Makers Local 256

Raymond, Tim, Justin, and I decided to go to St. Louis for the grand opening of Arch Reactor the local Hackerspace up there. They had made a post to the hackerspaces.org mail list inviting everyone out to there space. I asked a few members if they would like to go, and we made a weekend trip out of it.

I had spoken with a few of the Arch Reactor members beforehand and made arrangements to crash at a members apartment. We left Friday night in the middle of a snow storm. Lucky Tim is from upside down Vermont and thus knows how to drive in bad weather. A 6 hour drive took us 10.5, but thanks to my Droid we never missed a beat with Pandora.

Once in St. Louis we found a McDonald’s to get food and then napped in the parking lot. Then we traveled over to the Arch and did the touristy things. We walked around the museum and rode up in the Arch. Being about lunchtime we headed over to Arch Reactor were we hung out for the rest of the night.

The open house was tons of fun. They probably had 50 or more people show up. They had a Maker Bot and a CNC, along with a bunch of old and new computers. There was some cool art, and a few talks. Tim and I even showed off the photobooth and gave a short talk about it. OH! and they had life sized Jenga!

As expected after only a few hours of sleep and parting all day with only caffeine to keep us awake, we crashed hard Saturday night. Sunday morning we had lunch with a member of their space and headed home. The drive home way way easier than the one going up. On the way through Illinois we saw a sign for Metropolis, IL aka Superman’s Home. Naturally we stopped and saw a giant Superman at the courthouse.

Here are the picture I took, I’ll update it later if anyone else has posted their pictures.