My trip to EA

Yesterday I took CalTrain down to Redwood City to visit my friend Mark at work. He's an animator for Electronic Arts (EA). I had been looking forward to going down to visit him because I've always been a big video game fan and I also think it's neat to check out where your friends work at. We spend so much time at the office yet very few of the people close to us get to experience any of that.

My trip down to Redwood City took about 50 minutes since I had to take two forms of transit to get there. I found the CalTrain depot to be rather pleasant (although getting there took awhile since there's no direct route from my house to the station) and the ride down the peninsula was scenic and comfortable. My roundtrip ticket (1 day 2-zone pass) on CalTrain set me back $8.

Upon arrival at the Belmont Station, Mark picked me up and drove me the 2.4 miles to EA's campus which sits on reclaimed land and the old site of the Marine World Theme Park, which moved to Vallejo in 1986. The main lobby was impressive which wasn't surprising since EA makes some huge titles. Mark gave me a tour of the division that he works in, which was really cool and then we had enjoyed bbq at the EA cafe. Mark then gave me a tour of the rest of EA's campus, which included a maze that he said you can see on Google Maps! How cool is that? I ended the day by playing the new Sims game that he's been working on, which is set to be released next month. I got dropped back off at the CalTrain station and took the northbound train back to the city.

I enjoyed my trip down to Redwood City and EA, but I have to admit that I really wanted to play video games when I got home!




CalTrain Station in San Francisco.


The entrance to EA's campus.


Video games set up in the lobby.


Mark!