Birthday Trip!
Like a lot of other things I've done, I figured - why not?
For my birthday this year, I made my second trip ever traveling alone. This time I went to California! 22 stops for my 22nd birthday.
For anyone who doesn't know me - I'm a huge techie and I enjoy learning everything there to know about technology, from history and innovations to the latest and greatest. On this trip, I had the privilege to explore the city of San Francisco, the Silicon Valley area, and some other areas as well.
The trip started with a flight on Delta from Cincinnati (CVG) to Salt Lake City (SLC), then from SLC to San Francisco (SFO). My stay was at the Hyatt Regency hotel near SFO and I rented a 2023 Tesla Model 3 - perfect car for California as I saw HUNDREDS of them during my trip. Notably, I also saw 4 Rivian R1T's and more impressively, 2 of Rivian's very-recently-released R1S. This was my first time ever seeing the R1S on the streets and it looks like an amazing SUV.
Friday
On my day off work, I packed my bags and washed my car. After a family dinner, we all enjoyed a marvelous cookies and cream Blizzard cake from Dairy Queen. Following cake, I promptly left for the airport. The flight first flight (Cincinnati/CVG to Salt Lake City/SLC) was spacious with few passengers on board. The final flight was also very nice, with window seats on both - just as I planned it. I highly recommend Delta if you haven't flown with them before. I arrived in San Francisco on Friday night (Saturday morning) around 12:30am. The time change (3 hours backward) meant I got tired during the evening hours, so I didn't stay out too late other than Friday.
Saturday
As with Sunday and Monday morning - Saturday started with breakfast at the hotel before heading to all my activities. Saturday's itinerary was jam packed with loads of stops including the house where Hewlett-Packard was founded, the garage where Apple was (not) started, Apple's previous headquarters campus at Infinite Loop, Apple's current HQ dubbed 'Apple Park', the Computer History Museum, the Googleplex, Meta's headquarters, Tesla's Fremont Factory, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge.
Sunday
The weather was just beautiful. I know it's so basic to talk about the weather everywhere you go, but it really was the icing on the cake for this trip. Apparently San Francisco's weather is almost always like this. Sunday's stops included a (defunct) Amazon Go store, a company called Cloudflare's HQ, an epic segway tour around the city, driving (and riding that segway!) down Lombard street, visiting Alcatraz Island, a stop at In 'n Out Burger.
Side note - I didn't notice until later that I had a completely serious face in the picture at Alcatraz. Though, this goes to show just how the energy is there.
Monday
The last day of the trip - a very relaxing one for sure. The only thing on the list for today was a trip to Intel's musuem, and I'm very glad I went. Admittedly, not all of the staff were helpful, but one in particular was very knowledgeable with the silicon ingots and Intel's lithography manufacturing methods. She also told stories about how she purchased a computer from a Gateway store in the mid-late '90s, which I found very fascinating since I had never heard of Gateway having a brick and mortar store. After the museum, I returned my rental car and jumped on the AirTrain at SFO. As I'm typing this on the flight from SFO to Detroit (DTW), the flight has been amazing so far.
The remainder of the flight was uneventful and we landed safely at CVG around midnight as I recall.
