The hackathons tour (part 1)

This story will cover a 27 day trip from Barcelona to the United States of America and Canada that started on 1st September and that is only possible thanks to the help from the hackathons, that cover the travel expenses.

The idea

It all started a couple months ago when Héctor and I saw that PennApps, considered by most people the most important student hackathon in the world, took place in early September, which meant that we could apply and, if accepted, miss university for a couple days.

That sounded great, but although they can help you by reimbursing your travel expenses, they wouldn't cover everything, and flying to the USA for only 36 hours of hackathon seemed a bit of an overkill. That's the moment when we remembered that a couple years ago some friends of us did 3 hackathons in a row in the US and told us it was the best trip they had ever done. So what did we do? Of course, apply for 3 hackathons that took place in consecutive weekends. In fact we applied to four, but two of them took place in the same weekend, so in case we got accepted in both we would have to decide which one to go to.

This were the following:

PennApps --> 7th-9th September (Pennsylvania, US)

Hack The North / HackMIT --> 14th-16th September (Waterloo, Canada / Boston, US)

Mhacks --> 22nd-24th September (Michigan, US)

The applications were pretty dense to fill, but they were all pretty similar.

Waiting for answers

July came by without any answer from the hackathon admissions, but they already told us they would be confirming early August, so we still believed in the idea of doing this amazing trip.

On the 31st of July I went sailing with my dad from Barcelona to "Ibiza" and "Formentera", two islands 24 hours away from Barcelona sailing. I do this every year, and we stay there for about 15 days.

When I'm on the boat it's very complicated to get internet connection because of the wildness of the place and the huge cliffs that act as a Faraday cage, but I was very anxious to know about the hackathons and every time I could get close to a populated area I would try to find satellite connectivity to open their websites and check my application status.

The first answer we got was from Hack The North, and they accepted us. OMG, that was huge! I wasn't sure if I could afford to go there if it was only for one hackathon, but they were offering to pay me up to $650, so I thought that no matter what the answers of the other hackathons were, I had to go to Canada. I had never been outside of Europe and it meant a lot for me.

Later came Mhacks, who also accepted us!. They agreed to give us up to $400, which is what we asked them for. We were definetly onto something, we were 90% sure that the trip was going to happen, but were still waiting for PennApps. It would be amazing to also go there so that we did the full 3 hackathons tour.

That same day hackMIT answered that we were on the waitlist. It made sense as we were asking for a lot of money, but nevertheless, we already got accepted into Hack The North, and had to decide which one was better. I must admit that going to the MIT would have been awesome, when I was very young I would often tell people that I'd go there to study, but things came out in a different way and actually never applied, staying in Barcelona for studying Aerospace Engineering. But going to Canada was also very tempting, and talking to people that had been there before I felt that Hack The North would be a way better experience. So far so easy!

And then PennApps answered that we were also in the waitlist. NO!!! This happened a week after Hack The North accepted us, and they were putting pressure to us to fill the flying information, but we couldn't do so until we knew if we would be flying from PennApps or from Barcelona. Hack The North agreed to give us 4 more days to fill out this information and we proceeded to send an email to PennApps.

We asked them how probable was it that they would accept us now that we were on the waitlist. Easy question, easy answer.

They replied saying that it was probable, but also improbable (thank you), but that if we refused to get travel reimbursement we could be accepted immediately. Again the problem wasn't that we weren't good enough, but that we were asking for too much money.

Héctor had an idea, a very Catalan idea (in Catalonia, the region in Spain were Barcelona is located, we are considered to be very mean with money, the kind of people that always try to find the cheapest way possible of doing everything), which was to do a counter offer. What if they gave us $200 dollars? They got into the game and said that for $150 we were in. So... We did!

Now we had no excuse, we were accepted everywhere, so it was time to sit down with our laptops and see the prices of the flights.

Getting plane tickets

It was very tough to find a combination that suited us and optimized cost.

The simplest approach was to do BCN-NY which was around $300. Attend PennApps, then go to Toronto, attend Hack The North, then go to Detroit, attend Mhacks, and then do Detroit-BCN. This last flight was also around $300 dollars, so apparently everything could work out. We were very busy that day to actually proceed with buying everything and we still had some questions of wether to go a couple days before, one, four... And many other small things, so we left it for the next day.

But the day after checking this prices, when we were ready to actually buy the tickets, we found out that both BCN-NY and Detroit-BCN nearly doubled the price. What!? Was it because of the cookies? No, we tried it though. Was it because of the day we were in? We decided to wait another day. That was dangerous, the hackathon dates were approaching and flight prices could even go higher.

There was no luck, both flight prices had increased. We couldn't afford the trip anymore... But wait, no so fast. I had an idea. Lets check which is the cheapest flight from BCN to the US in the whole month of September. Bingo! BCN-Oakland on the 1st September was $140!!! And flying from San Francisco to NY was $120, so in total way cheaper than flying directly to NY on the 6th.

Going to Oakland on the 1st September meant something amazing but also something dangerous. In one hand, we could afford the tickets, but most importantly, we would visit the Valley, a dream of mine ever since I got into the startup business. In the other hand though, it meant staying 5 nights in San Francisco. I don't know if you've been there before or if you have heard of this, but living close to the Valley is HELL EXPENSIVE.

We needed to figure something out because Airbnb wasn't an option, not to mention hotels.

But time flied and tickets were getting expensive, so we bought everything that same day. Go big or go home! That's what we used to say when I was very into skateboarding.

I told this to my mum on the phone and she reminded me that my uncle was once married to this American girl that lived in Barcelona but who's family was born and raised in San Francisco. They split up when I was like 6 years old, and my uncle now even has 2 kids with another woman, but I had to try.

She gave me Olivia's phone number and I called her. She remembered me! I asked her if she could help me, we talked for a long time about what I had been up to and sent her pictures. She said I was the same cute boy but taller and more tanned. (I sent her recent pictures from the time I was sailing with my dad, so my skin was way darker that usual).

Olivia contacted her mum and answered me back saying that their house in SF was full because they rent the rooms in Airbnb, but there was this old woman, Mary, who could host us for $50/night. That was awesome!

There was some missinterpretation in the middle and for a couple days we thought that they didn't count on Héctor and that it was $50/person and night, so it wasn't a good deal anymore... But it ended up being Olivia's missinterpretation, and it was $25/person and night.

Hey, if going to San Francisco for 5 days was crazy and funny, check this one out. Instead of going from Toronto to Detroit, we decided to go to Chicago for 3 days in the middle. I don't know when I'll be able to come back to the US, so I had the obligation to plan the craziest trip ever.

And the last crazy thing. Remember that Detroit-BCN got really expensive? Well, we found out that if we slept at the airport for one night, we could go to Miami, stay 12 hours and then do Miami-BCN, which was the cheapest possible return flight in the whole US.

As you can see, this was a difficult Puzzle to solve, but I think we passed with honors!

Here is the first flight schedule we made when everything was kind of sorted out.

The column that says "Precio", which you can intuitively tell means "Price" in Spanish, is the total of two tickets, not a single one.

You might notice that SF airports are different for example. I haven't explained in complete detail every decision we made, but you will understand later on our intentions.

So far the trip looks promising, and for now I can assure that it is being incredible. I'm on my way to NY from California, but the next post isn't yet going to be about this first week, but about all the preparations we made for the trip.