30 May 2009
A Faire Day Out
The three of us went to the Maker Faire1 today. I was ambivalent about going originally as it seemed like it would be a bit of a hassle to get there. Originally, it was going to be only Sam and myself going, but as Carolyn helped us figure out how best to get there, she decided it looked interesting to her too, so we decided to all go. We took our bicycles on BART from the far north east corner(El Cerrito del Norte), to the far southwest corner (Milbrae). From Milbrae, we rode our bikes along the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition’s commuter route map which follows along near the CalTrain route down to the San Mateo County Expo Center where Maker Faire was being held. By virtue of arriving by bicycle, we got discounted admission (win!).
.The faire was full of all kinds of wonderful oddness. Carolyn and Sam went swinging in the PlaySoundGround which was interesting, but I was surprised at how few sensors there were contributing to the soundscape, and how hard it was to tell if what impact those sensors were having. From there we wandered around and saw someone bouncing around on strange stilts, cars with all kinds of “art” on them, rocketry, music, pedal-powered carousels and ferris wheels.
The “life-size” mousetrap, SCA sword fights, a huge Lego model train set, and battleship. Sam really enjoyed working with clay at one of the demo stations for Oakland’s The Crucible as well as playing with the lego jeep.
There were all kinds of places represented that I want to play at in the future too, including The Crucible, The Sawdust Shop and TechShop. An excellent day was had by all, and it was topped off surprisingly well. On the way back, we stumbled across the “CrepVine” restaurant where we had some delicious savory crepes and Sam very much enjoyed the chocolate cake she split with Mom. (I had my own, thank you very much.)
We liked it enough that if we hadn’t already planned to be lazy tomorrow (and have dinner out east with “Unkie John”) we might have gone back for a second day. We’ll certainly do it again next year, but next year, we’ll leave quite a bit earlier! More photos are in the gallery
- Carolyn especially enjoyed the spelling of “Faire” as it’s the French infinitive of “to do” or “to make”! Return to body↩
