RMRRF Friday Setup

I left very early in the morning to head to Denver for a weekend of 3D printing madness.   We didn't know it would be that crazy busy at the time.  I landed close to the time that JC, my producer, landed.  We got our luggage and a car and headed the hour-ish-long drive to Loveland, Colorado.

JC prefers to use Waze, so he had it taking us to our destination.   I prefer big roads and straight shots.   Waze likes to do the opposite often, from my experience.   But this time it did something I can't believe happened.   We were getting close.  Less than a few miles, when it had us turn onto a road that headed up towards the mountains, away from everything.   Maybe the hotel was over that rise we can see?  Then it has us going down a very small road and continuing on through a gate that said on a sign, "Private Property No Trespassers." 

JC said he could see the destination if we could go through the gate, turn left and head to the rise; we might see a way to get to the hotel.   We were both unsure, so we turned around and headed back down the hill.  JC, in the meantime, navigated using Google Maps, which said we were still close to a half-hour away.  We don't know what happened with the navigation, but we made it in the end.

We dropped our bags and pulled out all the things we'd need at the event space, and then we headed to Target to get some candy.   Candy was needed.  And a big bowl for the candy.  I was going for "Best Candy Bowl 2023".  I didn't know if they had any prizes, but if they did, I was going for that one. 

I love the setup day.  It's the companies and the people who have tables or booths getting their spaces ready.   There are no attendees, and yet all of us are attendees in a sense too.   We all wanted to go around and say hi, and since our table was reasonably easy to set up, that's exactly what we did. 

After setup, there were groups of people going to dinner together—large groups—which overwhelmed the restaurants quickly.  We decided to back out of the main, huge, group and go to another restaurant a few streets over.   We had a lovely dinner with two filament companies I'd been wanting to spend some time with.

Then we went back to the hotel to get some sleep before the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival begins!