Friday, May 20, 2011

Maker Faire Bay Area Road Trip

For R2's fourth birthday today, he got to go on a road trip.

Maker Faire is this weekend in San Mateo, just south of San Francisco. That means that R2 and I hopped into Mike Senna's van with him and his family, for the 413 mile, near 7-hour drive up from Southern California.



I'm bringing my R2 to join the Bay Area builders, and Mike Senna and Michael McMaster are bringing their WALL•Es-in-progress to show at the adjacent WALL•E Builders booth.

Once we cleared the LA area, there wasn't much to see other than farmland, although we did cross the California Aqueduct once or twice.



Around 4:00pm, we arrived in San Mateo, and the site of Maker Faire.



All sorts of interesting things to see on setup day. Like this stilt creature, reminiscent of the one the movie, The Dark Crystal.



Or, an electric giraffe.



The famous, buzzing Tesla coil and Faraday cage were also being tested, in the same hall where the R2 and WALL•E builders will be. This promises to be a loud weekend.



Steve Simmons and Grant McKinney appeared on the local NBC news affiliate with their droids.



I'm not sure I'd want my droid under what looks like a 2-ton stone, but this is Maker Faire.



The Coke-and-Mentos guys were there, doing their thing.



A number of human-powered, chain-driven vehicles were on display. Very interesting stuff.




Tonight R2 will spend the night in my hotel room, facing the corner for easy access to the back door and batteries. Tomorrow morning, it's Maker Faire, day #1!

1 comment:

red UFO said...

Nice Droid, I love the New Hope early look on it.