The trip to San Francisco Bay Area
So here I am, back in Montreal, after spending six amazing days on the other side of the continent. This will be a quick rundown of what I’ve done and seen…
All the photos of my trip are available here on Flickr. The photos are in the same order as I recall the events in the text below.
Wednesday, August 15th 2007:
I left my appt. early in the morning so I had to call a cab to get to YUL. This time I packed the minimum amount of stuff I needed so that everything would fit in my 50 liters backpack + my smaller bag for my photo rig. Upon arriving at SFO (a little after noon), I continued reading Woz’s book “iWoz” while waiting for my luggage (it’s a fun book to read). I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) … (the machines selling tickets have a pretty confusing and lousy user interface) to 24th / Mission close to where the hostel I had reserved for the first two nights is located. “Elements Hotel” is located right on Mission St. in a part of town that is not particularly attractive and that doesn’t have the reputation for being the safest at night, but it didn’t look that bad in my mind. Probably the best part is that they have an incredible terrace on the roof with a complete bar. I dropped my backpack in the room and hopped on the next MUNI bus (SF’s public transport).
So first thing I did after quickly grabbing a sandwich was obviously to head towards the Apple Store on Stockton St. ! I wanted to see the brand new iMacs and play with the iPhone too. I noticed that all the iPhone were activated and ready to use on AT&T’s network, so I called my parents for free ! Then I played a little and tried the news iPhone-optimized Facebook user interface to call Pierre-Nicolas. After being recharged with Apple goodness I headed towards Chinatown to continue visiting the city. While walking on Powell St., I saw one of those famous cable car coming by so I hopped on it to go down the hill. I could see Alcatraz island. I took a couple of pictures while I was standing on the side of the car. What a fun ride 
After some time I decided to stop and walk towards Lombard St., which is supposedly one of the “crookedest” street in SF. So I continued walking towards Fisherman’s Wharf. But instead of seeing Fisherman’s Wharf that day I decided to walk towards west instead. I took some pictures of the Palace of Fine Arts (amazing architecture), then headed towards the Presidio, which is an historic national park and old Spanish fort. There are lots of very nice old houses. That’s also where Lucas Arts and Industrial Lights and Magic moved their headquarters to (in the Letterman Digital Arts Center). So I walked all the way back to Lombard St. and stopped in a nice, inexpensive Thai restaurant, yummy Not long after I went back to the hostel to get some sleep.
Thursday, August 16th 2007:
Probably because of the jet lag and long day of walk in the steep SF streets… I slept in and woke up only around 10am. I decided to take the MUNI light rail towards to ocean (close to the Golden Gate Park). I walked back from the beach to the center of the Golden Gate Park and decided to the bus to take a few pictures of the Golden Gate bridge. Then I spent part of the afternoon at Fisherman’s wharf visiting the Musée Mécanique (an amazing collection of antique pinballs and various coin-operated games of the early 20th century). Around 7pm, I joined Adam Goldstein, one of my friend from TEP at MIT. He was giving a talk about his book “Applescript: The missing manual” at the Apple Store. Later, Mark and Celeste, also good friends from TEP joined us for dinner. Adam is currently working as the CTO and lead developer for a Web 2.0 startup “Booktour”. After dinner, we went to Adam’s appt. right on Telegraph Hill, so you can imagine the nice view we have on the roof deck. I went back to the hostel for the night.
Friday, August 17th 2007:
I woke early this time to catch the Caltrain towards Silicon Valley. I actually stopped at the Mountain View Caltrain to catch the Apple employee shuttle. I pretended the be an Apple employee and tried to overhear some interesting things so I could feed the Mac rumors machine, but unfortunately they seem to be well-trained by Steve so that they don’t leak to much info 
On Apple’s campus in Cupertino I joined Matt Gordon, another good friend from TEP, who gave me a quick tour of the campus. Matt is an intern for the summer. I saw the “Town hall auditorium” where Steve gave his latest keynote about iLife 08 and iWork 08. I stopped by the “company Apple Store” to pick up a t-shirt. I had to sign an NDA so I can’t say much more… But I did get to eat with Matt at Apple cafeteria which has some pretty good food.
As public transportation in the valley isn’t the best, I called a cab so I could quickly get to the “Computer History Museum” in Mountain View. As an über-geek, this was probably one of the best part of the trip. I was so excited to see all the old computers that they have : Xerox Star (the one that pioneered the GUI), Altair 8800 (for which Bill Gates wrote Basic), a working DEC PDP-1 from 1960, a early ARPANET interface from BBN, Doug Engelbart’s first mouse (used in the ‘68 “mother of all demos”), etc…. I ended the afternoon by visiting the Intel Museum in Santa Clara, but that wasn’t nearly as interesting after seeing the Computer History Museum. Mark and Celeste came to pick me up at the Caltrain station near there. We went back home and they left me the keys to their appt. in Santa Clara. They were leaving for a two days trip to the Yosemite park. So there I was with my appt. in the valley, with a pool in the back, Mark’s Macbook Pro, a fast internet connection and a bike so I could go a little further than just by walking, what else could I ask for ? Dany Q., another friend from MIT came back from work later that night.
Saturday, August 18th 2007:
I slept in and continued reading Woz’s book and enjoyed the sun. Towards the end of the afternoon Dany Q. invited me to follow him to Google, where he is an intern working on Google Earth. We took the bus with our bikes. I got to get a bit more familiar with directions in the valley. After chilling at Google and getting some free food (as they say, you are never further than 100 feet from food) I took my bike and went to the Stanford Campus, by then it was already pretty dark. I bikes around the campus and took some pictures before taking the bus going back to “my appartment” in Santa Clara ;-).
Sunday, August 19th 2007:
I gave a call to Star, another TEP friend, who is working for Squid Labs (the startup that runs Instructables). I took Caltrain to go north with my bike and then the BART to go on the other side of the bay. I kinda got lost in Oakland while trying to find the entrance to the tunnel crossing to Alameda, where Squid Labs is located. Anyway, after going through the very scary tunnel (that has only a tiny 40 cm sidewalk that is 2 meters above the cars) I was in Alameda. Alameda was basically a city created for the purpose of this, now decommissioned, naval air base. Star was waiting for me at the end of the tunnel. After exploring around the old base, we stopped to get some food and then headed towards Squid Labs headquarters. They basically bought the old control tower of the naval air base ! You might’ve already seen this place, because if you watch Mythbusters, they often use the old runway to test explosions. Also, for the movie “The Matrix reloaded” they built a fake highway on the base for the chase scene. Anyway, so Star showed me around the place. They have some pretty cool toys (3D printer, 2 laser cutters, a water jet cutter etc… I met Tim Anderson, a very famous guy at MIT, who builds robots and other cool stuff. After the visit, I took the ferry to cross the bay again. I stayed in San Francisco at Adam’s place because it was already pretty late.
Monday, August 20th 2007:
I took Caltrain early in the morning to go back to the valley, because I had an appointment with Arshan Poursohi at Sun Labs (Martin Morissette, a good friend from my school did his last internship there and thought I’d like to visit the place). I biked all the way from the Palo Alto Caltrain Station to Sun Labs in Menlo Park (right by the bay). I spent about an hour there visiting the facilities with Arshan. I was really impressed by the environment, it looks like a great place to work. I stopped by Mark and Celeste’s appt. in Santa Clara to leave the bike and get my backpack. Here I was again on the Caltrain, but for one las last time ! Back in SF, I met Adam waiting in line in front of the Apple Store for a free concert. “Public Enemy”, a famous rap / hip-hop band was playing that night. The concert was pretty awesome and we were literally in the first row of seats.
So the next day I took the plane back to Montreal. Pfffeww what an amazing week that was.