This coming weekend, I’m headed to San Diego, California for TwitchCon. For that trip, I decided to start in Los Angeles County and make the ~120 mile (~195 kilometer) drive down south, making a few stops along the way. So, in preparation, I headed over from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. While in town in LA and before I left, I decided to stop by 江戸前鮨 㐂扇, which translates to Sushi Kisen, a Japanese restaurant in Arcadia, California.
I originally heard about this restaurant back in early 2025 during the highly destructive Eaton Fire due to this message they posted online during a power outage: “We cooked come proteins that we can’t store in our fridges. Any firefighters, police officers, [or] electricians who’ve been working hard fighting for our community … please come help us clean [out] our fridge.” I used to work in law enforcement and still have quite a few first-responder friends. I now work in a field that is far less stressful and has far greater earning potential, so one of the ways I like to help my former fellow comrades is to support business that support them.
After being on my “want to go” list for several months, I finally found a good opportunity to check them out for a lunch omakase experience costing US$90.00 per person.
The meal started with some sea snail.
My friend got some hot green tea with the restaurant name 鮨 㐂扇 printed on the side of the cup. She said it was great tea, and she was happy that the waitress promptly and regularly came around to give her refills. This was only US$3.00 and she thought it was great value.
The lunch omakase consisted primarily of nigiri. Pictured below were our first six pieces.
Part-way through our meal, we noticed that they were cutting up some tuna; one of the chefs was happy to show it to us and let me take a photograph.
Afterwards, nigiri service continued with four more pieces.
My favorite type of sushi is sea urchin, so I was happy to see that uni gunkan was part of the omakase.
As we were nearing the end of our omakase, we were given a negitoro hand roll.
I forgot to bring my Sony ZV-1 camera for this meal, so I took all my photographs with my phone. On my point-and-shoot camera, there is a single “action” button where you can prompt it to auto-focus by depressing it part-way, then command it to capture the shot by lowering the button all the way down. My phone, on the other hand, has a virtual capture button that immediately saves the picture, and if you want to get it to focus, you have to tap the screen atop the item on which you want it to focus. Obviously, my left hand was busy holding my hand roll and my right hand was busy holding my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is a pretty hefty device, so I used my nose to tap the screen and make it focus on the tuna. My friend found that quite amusing and said it was the “life of a content creator.”
After we finished the hand roll, we each got a bowl of miso soup containing some whitefish.
To conclude our meal, we got a nice, thick cut of tamago served nori-ribbon nigiri style.
As expected from a Japanese omakase experience, we were served at the sushi bar and were able to watch the chef prepare each item throughout our meal. This was the view from the perspective of my seat.
I snapped this photograph of the rest of the restaurant (including the regular table dining area) on our way out. We had the final reservation slot available prior to them closing for lunch, so the restaurant was empty by the time we had finished our meal, and most of the staff had already began their mid-day breaks.
Along with our check, we were given a survey so that we could share feedback about our experience, which my friend filled out. In the photo, you can see the chef eagerly peeking over the sushi bar to see what she wrote, which I thought was pretty funny.
This is what the exterior of the restaurant looked like; it was just a small and somewhat inconspicuous restaurant nestled in the re-entrant corner of this strip mall.
I originally wanted to try out their dinner omakase, but the timing didn’t work out this time around due to my friend’s tight schedule and my infrequent presence in the Los Angeles area. Being in Arcadia, this restaurant is further away from the more congested and unpleasant areas of Los Angeles, so I am definitely willing to go back in the future to try their dinner set as well.
With that being said, I was still satisfied with the lunch omakase. It was relatively light, but still reasonable for what you’d expect for lunch. There wasn’t anything particularly special or innovative about the omakase, which is not necessarily a bad thing—it serves as a good option for someone who is looking for a simple, predictable, traditional experience during a quick lunch break.
Because of some absolutely horrific past experiences I’ve had with the Rio Hotel & Casino back when they were a part of Caesars Entertainment, I’ve been pretty avoidant of Caesars properties in general. However, once in a while, a hotel under the Caesars family will have something interesting enough that it’s still worth making a visit. In my opinion, one of those things is the Wildlife Habitat at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel & Casino.
The main reason I actually decided to go for a midday walk to the Flamingo was because I heard there were some renovations to their pool that was finally open to the public after a few delays, and Caesars played it up as if it was going to be some kind of revolutionary, innovative, state-of-the-art renovation, so I wanted to see it for myself and find it if that was true.
Funny enough, I could not figure out where the entrance to the pool was. The only entry point I could find had a security guard that said only registered hotel guests were permitted access, and the other meandering path I came across ended up spitting me out at the taxi and rideshare zone. I don’t even like pools, so I wasn’t particularly motivated to keep searching. Instead, I just went to the Wildlife Habitat to see the flamingos.
You need to calibrate your expectations properly when going to the Wildlife Habitat, because if you’re hoping to see a ton of flamingos, you’re going to be out of luck. I think there are fewer than ten flamingos on the property, along with a small, assorted collection of other birds, fish, and sea life spread throughout different sections of the habitat. It’s nothing too crazy, and it’s nothing even close to what you’d find at a zoo or aquarium, but it’s free to go in for a quick stroll, and it’s amusing to see something like this outdoors on the Las Vegas Strip.
I also had an opportunity to see the Garden Chapel. I don’t know if this is usually just open to the public or if I had some fortunate timing, but this back area was very serene and nearly devoid of tourists. There was the occasional sign saying that the wedding coordinator was away and would be returning shortly, which I guess implies that the area is only open during certain business hours, but I was lucky enough to be able to sightsee uninterrupted due to the attendant being busy.
Here are some photographs I captured during my visit:
On a day that I didn’t really have much going on, I decided to break up the monotony of my work day and spend an afternoon checking out the Infinity Museum at the Boulevard Mall in the unincorporated town of Paradise in the Las Vegas Valley (different from the BLVD on the Las Vegas Strip). This is apparently a relatively new attraction, having opened only about a month ago
The Infinity Museum is a collection of eight rooms using lights and other visuals to create immersive experiences (along with a few more smaller displays in the hallways between rooms), some of which included a simulated starry night, a room with gigantic helium-filled orbs, a walk-in dodecahedron, a mirror maze, and a kaleidoscope.
This obviously reminded me of my visit to Arte Museum Las Vegas, another interactive and immersive light show experience. The Infinity Museum and the Arte Museum are similar, but have a few distinct differences.
It feels like the Infinity Museum wants to focus more on pushing boundaries and setting records, by way of designing things that haven’t been made before and being more innovative with their rooms. For a lot of the rooms, it also made me feel like I was basically a doll in a dollhouse—the rooms are large and spacious, so it almost gives the impression of there being a giant peering in through the ceiling and watching as you interact with their creation.
On the contrary, the Arte Museum had smaller rooms, which had the effect of feeling like the walls were pushing into you; this made it easier for you to get “lost” inside the immersion and truly feel like you are in the middle of what’s going on around you. Also, I personally like having multiple senses stimulated at once, so the fact that the Arte Museum integrated scents and aromas into their experiences made them very pleasant and memorable.
I personally liked the Arte Museum a bit better, but I enjoyed the Infinity Museum as well. I would recommend both; but, for different kinds of people who are looking for different things, I think one option will be notably better than the other.
I recommend the Arte Museum if you are an adult going alone or with a small group of other adults and have the patience to really take in what’s around you and want a multi-sensory experience (because remember, Arte Museum has a café too). I would recommend the Infinity Museum if you are going with children, or if you are big on taking cool-looking pictures to post on social media that will give a nice visual pop to your feed.
I personally paid US$29.00 for admission, but I think there was something bugged with the online booking system at the time of my purchase (I checked again just now, and it seems like the point-of-sale platform is fixed). When I went to buy my ticket, there were around three or four adult general admission ticket prices listed that made it seem like you were allowed to pick how much you wanted to pay (and I obviously picked the cheapest option). With that being said, I am a Las Vegas local and went during off-peak hours, so I feel like I deserved the cheapest ticket price anyway.
It looks like tickets are currently in the $40s per adult if you want to go on a weekend during surge hours, and they cost a little bit more if you also want to add on a VIP package.
Here are some photographs I took throughout all the exhibits:
Today is the last day of astronomical summer, with the autumnal equinox happening tomorrow during the late morning in my local Las Vegas time zone; I felt like this was a good milestone to share some of the miscellaneous food photographs I’ve taken over the past handful of months.
While in Los Angeles County housesitting for a friend, I met up with another friend to help her do some furniture shopping. We sat on several different couches from a bunch of different stores, and I concluded that all of them felt nearly identical. Then, I sat on the last couch on her list of couches to test out and realized that it was about 20 times better than every other couch, and that we probably should’ve just started with that one to begin with.
After successfully debossing our butt prints on many different couches, we got sushi for lunch at Mills Alley in Pasadena, California. Here is my chirashi bowl and tako wasabi.
During one of my trips in spring, I flew transcontinentally with JetBlue Mint on one of their new Airbus A321neos configured to allow all Mint passengers to have direct aisle access (as opposed to the older Airbus A321s that have “throne” seats in the even-numbered rows and a 2-2 configuration in the odd-numbered rows).
I don’t know if this has always been the case, but I found it enjoyable that they gave me a bottle of Saratoga Water, considering the recent Ashton Hall Saratoga Water meme.
While waiting for the flight attendants to prepare all the meals, I received a glass of Diet Coke and their signature zero-proof “Mint (Under One) Condition” with seltzer, ginger, lime, cucumber, and mint. I also got a small brass snack bowl of what I think was vegan rinds, potentially made out of rice.
I always like to sit in the last row of lie-flat first class and business class cabins because they offer the most privacy; in this case, I was in seat 8F. This meant I would be the last one to receive my meal, but I don’t mind; I feel like receiving your meal deeper into your flight helps partition out the journey a bit better so that you’re not done with your food right away and left with a bored mouth for the rest of the flight.
For my meal, I got some shrimp, lasagna, and a chicken salad. I think this is literally the most dry chicken I have ever tasted in my entire life. The food was incredibly disappointing, and I think the bread was probably the only decent thing they served for dinner.
For dessert, I got this wild-looking fruit and nut ice cream. This was significantly better than the meal, though I don’t know if I thought that because it was actually decent ice cream, or if I had been so let down by dinner that this only tasted incredible in comparison.
One of my friends recently visited me in Las Vegas for a bit. She was craving some late night sushi, so we tried out Japaniero Asian Fusion in the southwest Las Vegas Valley. We were pleasantly surprised at how high-quality the fish was. We enjoyed some sashimi and ceviche, but my favorite dish was the rock shrimp with spicy yuzu creme.
Back on a plane—this time with American Airlines.
Although my cholesterol levels are no longer as dangerously high as they used to be, I am still mindful of my health and try to eat fish and birds whenever possible to maintain heart health and avoid hereditary-prone disorders and diseases. Thus, I requested grilled salmon with vegetables, pita bread with hummus, and a side salad for my in-flight meal.
The person sitting next to me, though? He requested nothing, because he completely knocked out right after boarding the flight. He didn’t regain consciousness until I was more than halfway finished with my meal, but after he woke up and realized that everyone else had either received or was in the process of getting their food, he looked around in panic as if he was too late and he would not get dinner that day.
The guy was young, and he seemed genuinely concerned, so eventually, I told him something along the lines of “don’t worry, you’re in first class, they will come back and give you food after they’re done serving everyone else.” Lo and behold, when the flight attendants were finished fulfilling everyone else’s requests that had already been put in, they asked my next-seat neighbor what he wanted for dinner. I think he picked some kind of pasta meal.
In addition to the regular portion of the meal, in-flight meals also usually have a “from the bakery” section where the flight attendant will walk around with a basket of fresh bread and allow you to select what kind of bread you would like to have to go along with your meal. They brought the bread basket to the guy next to me, and he picked a roll. He then proceeded to jab at every single dish, literally not eat any of it, then eat only the bread with a gigantic portion of butter.
When he had the chance, he flagged down the flight attendant and asked for some more bread and butter. He then proceeded to eat only the bread and butter again, and not eat anything else. This was so funny to me that I felt I had to take a picture. I didn’t want to make it obvious so the framing is a bit weird and I just barely got his tray in the shot with the wide angle mode on my phone’s camera, but you can see the comical stack of butter wrappers atop the rest of his uneaten food.
Also, if you’re wondering about the discrepancy between my photograph here in seat 1A and the statement I made earlier about preferring the final row of the first class cabin, my last-row preference only applies to lie-flat seats that have direct aisle access. For United States domestic first class in a 2-2 configuration, I always try to grab the bulkhead window seat if I can so that I can go in and out to the bathroom without my seat neighbor needing to move, and also so I can sleep without my neighbor bothering me to go to the bathroom.
Anyway, this was my dessert. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I do recall it being pretty good, albeit a bit too sweet.
Back in Las Vegas, I had a tasting menu dinner reservation with one of my friends one day, but we had a few hours to kill before our time slot. We were on the Strip, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to visit the Coca-Cola store on the Las Vegas Strip.
For the longest time, I’ve wanted to do the “Around the World” beverage tasting experience but never got around to it until now.
I’m glad that I brought my friend along for this, because the portion size for the drinks was actually more than I expected. Even though the plastic cups look small, the liquid adds up pretty quickly, so it was helpful to have her help drink some of this.
It was definitely interesting, but still probably just a one-time-only kind of activity for me. My conclusion after trying all 14 beverages was that plain old regular Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar are still my preferred Coca-Cola soft drinks, and my all-time favorite is still Coca-Cola Zero Sugar out of a Coca-Cola Freestyle dispenser with either lime or peach syrup mixed in.
I don’t know where this was from because I was with a group of friends after dinner, one person picked a place in walking distance to go to for dessert, and I basically blindly followed her to the restaurant’s front door. We picked two desserts to share amongst ourselves, and this strawberry ice cream dessert was my selection; I thought it was very good.
Anime Expo happened over the summer, and I had some friends visit Los Angeles from out of town for the convention. I also happened to be in Los Angeles County at that time (though not for Anime Expo), and I took the opportunity to meet up with some friends who I hadn’t seen for a while.
With one of my friends, I went to Shinkai Sushi Japanese Fusion in Alhambra, California. My friend told me that she’s not really a sushi expert, so to spare her from the decision-making, I decided to order two different combo plates of sashimi along with a side of sushi rice. The fish was high-quality and cut satisfyingly thick.
In the evening of the final day of Anime Expo, I joined one of my friends and her group of convention-goers for dinner at Hanu K-BBQ. While at the restaurant, I happened to run into someone else I know, so I went over to chat with her at her table while I was waiting for food to come out. Apparently, Hanu K-BBQ has very fast service, because by the time I was back at my table, the waitress was already done cooking our first batch of meat.
The quality of the meat was great, but we ordered a comically small portion of food considering the number of people who were in our group, so I left hungry. This restaurant is one of the rare spots in Koreatown that has plentiful parking, so if I’m in the area again, this is definitely a place I’d be willing to try again (but order a more reasonable amount of food).
Now we teleport to the San Francisco Bay Area, to which I traveled for Open Sauce 2025. I had a travel companion as a +1 for my trip, and on the day that we arrived, we walked over to a nearby strip mall to get some food and buy some filtered drinking water and snacks.
For lunch, we dined in at Otoko Sushi in Redwood City and ordered a chirashi bowl and “treasure box” off their sushi combo menu. Both of these were pretty mediocre, and I found the market price on the treasure box to be fairly overpriced compared to what we got (though I don’t remember exactly how much it was; I just remember that it was too expensive).
This was such a funny moment for me that I felt like I had to share it, and I figured that its relation to food is close enough that it would make sense to tell the story here.
After our sushi lunch at Otoko, we walked to the nearby Nob Hill Foods to buy a gallon of spring water and some protein bars. My friend initially picked a KIND bar, but then she remembered that she had an app on her phone where she could scan grocery store barcodes and be told how healthy an item is.
She then proceeded to scan literally 30+ different items from the shelves in an attempt to find the healthiest protein bar, periodically expressing comical frustration and confusion at how unhealthy so many of these options were. At one point, she was so bewildered that we decided to fact-check her app by scanning the barcode on our drinking water… to which the app declared that it was 100% healthy. Now more confident in the app, she proceeded to squat back down and scan even more items.
We weren’t in a rush because our next scheduled obligation was quite a bit later on in the night, so I stood there in pleasant amusement while doing curls with the gallon jug of water in an attempt to make more efficient use of my time and get a light workout in.
The best part: she ended up just buying the original KIND bar that she had first picked anyway.
For lunch during one of our San Francisco days, we went to Echigo Home Cook. For our beverage, we ordered an iced coconut hojicha. The flavor profile on this was very unique and distinct, and I think this might have been the most delicious tea I have ever had in my entire life.
For our main entrées, we got one deluxe chirashi bowl and one uni-toro-kani rice bowl. My friend also added on a creamy scallop hand roll, which is not pictured here.
The fish quality was unbelievably high. The food here was very pricey, but the quality was also up there to match. The salmon roe in the chirashi bowl was unlike any I had ever had before—it tasted almost like it was a more naturally watered-down version of the roe, but only to the perfect level such that it reduced some of the more intense saltiness you expect from ikura so that the flavor profile comes out a bit more pure and clean. I also remember it having an unusual citrusy freshness to it. It’s almost as if each roe was individually injected with a tiny portion of yuzu juice and then resealed.
Jumping back to Las Vegas, here’s an octopus appetizer I had at Javier’s in the Aria Resort and Casino. I also ate the fish of the day as my main entrée, but I forgot to take a picture of that.
And finally, to wrap up the photo dump, here are some photos from a seafood restaurant. I don’t remember where this is from because I was conveniently chauffeured there by my friends. As you can see, we ended up ordering a lot of dishes. The portion sizes were smaller than we had hoped, but overall, the food ranged between decent and solid.
And that, along with the individual dedicated blog posts that I linked above, concludes my past two seasons of food adventures. I’ve had more to share recently than I usually do because I’ve been traveling together with friends more often lately, which encourages me to go out and try local restaurants’ dine-in experiences (as opposed to there being a higher likelihood while traveling alone of just ordering a simple chicken or fish dish for takeout and eating it in my hotel room while working or watching YouTube).
I haven’t been as diligent about keeping up with new technology as I was when I was a kid. Young Adam used to be pretty dedicated to reading tech news and trying to adopt as much of it into his life as quickly as possible, but current Adam only notices these things if they are either locally relevant or have advanced to a stage of development where it’s about to have a big impact on society.
Self-driving cars have hit both of those metrics.
With Tesla and Elon Musk having local ties to Nevada and Las Vegas, I’ve noticed them as one of the pioneers of self-driving technology. I’ve never really liked Tesla ever since around 2017 when I took a ride in my aunt and uncle’s Model X and realized how poorly it was built. Although I have not been particularly vocal about my dislike of Tesla ever since Elon Musk’s involvement in politics because I don’t want to be mistaken as some leftist Democrat who is just jumping on the Elon Musk hate bandwagon, my opinions of Tesla are still generally the same. I’ve always thought that Tesla should’ve just been a technology company and not a car manufacturer. With that being said, to my understanding, the work that Tesla conducts in Las Vegas is heavily focused on that technology aspect, which I think is a good thing.
Other companies, like Waymo, have joined in on developing self-driving technology and have outpaced Tesla. When I took a trip to the Phoenix Metropolitan Area in Arizona, I rode around exclusively in Waymos instead of using human-driven rideshare services. This is obviously a big change to society.
I am looking forward to self-driving technology becoming good enough to the point where people won’t have to drive their own vehicles anymore. I still drive my 2018 GMC Canyon gasoline pickup truck; once that breaks down or otherwise becomes inoperable, I expect to buy an electric pickup truck to replace it. I anticipate that to be the last vehicle I buy that I need to drive myself; I think that if I keep my Canyon for a handful more years and then drive my new EV for a decade and a half, self-driving cars should probably be the norm that far into the future.
With all that context in mind, along with knowing that I am optimistic about the future of self-driving vehicles, I’m sure it’s not surprising to hear that I was one of the first people to join the Zoox Explorer program as part of their partnership with Resorts World Las Vegas. Zoox is a company that is also working on self-driving technology like Waymo, and they are at a phase of development where they’re able to test their vehicles on public roads. For the past few years, I have seen quite a few supervised Zoox vehicles driving around Las Vegas for testing; I was excited to hear that they were now ready to be tested fully autonomously.
Zoox had a little booth set up in front of the southern entrance off Goh Tong Way. From here, people who were interested in taking a ride in a Zoox were able to scan a QR code, register for an account, and join the waitlist.
Right around 20 minutes after my friend and I signed up for a demo ride, a Zoox arrived to pick us up. As you can tell from the photographs, the interior of these vehicles are designed to not have a driver at all. There is no driver’s seat or front passenger’s seat; there are just four seats for occupants.
They also don’t look like a normal vehicle with a tapered hood area that encases either the engine in gasoline vehicles or a front trunk in electric vehicles; instead, they are basically just rectangular prisms (which I imagine might not be the best for aerodynamics).
Once inside, there was a message on the control screen welcoming us to the ride and briefing us on the estimated length of our demo ride. Shortly thereafter, a button popped up that allowed us to begin the ride.
There is a little screen next to each occupant from which the climate control and music can be adjusted.
People sometimes ask me (presumably as a joke) how I can prove that I went somewhere or did something if I take pictures of things around me, but not of myself. Well, here is a remarkably low-quality picture of myself sitting in the Zoox.
There were two demo rides available—a short one just around Resorts World Las Vegas, and a long one all the way up the Las Vegas Strip. Interestingly, our Zoox decided to have a mind of its own and not follow the mapped route; instead, it took us all the way out to Koval Lane. Here is a photograph of the MGM Grand at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue.
When I mentioned this detour to a Zoox staff member after the conclusion of the ride, he said that the system sometimes takes different routes to avoid construction if it knows that it will be stuck in congestion.
Eventually, it found its way back onto Las Vegas Boulevard. The vehicle has a dual-pane sunroof, which acted as a convenient window through which we could see the lights of the Strip.
After about half an hour, the Zoox completed its loop and returned us back to Resorts World.
I found most of the ride to be not too different from what I experienced in a Waymo. However, there were two things that were significantly worse.
First, the headrest is extremely hard. It feels like it is an insanely dense block of foam or something. Not only does it jut out a bit so it feels like your head is leaning forward the entire time, but it is so solid that, if the Zoox ever has to brake hard and your head gets thrown back, it will impact with the foam and probably give you a pretty bad headache. In Waymos, I liked that the headrest was basically just a regular vehicle headrest that was firm enough to give proper support but still soft enough to be comfortable.
Second, the seats do not recline at all. This is a problem for someone like me who gets easily car sick. In Waymos, I’m able to sit in the front passenger seat and recline the seat back pretty far so that I’m in a relaxed, leaned position and my motion sickness is mitigated. However, in the Zoox, I had to sit upright the entire time, and my motion sickness got bad enough near the end that it almost felt like I had to vomit.
Overall, I thought this was a great experience, and I’m glad I was able to participate in the program and volunteer some of my time to test out a new autonomous vehicle. To be clear, I did not get compensated to write this blog post, and I didn’t even receive a special private invitation or anything; I just saw that this was a thing and tried it out along with the rest of the general public.
I don’t know how long this testing phase will stay open, but if you’re on or around the Las Vegas Strip and want to check it out, I think it would serve as a fun way to spend half an hour.
I think this would be especially compelling if you’ve never ridden in a Waymo before. This wasn’t as novel of an experience for me as it could have been because of my plethora of Waymo rides from Phoenix, but I’ve heard from people who have never been in a fully self-driving car before that their first time was pretty surreal.
I mentioned earlier in this blog post that I’m looking to buy an electric pickup truck as my next vehicle. I decided to save this photo for last because it’s not fully relevant to Zoox (apart from the Zoox vehicles also being electric), but I drove a Ford F-150 Lightning as my rental vehicle while I was in Las Vegas.
(For those wondering, the reason I had a rental and didn’t just drive my own personal pickup truck is because I recently flew from Hà Nội to Los Angeles and had a small window of time to head back home to Las Vegas before needing to return to Los Angeles again to attend an event, so instead of driving to Las Vegas, I parked my truck at my friend’s home and flew.)
When I rent vehicles, I always select the pickup truck class because I’m used to driving pickup trucks and feel more comfortable in taller vehicles with better visibility. Luckily for me, apparently Avis just classes all full-size pickup trucks together, regardless of whether they are a basic trim or an EV. I figured this was a good opportunity to test out a Ford F-150 Lightning for the first time, so I specifically asked for it when I went to the rental counter, and the customer service representative gladly fulfilled my request.
The charging infrastructure in the Las Vegas Valley isn’t the best if you don’t have access to the Tesla Supercharger network (which I did not, because the F-150 Lightning rental did not come with a proper adapter to allow me to plug in a Tesla Charging Connector into the currently more common CCS connector for non-Tesla EVs). I ended up having to drive down to the Shell Recharge south of South Point for fast charging, as a majority of other locations I found only had ~7 kW charging rate instead of the full ~180 kW DC. Unfortunately, the price there was pretty expensive, and considering the kilowatt-hours per mile used by the F-150 Lightning, it was barely any cheaper than if I had a gasoline F-150 with an EcoBoost engine.
With that being said, I heard that Tesla is working on making their facilities more universal and friendly to other non-Tesla vehicles as well, and they will allegedly retrofit their stations to have built-in adapters. On top of that, charging technology is only going to get better, so in a handful of years when I’m ready to buy a new pickup truck, I imagine that charging will no longer be much of an issue.
The F-150 Lighting was probably the most stable and smooth ride I’ve ever felt in a pickup truck. I love that the heavy batteries bring the center of gravity down low, so it significantly reduces the chances of a dangerous rollover in the case of a collision, and it overall just makes the vehicle feel more firm and solid. I felt like I could easily take curves faster than my smaller mid-size pickup truck and still not have as much of a sensation of inertia from centripetal force.
If a car rental company has an F-150 Lightning available, I am definitely asking for it again in the future. Once you get the hang of it, charging at a fast charge station isn’t too bad—you plug it into the charger, get back in the vehicle, turn on the air conditioning or heat to stay comfortable (without needing to idle the engine like you would with a gasoline vehicle), plug your laptop into the household outlet that F-150s have, and treat the truck like a little mobile office.
As for Zoox, I’m looking forward to seeing how they iterate on the interior design of their vehicles. Hopefully they implement some more comfort features in the cabin so that I can consider using them on a routine basis without needing to be worried about motion sickness.
The Bellagio’s summer installation this year is called “Glam Menagerie: A Surrealist Summer.” I took a quick look at it back in June and July when I had friends visiting Las Vegas, but I didn’t have an opportunity to go through and thoroughly photograph everything until earlier today. I managed to get my visit in with only a day to spare—the installation is closing down at the end of the day tomorrow and will be entering its dark dates for a week while they transition to the autumn collection.
