A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away..........

There are no words to express the amount of awesomeness (yes, it's a word) that I felt last week, but I'm certainly going to try.  This is a blog, after all, and it's supposed to have words on it.

But first, a little history.  As the title suggests, this blog post is more than likely going to involve Star Wars or some aspect of Star Wars.  And boy does it ever.

For those of you that know this story - too bad, you have to hear it again.  When I was a boy - just 2 1/2 years old - I was taken by my parents to see Star Wars: A New Hope (for those of you keeping track, this was the original movie released in 1977).  It was at a drive in, and therefore the screen was large and the volume was loud.  And Darth Vader in all his menacing glory was scary.

Fast forward through about a million viewings of Star Wars and its sequels and prequels.  In that time, I have come to learn, understand, respect and even admire not only George Lucas as a storyteller, but the vision that he created with Industrial Light and Magic, his special effects company.

ILM was originally created for Star Wars with George Lucas grabbing various people that were working on special effects during its infancy.  Star Wars was the film that sent special effects into the stratosphere.  If not for ILM, movies like Avatar would never have been made.  In fact, if not for ILM, Pixar and all of their wonderful movies would never have been made either.  But that's information for another blog post - if I remember.  If not, just go to Wikipedia and look up Pixar or ILM.  You'll see.  Pixar used to exist as a group of people within ILM.  Go look.  I'll wait.

And now that you're back from there, I will continue with my adventure.  Our friends, Amanda and Marc, used to live in San Francisco.  During this time, Marc made a friend named Marshall.  In talking to Marshall, Marc discovered that he worked at ILM in San Francisco and offfered Marc a tour of the facility, which he and Amanda eventually did this past year.  But here's where it gets interesting.

Marc and Amanda offered us a chance to join them for a few days in San Francisco leading up to an actual tour of Skywalker Ranch.  Wait, I thought we were talking about ILM.  What's Skywalker Ranch?

Skywalker Ranch is a place that George Lucas created with land he purchased in the late 1970s.  It's a lot of land with very little development.  But that's not the point.  The point is that I have always wanted to go there.  It didn't matter that there were just a few buildings there with very little in the way of memorabilia to gawk at.  It didn't matter that it was forty minutes north of San Francisco through the mountains and rolling hills.  It didn't matter that George Lucas might not be there.

No.  It mattered to me because it was the epitome of a place that a Star Wars fan - and a George Lucas fan in general - would want to go.  Sure, the ILM tour is fascinating, but where else but the Ranch can you sit in a two story library with a fireplace and large comfy chairs and just "research" for a little while.  Where else but the Ranch can you walk from the Main House past Lake Ewok on your way to the Recreation Center to play racquetball, volleyball, tennis or even go for a swim in their lap pool?  And, just for fun, there's also a gift shop at the Ranch.  Not a very big one, sadly, but a gift shop nonetheless.

Needless to say, as much as I want to visit ILM at some point in the future, I have always wanted to go to Skywalker Ranch.  Something about visiting a place where George Lucas has an office and thinks up some of his fantastic visions.  A place where Skywalker Sound - the audio engineering branch of Lucasfilm - resides and records everything from movie soundtracks to simple audio recording for films.  A place where even though you're out in the middle of nowhere and someplace that has over a hundred employees, you not only feel like you're still in the modern world and yet, you don't see too many people around.  On our tour of Skywalker Ranch, we saw very few people until we arrived at the Recreation Center. 

Being cold that day, no one was swimming, but we did see people on the tennis court and people in the indoor racquetball court.  There were plenty of staff members in the cafe area (we arrived during the standard lunch hour) and even a few people (tourists like us) in the gift shop.

It was a great tour and I know that most people will wonder why I didn't take the ILM tour as well.  Well, most importantly was because there just wasn't enough time and I had to choose.  Most people would have chosen ILM, but I chose Skywalker Ranch.  It was peaceful and if I could, I would have stayed there.

It's a once in a lifetime opportunity and I jumped at the chance.  If a chance to experience something you like ever comes along - besides ILM, the next place I would love to tour would be New Zealand where they filmed Lord of the Rings - then you should definitely take it.  Do what you can.  Skip work if necessary.  As NIKE says, Just Do It.



Until Next Time.