I’m so tired right now, but I need to tell you about Lillian.

Lillian is my favorite 3D printed snail. She was hatched on October 23, 2017, weighing about 1kg, on what was then known as Daguerre Senior. It is known known as the Form 3L.

Today was the launch day for the next generation of Formlabs printers. They’re a huge step forward in SLA technology—we even trademarked the term LFS (low force stereolithography). For the past few years, I have worked on the Form 3, whose novel printing process enabled the Form 3L.

When almost a year and a half ago I came into work and saw Lillian on my desk, I knew we were working on something special. She is HUGE. About a year later, her big brother Sir Phillip was hatched, roughly twice the weight, showing how much we accomplished in one year’s time.

Anyways, I want to write more about the Form 3 and the amazing team that brought it to life over the past year, but I am exhausted and need some rest right now. I also have more to share about LA. Right now, I’m in Solvang, a Danish city about an hour north of Santa Barbara. I’ll be without internet for the next two nights (more on that later), so the pace of these posts may slow down until the weekend. Stay tuned.

The first day in Joshua Tree we didn’t even go into the National Park proper. We started just outside in the north east tip, exploring what is known as Black Rock Canyon.

It turned out that this region had more beautiful landscapes than Joshua Tree proper, so I’m glad we didn’t skip it. The area has seen more rainfall than any year since 1942, and as a result the park was more colorful and blooming than it has been in recent memory. Almost every Joshua tree had at least one white or purple flower.

We did two hikes that first day: Panorama Loop (“strenuous”, 6.6 miles) to Warren Peak (“strenuous”, ~1 mile). One of the rangers in the visitor center said all the trails would be packed, but I don’t know what she was talking about. It was pretty empty and we ran into few people on the trail.

The Dollar rental car at San Francisco airport has a “manager special”, which is essentially a mystery car reveals when you get to the lot. We ended up with a brand new Chevy Sonic (with just seven miles on the odometer). Some fun facts about the 2019 Chevy Sonic, which I’d never heard of before:

• Despite the name Sonic, it is not really fast. My dad described it as driving a golf cart. Accelerating onto the highway was tricky.
• It is the smallest car my dad had ever driven.
• It comes standard with Apple CarPlay, which is really cool.
• You can feel every bump on the road, even ones that you can’t see.
• The trunk is surprisingly big, easily fitting my dad’s carry on and my duffel bag.

On the way to Napa valley, we stopped at a coffee shop called Red Whale Coffee. It was so great that I wrote my first Yelp review. If you’re ever heading north over the Golden Gate bridge, be sure to stop here for a coffee, snack, and a quick pinball game.

Before departing to Southern California, my dad joined me for a few days in San Francisco and Napa.

Our first day in together in San Francisco revolved mostly around wandering the Embarcadero area and the piers, followed by dinner at Chez Maman, which I had been to once five years earlier.

On the second day, we want to the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. In addition to the “Passport to the Universe” planetarium show narrated by Tom Hanks, the museum had a rainforest dome and aquarium.

After we finished at the museum, we went for an excellent dinner at the Slanted Door, a Vietnamese restaurant on the pier recommended by my cousin. The food was all delicious, and they served some of the biggest scallops that I’ve ever seen.

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To end the night, we got a great view of a nearly full moon above the Bay Bridge. If I look uncomfortable in this pictures, it is because I am very cold. San Francisco appears to change weather by hour and by block. Dress in layers.

The first part of my trip, in some parts planned and some parts unplanned, has been reconnecting with friends. For me, seeing friends while traveling is nothing unusual. Most of my solo travel revolves around spending time with friends. It will actually be the later part of the trip when I am roaming the Pacific Coast Highway alone that will be novel for me.

Here, though, the amount of close friends I have seen is remarkable. To start, I visited my friends in Oakland (celebrating one of their birthdays in Tahoe) along with a high-school friend turned co-worker. After the ski weekend in the cozy cabin, my high school friend and I wandered San Francisco and caught up with another former co-worker.

To my surprise, I learned that my high school robotics team’s mentor has been living in San Francisco for the last decade. One of my closest high school friends and robotics team co-captain happens to be staying in the Bay Area this month. And a high school friend who was the team captain the two years preceding me also lives in the Bay Area. We all met up for pizza, perhaps for the first time since 2007 when we would do that nearly every week at times.

Before I take off to spend some time with family and then on my own, it was great to reconnect with so many friends.

Historically, I will spend solo city trips walking until my feet bleed. Usually, I am not wearing the right shoes. In this case, I thankfully do not have bleeding feet. They are just very sore and blistered. I have learned that Allbirds are extremely comfortable, but they are not made for walking nine miles in a day. Lesson learned.

The nine mile walk, however, was terrific. I started out downtown San Francisco, in the SOMA neighborhood and walked east until I reached the Golden Gate Park. It was a beautiful day, low 70’s and sunny, and I wished I had something other than jeans. As I moved further west towards the coast, the weather shifted to 60 and foggy. I was cold even with my sweater. From the warmth to the cool, I visited the Conservatory of Flowers, California Academy of Sciences (though I opted not to go in because I didn’t have the 3-4 hours of time recommended by Yelp), the Japanese Tea Garden (which had a strange $9 entrance fee, but was generally worth it), Strawberry Hill (a small island in the middle of the park), and the quieter area west of State Route 1 which bisects the park.

Getting back to dinner, I took the N trolley, which took me through the quant Sunset District and by the Duboce dog park. Of course, I elected to get off one stop early and visit the dog park before going to dinner.

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One thing to note, which I don’t have any photos of, is the massive inequality on full display in downtown San Francisco. It is less a stretch than I want it to be to say that most people I saw downtown were either homeless or millionaires. There were two completely different worlds, living right on top of one another not even seeing each other. I have seen this environment in the past, but not in a developed country.

Earlier this week, I finished Rutger Bregman’s book in which he outlines and advocates for a universal basic income. He argues that the poor are poor because they don’t have money—that they lack capital to move out of poverty. Citing many studies, he shows that giving the poor (in some cases the homeless) money with no strings attached actually reduces public spending and shrinks the government—in this case policing costs, sanitation costs, and court costs. That San Francisco, a progressive city in a progressive state, has failed so horribly at solving homeless and inequality is disheartening. San Francisco has always been a city of change. Perhaps it will soon take the lead in helping the homeless find homes and reducing inequality.

Of note, once I walked a few blocks outside of the downtown area, I no longer saw this inequality. Though it was overwhelming downtown, it does not permeate the entire city.

It’s been just a few days since I dropped off Aayla with my friends. Five and a half weeks will be the longest we’ve been apart since I was off at college. Thankfully, I get Aayla updates while I am on the road. She appears to be very happy.

For my friend’s birthday, we celebrated with three different pies from Gregory’s Gourmet Desserts. It’s known as the best underground bakery in Oakland because it is literally underground. If you need good pie in the east bay, go to Gregory’s.

The pies were massive and massively delicious. One pie, the Uptown Baby, was a custom order: an apple pecan pancake baked on top of an apple pie. We barely made a dent in these pies during dinner, so they were incorporated into breakfast the next day before we checked out of our Airbnb.

Skiing Tahoe is different from any other skiing I have done before. Or perhaps I just haven’t skied in so long that I forgot how much fun it is. With 6-8 feet of snow accumulated on the ground, there are no green patches and no ice. The temperature was also around 55ºF, so there was really no need for a jacket.

Apart from falling off the chair lift before my first run of the day, I’d say I did pretty well. We started off with some scenic greens and ended on some narrow and windy blues.

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