Beest

A Very Last-Minute Event

I wasn't really supposed to be at this event.

Beest was kind of a last-minute thing for me. I had asked the lead organizer if they needed any extra help with an in-person Hack Club event happening here in the Netherlands. They didn't, but he made me another offer: if I could do 15 hours in two weeks instead of the usual 60 hours, I could come.

There was only one catch: no accommodation.

That wasn't too bad though. The event was in The Hague, so I could just take the train home every night.

This morning, I woke up and still hesitated about whether I should actually go.

Eventually I decided: why not?

So I got on the train, and about an hour later I arrived at Den Haag station and started walking towards The Hague Tech.

Guess Who I Found

Before I even properly made it into the event, I spotted someone on a bike.

Euan Ripper!

He was struggling with his bike lock and told me he'd just gone to a grocery store to pick up a DHL package. He was very confused because it just looked like a completely normal grocery store.

Apparently picking up packages from random grocery stores isn't really a thing where he's from.

Welcome to the Netherlands!

We went inside together, and while I was checking in I immediately started seeing familiar faces. Alice and Emma were there, and later I found Reem as well! There were also a lot of people I'd never met before.

Then it was time to figure out what we were actually going to be doing for the next few days.

Build a Strandbeest

Unlike most Hack Club events I've been to, where everyone is working on their own project, Beest had one task for everyone:

Build a Strandbeest.

A Strandbeest is basically a mechanical structure that can walk using a bunch of interconnected legs. Euan had designed everything beforehand and laser cut all the wooden parts for us.

The plan was pretty simple. Everyone was split into teams, and each team had to build one leg. Once all the legs were finished, we'd put them together into one giant Strandbeest.

The teams had already been made by the time I arrived, so I joined Alice's team.

We started putting our leg together, and it didn't take long before we found our first problem.

One of the screw holes in a joint was way too big.

Our solution?

Put another piece of wood into the hole and drill a new hole through that.

Problem solved!

After a lot of figuring out which piece went where, our leg slowly started looking like an actual mechanism. And we weren't the only ones. Around us, all the other teams were trying to get their own legs moving as well.

Eventually, the first two legs were finished.

And that's when the original team structure kind of disappeared.

Organized Chaos

Once those first two legs were done, everyone started doing different things.

Some teams were still trying to figure out how to get their leg working. One group started working on the final assembly and figuring out how all these separate legs were actually going to become one walking machine.

And one pretty big group had basically stopped building altogether and started playing theatre games together.

So the room had turned into this weird mix of people building a giant wooden walking machine, people troubleshooting individual legs, and a group playing games in the middle of it all.

I mostly stayed around the Strandbeest and helped wherever I could.

At some point people even started asking me if I was staff because I apparently sounded convincing enough while explaining what people needed to do.

I'm not staff. But sure.

Slowly, the final frame started taking shape. We managed to get the first two legs connected and had a pretty sturdy structure standing in front of us.

There was just one problem.

We Need M8s

The final assembly needed three stabilizing rods to hold everything together. The design required us to clamp pieces of plywood between two bolts.

Except the rods we had weren't threaded.

Which makes putting bolts on them somewhat difficult.

We needed the right M8 hardware.

So Matei and I volunteered to go on what should have been a short mission:

Go to the nearby hardware store, get the M8s, and come back.

When we got there, we found out they didn't have the M8 screws we needed anymore.

So we found another hardware store and walked there instead. Thankfully, they actually had what we needed!

By this point, our quick hardware store trip had turned into about an hour of walking around The Hague.

And while we were gone, the venue closed.

Everyone else had already left and gone back to the hostel.

At least we had the M8s. We asked security to open the doors for us and left the new screws.

An Empty Venue and Some Pasta

We headed over to the hostel where everyone else was staying, and they offered me some pasta. It was delicious!

After eating, I talked with Euan for a bit about the plan for tomorrow.

Then came the unfortunate part of that one catch from the beginning.

Everyone else could stay at the hostel.

I had to go home.

So I said goodbye, headed back to the station, and took the train home.

This morning I wasn't even sure if I was going to show up. Now we've got a half-built Strandbeest. tomorrow we somehow need to turn all of it into something that actually walks.