes for a hell of a motorcycle ride (see our earlier blog<\/a> and the article I wrote for Motorcycle Classics<\/a> magazine).<\/p>\n

I don’t know if Xi and Biden accomplished much during their meeting.\u00a0 If I had organized their visit, I would have left all the entourage folks behind and given Uncles Joe and Xi a map and a couple of RX3 motorcycles.\u00a0 They would have had a better time and probably emerged with a better agreement.\u00a0 A good motorcycle ride will do that for you.<\/p>\n

You know, we don’t do politics on ExNotes, but I have to get in a comment here.\u00a0 There ought to be a win-win solution to our current disagreements with China.\u00a0 I think if I could be king of the U.S. for about six months (not President, but King) and good buddy Sergeant Zuo from our ride across China could be King of China for the same time period, we could go for another ride and figure it all out.\u00a0 I’d bring Gresh along to keep it interesting and I’d get another book out of it, too.\u00a0 That’s my idea, anyway.<\/p>\n

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If you’d like to read more about Joe Gresh’s and my ride across China with Sergeant Zuo, you should pick up a copy of Riding China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And if you’d like to read about Gresh and me riding across America with the Chinese, you need a copy of 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Never miss an ExNotes blog:<\/p>\n

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