The Argon Express 2008? It's not too late!
Picture yourself and your laptop. It’s been over a day and you’re sitting on a train with a group of Rails developers with a view like this over your shoulder.
Hacking and reading on the train.
Enjoying the sceneary of the U.S.A.
Two years ago… a group of us went from Portland to Chicago for RailsConf 2006 on the Argon Express.
I know this is a tad late… but uf you haven’t purchased plane tickets to Portland yet for CabooseConf or RailsConf 2008 and would be interested in catching the train from somewhere the East Coast, email me and we’ll talk. I’m hoping to organize the Argon Express 2008 over next few weeks.
RubyConf Express
Wow… this is awesome!
The sd.rb group is following up on our concept for The Argon Express. People are heading to RubyConf 2006 from San Diego, California to Denver, Colorado on the RubyConf Express.
We had a blast on our two-day trip across the country… check out our photos on flickr.
It’s great to see the tradition continue!
Have fun! :-)
the Argon Express
While at RailsConf, I was asked probably a few dozen times how the trip to Chicago via Amtrak was… and my answer was, “fun!” It really was… granted it wasn’t easy to sleep on the train but we did have fun.
Here are a few photos from the trip… in chronological order. Be sure to see the gallery as people are adding more and more photos to the group.
Walking to Union Station in Portland, OR.
Group photos before boarding…
Traveling on the train along the Columbia River
Late night hacking..
Late at night… leg streching
Breakfast on the train
Stopped in Wisconsin
Hacking on the train…
More hacking on the train…
The Mac shot…
Arrived at Union Station in Chicago, IL.
A video is coming soon too!
Snakes on a Train
4 comments Latest by Alain Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:39:55 GMT
First of all, thank you Allison for keeping people updated for the past few days as the sixteen of us traveled across the country together. We made new friends and enemies over those two days and we’re already talking about RubyConf and next year. :-)
Yesterday…. Allison posted that we arrived in Chicago. We are all at the conference hotel now and last night we had the world famous Giordano’s pizza. Then we headed downtown to a few clubs (several of the argon express passengers came). I just woke up from the best sleep since Portland as I didn’t have to try to sleep in an awkward position on a train seat.
I also updated the Flickr group for the Argon Express. Hopefully the others who joined us will be posting photos to the group. :-)
The Argon Express Has Arrived!
Hello Chicago!
I just got a message from Robby announcing their arrival in the windy city. I’d advise that anyone eager to catch up with the Argon Express passengers stay away until they have all showered. 40-some hours on a crowded train? No thanks! :P
Hope you all had fun on the train, be sure to add your photos to the Argon Express group photo pool.
The Argon Express: St. Paul, Minnesota
1 comment Latest by Luke Francl Wed, 21 Jun 2006 15:01:39 GMT
I got another update from the Argon Express this morning during a stop in St. Paul Minnesota. Here are some of Robby’s thoughts from the train.
- We just left the Amtrak station in St. Paul, Minnesota and we can now see the Mississippi to the right of the train. Sleeping on the train has been one of the biggest challenges and Josh and Alain snuck into sleeper cars last night.
- People have been commenting how they haven’t seen so many laptops on a train before.
- Montana is really huge.
- We’ve had good luck with the power and have power strips running in two areas of the train so nobody has run out of battery life.
- We’re going to try and post more pictures to the groups in the next day as we have more internet access.
Robby did seem to find a moment to post some more photos. Be sure to keep checking the PLANET ARGON Argon Express photoset for more updates.
I just caught Robby online, and asked if anyone is working on any interesting projects… here is what I gathered:
- Chris Anderson is working on a version of Asset Compiler for audio files with the help of Jeremy Voorhis.
- Trevor and Mark are working on something and did a lot of swearing about has_many through but… not sure what
- Steven and David are working on rspec for rails
- Other than that… not sure what people are up to… personal projects and client work
And lastly, here is a portion of a blog post Robby was working on yesterday. He asked me to share it with you:
Sitting in my seat on the Argon Express and been looking out the window for most of the day. Brian is reading my latest copy of Scientific American Mind and I’ve been reading, Wherever you go there you are. Jeremy Voorhis is reading the Betrand Russell book I brought and is in front of us and Jeremy Hubert just took his shoes off and is watching The Pink Panther. Josh Knowles got the internet up for a few minutes… long enough for me to see the last post by Allison. I predict we’ll have very limited internet for the rest of the day, which is just fine with me.
The train is quite relaxing and we stayed up really late last night, which took its toll on my energy level for the day. Sleeping on a train is not as easy as one would think.
Woke up this morning to some awesome scenery in western Montana, which I will try to upload in the near future.
As far as development projects, Chris Anderson and Jeremy Voorhis stayed up pretty late working on a variation of asset compiler for audio files… should be interesting to hear about that.