See all pictures here

About a month ago we talked about having a big group trip to San Francisco. We looked into staying at a hostel overnight but decided we would just do a day trip instead and that the last weekend was best for everyone. Last week I emailed everyone so we could make plans and figure out transportation. Just about everyone emailed back saying they didn’t really feel like going anymore, so the group trip was canceled.

However, David and I still wanted to go. He’d never been there before and probably wouldn’t have another opportunity anytime soon. So we got a zip car and drove down there early Saturday morning. After parking we walked to the end of Pier 39 and got our view of the harbor, Alcatraz, the ship we later visited, and the seals that rest on floating piers. We toured the USS Jeremiah O’Brien, which we really enjoyed. They let you walk around just about anywhere. The ship is still fully functional and they have a volunteer crew that takes it out on occasion.

We continued along the wharf and got some fish and chips, which was actually pretty terrible. But we made up for it by getting a sundae with dark chocolate fudge at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop in Ghirardelli Square. From there we decided to just keep walking until we reached the Golden Gate Bridge. We saw the Fine Arts Palace but decided not to go into the Exploratorium.

We ended up following the path that led under the bridge, and discovered a fort, Fort Point to be exact. We had fun exploring the fort and then took the other back to the top of the hill level with the bridge. We were lucky that the bridge was not obscured by fog!

After that we went to the cable car museum and walked through Chinatown. Dinner was an adventure. I suggested we could just eat at Chinatown, but for some reason David didn’t want to. So we went in search of the Italian district but ended up at the wrong place, got the car and drove around looking for something but realized there was no parking and in the end we parked the car in our lot and took the bus back to Chinatown and ate at the restaurant we had passed earlier.

So we ended up in the same place we had been an hour and a half earlier, but hungrier and more tired. But it was good, we got free pot stickers, which made up for accidentally ordering two servings of fried rice instead of one to share (David ordered one thing and I tried to change it, but we got both). After dinner we got back in the car and drove through downtown and across the bridge and back.

I can’t believe the last weekend is already gone! :(

And so the day after going to A Midsummer Night’s Dream we had a field trip to IBM Almaden, their research facility in Silicon Valley. I really enjoyed it, we got to see a lot of cool stuff and see what they’re working on.

They gave us the “Hi we’re IBM” spiel, just an overview of what they’re doing and why they’re so great. The first place we went was some sort of device that could see the locations atoms on a surface called a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. This way they can look at the locations of certain molecules and atoms, do something to them and then see what happens after. I’m not much of a natural sciences person but it was pretty cool what they could do with it. They’re not really working towards any certain goals or products, just seeing what they can come up with.

After lunch we saw the rapid prototyping lab. When someone is working on developing new hardware, they can have a test version made of it before sending it off to be made. They have a machine that makes any object out of a plastic substance by “printing” it.

3D printer making platic wrenches.

Something they “printed.” The gears on this thing all move together. This is done all in one printing, the machine prints dissolvable stuff to separate pieces.

More cool stuff from the prototyping lab:

1956 IBM Ramac - The first hard drive - 5 MB

After IBM a few of us went to Apple headquarters. One of the girls’ boyfriend works at Apple so he kind of got us “in.” I was hoping we’d get to look around more, but we basically saw the lobby and courtyard. They have a cool board that shows the a ton of apps and each one bubbles when it’s purchased. We also went to the Apple company store and I bought a t-shirt :). I really wanted this jacket that I’d seen my coworkers at the Apple store wearing, but it wasn’t worth the money.

Random stuff with an apple on it!

LA Trip Part 2

We didn’t actually make it to Los Angeles. Saturday we drove up to Solvang, a Dutch town. I wouldn’t really say it was worth the drive… just little shops and neat architecture. But it was still fun to hang out and better than, as Emily put it, sitting in the living room staring at each other. I feel bad David didn’t get to see LA when we were so close, but the rest of us didn’t really feel a desire to see the city again.

After Solvang (I think we drove longer than we spent there), we went to the Santa Barbara mission. That was fun, we did a tour and of course took some pictures. After dinner (it was nice to have a homemade meal), we played Settlers of Catan (best game ever). Sunday we went to church, ate at In ‘n Out, a fast food burger place only found in California. It was cheap and surprisingly good. We took the fast way back.

Another great weekend in California :).