9×9

I’m in Santa Fe, NM, for the 2025 Low Temperature Detector conference. I was quite excited about coming here back in spring and was planning (in my head, mostly) a big road trip: Start from LA, the western end of the historical 66. Then follow the mother road all the way to Albuquerque. After the conference, I was planning to go north, passing by Denver to SLC, then back home. Besides that, I was going to revive this website during the trip, writing blog here everyday to record my lonely journey.

It was an ambitious plan. Very soon, life happens, all sort of craps. The first chapter of my grand road trip, “2025 Summer Roadtrip: The GTI”, is still lying in my draft box.

Well, I still made it to the conference! I gave a talk on the very first day so now I can just relax for the rest, which is super nice.

As usual, I am still the weird person and I did weird things. One of those this time is that I booked a hotel 20-min drive from the convention center… I don’t remember exactly why I chose to book it. So even for this week-long conference, I am doing similar commute just like when I was at home. This effectively prevented me from heavy drinking at dinners, which is “nice”.

It has been nice catching up with old friends and making some new ones. It could as well be my last LTD — who knows. I will make sure that I enjoy it to the max!

I want to share a photo I took from my flight. I saw this interesting landscape but didn’t know what was it. I searched on google map yesterday and found that it’s the Monument Valley! How cool was that!

I have a couple more random photos from the past few days but I won’t show them here. The plan is to go to Los Alamos tomorrow afternoon during the collaboration forming session. The weather forecast says there will be thunderstorm — will see what happens!