All aboard the Boreal Express

In the summer of 2024, I had the opportunity to attend one of the coolest hackathons that's ever happened, the Boreal Express...

Now this wasn't any ordinary hackathon, this was a cross-country journey on a train, where you got to meet some of the coolest highschool hackers from around the world and build projects without any wifi, just the help of others.

But let's back up a little bit to how I actually got invited...

A couple months before Boreal was going to happen, I was perusing the internet for fun hackathons in Vancouver where I could meet others nearby, and came across a cross-country hackathon on a train. I could not believe that this is real, an all-expenses paid 8-day expedition from Vancouver to Montreal for only highschoolers put on by this amazing organization called Hackclub.

Hackclub runs some of the coolest events for high schoolers like Apocalypse, a zombie themed hackathon in Toronto, to events like Arcade, where you work on projects and redeem hours for free stuff like hardware. They're literally the coolest organization on the planet run by the coolest hackers.

The Boreal Express was an invite-only hackathon, you had to submit projects to get accepted, similar to Hack the North and other hackathons, but on a smaller scale. Now around this time, I hadn't actually have made too many projects aside from some small apps and stuff that never really got anywhere, but I did have this one hackathon project I build for a 12h local hackathon that got #1 so it was really my one shot at getting an invite to the Boreal Express...

I wasn't too proud of this project, but it was kind of a neat concept around helping to prevent school shootings, so I submitted it and hoped for the best! It's also my project that got the most amount of attention and won #1 at one of my local hackathons, so I figured it had the best chance.

A couple weeks later, I didn't actually hear anything aside from others being rejected, so I was feeling pretty optimistic, and then a couple weeks before the Boreal Express was going to happen, I got an acceptance letter, I was in for one of the coolest experiences of my life :D

Fast-forward a couple of weeks, I get my flights booked with the organizers, and I take a ferry over with my family to Vancouver and I'm off on my way to the Boreal Express.

The Meetup

The entire group was set to meet on Jericho beach at sunset, and I got to meet lots of cool people like Angad who I was feeding the bunnies with, Advay (my roomate) and a bunch of other really interesting hackers!

I was pretty shy initially because most of the programmers know each other online, but I wasn't too active in the community around this time, but we all shared a lot in common, so it wasn't too hard to meet some new people and I chatted to some people about radio's, hardware, server and just generally interesting stuff!

My first in-depth chat with someone was this kid who I talked to about radio's and airsoft. I was really fascinated about his ham radio because it was like this completely separate thing that only a select few people knew about, and it felt like this really kind community. So we played a couple pranks on the radio on some of the local FM channels, which was fun.

Learning from this experience, I think it's incredibly important to just have deep conversations with people. You learn such an insane amount and form incredibly strong connections with those people, I wish I talked a bit more to others but I still learned a lot nonetheless.

After the sunset, we fooled around on the beach, had some Poke, tried to set off some fireworks (but the police were faster), and all huddled around to finish the night off with our own Boreal song from Woody and his group (you'll hear more about them soon, they're very interesting people).

We met back at a little hostel right by the beach, and I clonked out for the night pretty fast. Something I took away from this was that sleep actually comes last during events like these, you miss a lot of interesting stuff when you sleep, and it's kind of that time where you form deep connections with people. I was kind of sad that I slept so early, I really should've tried talking to some people because I feel like it would've been easier to talking to everyone from the get-go if I messing around like the others.

It's always good to have a laid back attitude during events like these, it's fine to be a bit irresponsible for a couple of days and have some fun, and it's something I really learned during this event, that life isn't that serious.

All aboard!

On day 2, we ate some breakfast and hopped on a bus to get to the VIA rail headquarters. It was this really cool old-fashioned style building and we got a bunch of swag and stickers as soon as we arrived.

We all got these cool yellow buffs that said "VIA rail" and "hackclub" on them, aswell as some "sleep deprived" stickers. Lots of people also brought stuff for all the participants like 3D printed trains, keychains, candy, everything.

I didn't bring anything like lots of the others, but in the future, I'll probably bring stickers to all the events I go too, because getting/giving free stuff is amazing :D

After arriving, the organizers held the opening ceremony where we got to hear some talks from government ministers, the VIA rail higher-ups and of course from the organizers Deven, Zach, Christina and others. There were so many people, it was hard to know who was who, and I wished I talked to more of them because they seemed like really interesting people.

Most of the people had arrived for the hackathon by now, so there were LOTS more people and the room was nearly packed! There were hackers from Greece, Australia, the US, germany, literally EVERYWHERE, it was really amazing!

We then went out to science world for lunch, where we had kind of like an information presentation for the train, and then we all fooled around at the playground. It must've been very interesting seeing 50 kids all with "hackclub" yellow buffs running around like maniacs, but it's all part of the fun!

I had also forgotten to pack my passport though, so I met up with one of my family members who brought me my passport. Luckily they were going to a day trip in Vancouver, and thank goodness I noticed, because if I didn't have it, I would've had lots of trouble flying back to Vancouver from Montreal!

We then headed back to the VIA rail station to begin our journey... We all hopped into a group photo, and then we made our way to our train and finally departed.

I was pretty adrenaline rushed and pretty excited so it was all like a blur... This was my first time doing something like this (aside from some smaller local hackathons) and every single small part was just really transformative, it's the kind of thing I want to do for the rest of my life!

On board, we were presented with our rooms, and then toured around the train a bit to get used to the different rooms, and then the train left on it's merry way.

The VIA rail train was still open to the public, but we had pretty much the entirety of the front, so we probably had like 5 or so carriages all to our selves. The rooms were spread out in a couple carriages, and there were small showers onboard in the corners of the carriages.

The entire train ride was just so magical and beautiful it's hard to describe, you're just passing through nature with nothing to disturb the atmosphere aside from some remote buildings you find here and there.

On board the train, there were also 350 cans of celsius to promote all-nighters.

Growing up, I was taught to be responsible and sleep at reasonable hours, so not sleeping was a huge mindset shift for me. And looking back at all these small experiences, they fundamentally changed me as a person and this is one of the reasons I love attending events like these.

This was also a huge independence jump for me, I'm still pretty young and haven't really done much by myself, so it gave me lots of confidence doing an event like this.

The Boreal Express also had this really cool server setup by Alex Park where we could all share files and host stuff to be eternalized for a long time.

Because we didn't have any internet or anything on the train, we also needed somewhere where we could access documentation and stuff if we needed it. And while the system wasn't perfect, it definitely helped alot of people.

All of us had setup our own tailscale accounts and gotten used to the server before the event started so we could add whatever we want to it beforehand. I found tailscale pretty confusing, but really interesting and I kinda wanna mess around with it a bit more in the future!

The server also introduced me to the terminal. Yes... I had barely touched the terminal before the Boreal Express, and this idea that you could interact with servers and stuff really changed how I looked at programming and will definitely inspire me to grow away from just building websites and apps.

The meals were also amazing on the train. I have many allergies and they were able to accommodate lots of stuff for me, and we were served like 3 course meals with lamb chops and just generally amazing food.

There were also snacks onboard that you could grab anytime, refreshments and stuff too, is was pretty sweet and the whole vibe was just really energetic and hackey, it's the kind of vibe I want to live with for the rest of my life...

Being on the Boreal and seeing all the landscape around us was beautiful :D

I live in Canada, but I never really got the opportunity to see the more remote area's only accessible by train, and it was so eye-opening to see what lies beyond large metropolitan area's. I really want to try and do more exploring after seeing this, it was just unbelievable!

Now today I didn't actually do any programming, I was meeting new people, getting a feel for the train and participating in all the activities, but the programming grind will commence soon.

Now before we went to sleep, we actually crossed through a bunch of wildfires happening around, it's a pretty common thing in Canada to get wild fires during the summer, but it was still pretty scary and hopefully it won't affect our journey later.

Anyways, it was time to get a good nights rest, so I clocked out for the night in our room awaiting whatever will happen next in our journey aboard the Boreal. I still really wish that I had slept less, but it's something I'll carry with myself to whatever adventure awaits me next.

Jasper & Misfortunes

I had a pretty nice sleep and woke up to one of the most surreal landscapes I had ever seen. I couldn't believe how fast it had changed, but we were now right by Jasper national park.

I didn't think Canada had desert-like landscapes like this... I forgot to capture the moments in this area, but there is this photo of the train like slowly entering the terrain, but it was just completely deserted with literal cacti and spewed with what looked like huts and mines, insanely cool.

I had a nice breakfast with some of the friends I met on the train, and then it was time to get to programming. Now we were allowed to pretty much build whatever we want, but we were encouraged to do something related to the outdoors/journey or something related to the server.

It was also encouraged to not just build one project, but instead build a bunch of smaller ones and learn a bunch from others.

So the first app I worked on was a little Wikipedia game where you could just like scroll wikipedia like reels. It was a pretty simple app that I worked on with Advay and it was a short kinda fun thing to make. Advay did most of the work on it, and I kind of just left it at that because I wanted to start on my second project, the Bore-ad service!

I love making interactive projects where people can like do something and have fun with it, so I thought that a fun project would be to have a little ad website on the server where people could post ads for their projects on the server. So I started working on this project, and got help from some other people whenever I ran into some issues.

Some fun events were also happening on the train though. We needed to set up decorations and stuff so we put up some lights that people had brought and added some other things to make it feel more homey.

Another thing that happened was one of the co-organizers Zoya, setup a mini barista kitchen and made drinks for everyone which was pretty sweet!

I got a shirley temple and this experience taught me how valuable it is to make others feel appreciated, so if I ever run an event in the future, I really want to focus on quality and not quantity.

There were also people running workshops and lightning-talks. Lightning talks are basically like mini stories that people share about something cool that happened in their life.

One of my favorite lightning talks was from Charlie who talked about how he accidentally recorded classified military activity when he flew one of his high altitude gliders, stratosoar straight into a military compound. It's a really cool project and I'd highly suggest you check it out!

And then there were also workshops on things like ham radio's and how to use docker, it was just really cool hearing what other people are working on and their experiences.

We were all pretty focused on our projects, but unexpectedly we had been called into the main carriage at the front to hear some news from Zach and the other organizers. Everyone seemed pretty stressed and we learned that because of wild fires we'd have to turn around. We were around Jasper and around that time wildfires were destroying the city so it was not safe to continue.

We were going to turn the train around (honestly no clue how they did that), and then come back and then just continue the hackathon but at rest at the station.

I feel really bad for the organizers because they put so much thought into each activity that would happen at each station, and they had to re-book every single flight. But it still wasn't the end to the journey, we could hang out in Vancouver, do activities on the train and still learn a lot.

And honestly, the experience is enough as is, just meeting everyone and doing something like this is absolutely incredible.

So we traveled back to the station, and then ended off the night with some karaoke. I then worked on my project for a couple hours and went to sleep in the morning as programmers do. I was actually kind of scared to have caffeine because I'm already pretty hyper so I didn't have any of the 350 Celsius's but I still stayed up quite late meeting people! I honestly missed out on the caffeine and should've drunken some, big mistake on my part and don't be afraid to drink caffeine guys! Helps you stay up so you can experience the cool moments at night.

I stuck to my comfort zone during this project, and just made the bore-ad service with nextjs and json files as a database, but I really wish that I made a project with someone experienced in completely different technologies, so that's something I'm definitely going to have to do in the future!

Vancouver Shenanigans

When I woke up, the train had parked right back at the station, but this still wasn't the end to our journey... Workshops, lightning talks and other activities were still happening aboard, my favorite workshop was the one by Angad where he kind of explained docker, and I didn't really actively follow it, but it inspired me to start using docker and server tools more often.

We also took a visit to check out Vancouver and stretch out our legs a bit! I was in Cara's group who did lots of the infra for the train, so it was interesting to learn about some server stuff from them. We went to this kind of Japanese hybrid restaurant which was pretty good and checked out some of the parks and stuff in Vancouver. We did accidentally get onto East Hastings though, which is one of the worst streets in Vancouver for crime, but we got out pretty fast. Whoopsies

We got back and then I had a really nice talk with Woody, who's a performer, comedian, musician, literally everything. He was probably the most interesting person I talked to, has had the opportunity to join Cirque de Soleil, actively performs and did all the live music during the train ride.

They really brought the vibe to the train and it wouldn't have been the same without him and his group, "Waldo & Woodhead". They also wrote this song just for the train journey, "our time" :D

Then after dinner, we all grinded our project until we couldn't stay awake anymore... My sleep tolerance hadn't really developed by now, so 3am was kinda my max... definitely going to have to start training for all-nighters!

I had a really meaningful talk with Zach Latta, the founder of Hackclub while I was programming. I needed some help getting my project on the server and because I was so used to windows, Linux was just so foreign so he really helped me get my grips on working with Linux.

He showed me all the shortcuts, how to use VIM, accessing the server and literally just a lot of cool stuff, and this was some of the most interesting stuff ever to me, it was like a whole other world I hadn't seen before. Zach suggested I get Ubuntu when I get home, and I'm really excited to start working with the terminal when I get back.

Zach literally embodies the hacker ethos, and he's one of the smartest, most humble and approachable people I've ever met, and he really shifted my mindset on programming a lot and this experience would have never happened without him.

Anyways, tomorrow we would have the opportunity to showcase all our projects that we made and then have our closing ceremony to finish off the Boreal Express.

My project was pretty much done by the time I went to sleep, but it was definitely janked together and the server wasn't really liking my json database...

Showcase and a surprise

We all woke up pretty early, I had barely slept because I was trying to finish my project, and some people just didn't sleep whatsoever.

Hackclub does a slightly different hackathon style, it's more for the experience instead of just prizes, so you basically like go around in a circle and everyone showcases each others projects. You learn a lot doing this kind of style and it's pretty cool!

My favorite project in the showcase was from Kevin, a really smart programmer who made this wildfire tracker and prediction, which was really cool because it was inspired from seeing the wildfires on our journey.

After showcasing each others projects, we went to our closing ceremony, where we all thanked the organizers for Boreal, VIA rail and everyone else who helped make this magical!

But there was still one surprise left in store... It turns out that one of the organizers had reached out to Linus Tech Tips and we caught news that we could meet him and tour their faciliity!

So we all piled into a giant bus and headed over to Linus Tech Tips's studio!

It was really cool to see how Linus operated. They had like a plethora of different buildings on the property for different things like studio shoots, podcasts, merch, everything imaginable.

We also got to talk with Linus and take some photo's with him which was pretty sweet, and the staff gave us a full tour of the entire premise.

One of Linus's employee's even gave me a bread plushie which was pretty sweet! They were all really nice people, and it was extremely memorable for me. After visiting it and seeing all the cool hardware, I also want to start working on more physical projects instead of just hardware...

My beloved bread...

We got to see all of the stuff currently being prototyped, like color changing swimsuits from water and a bunch of other cool merch. It was just generally a very cool space to be in, and will definitely inspire me to make some more silly and also extreme projects in the future.

And just like that, we went back on the bus to return to the VIA station. We all signed the server and said our goodbyes... Lots of people had later flights so they were just waiting around and I had some nice talks with people about getting started with Linux, until I got picked up, and just like that, my journey on the Boreal was over.

Most of the people were smarter than me, but I'm trying to learn as much as I can, so all these little experiences really added up in me.

Closing Thoughts

The Boreal Express was such an insanely cool event and it was a pivotal moment in my life. It taught me much more than just programming, it taught me what's possible.

The first takeaway I had from this journey was just build whatever you want. Don't worry about what others want, or what you should make, just make what you want to make.

The second takeaway is DON'T SLEEP... I missed out on a lot of cool moments because I slept too much, and it's really when you form the deep connections late at night. Also this means drinking lots of caffeine, something I definitely missed out on.

The next takeaway is to talk to as many people as you can, not even just the other kids, but also the organizers, the staff, and other cool people. Having the 2 conversations with Zach and Woody were extremely powerful and impacted my mindset a lot.

Another thing is to adventure with others, I didn't do this enough and missed the opportunity to do cool things and form bonds with others, just wander the city with others and see where it takes you (just don't go too haywire...).

And of course, quality over quantity. Spend focused time on something and do it well, instead of just rushing a project really fast. But this doesn't mean don't hack stuff up, it's more just think of smarter ways of doing stuff, it saves a lot of time and makes whatever you're doing, way better!

The final thing is idea's. Good idea's are way more powerful than a complicated, boring project. They're more fun to make, you usually learn more and they're just generally so much better. Think for a long time before actually doing anything.

Now with all this in mind, I want to:

• Do more cool events like this, maybe run a couple
• Switch to Linux and learn some server stuff
• Learn hardware

This was my very first event like this, so I was pretty shy, but I learned a LOT and know I have all these idea's of running events and stuff. But for now, I'm going to leave those thoughts and really focus on building up my skills so I can build higher quality stuff.

But anyways, this event was such an important part of my life and I'll never forget it...

Now get out there and keep on hacking :D

-Kai

Credits & Thanks

First of all thanks to all the organizers of Boreal and specifically Deven for making this entire thing come true, it was an absolutely amazing event and one of the most pivotal moments of my life.

Thanks to Zach for founding hackclub and all the other staff who help Hackclub run, and also to "Waldo & Woodhead" (Woody's group) for the vibes!

And a big thanks to Cara, Nachu and all the others who's photo's I've included in this journal! It was so nice to meet everyone and I hope to see you guys again :D

Finally, there's also a short documentary of the journey on YouTube if you want to check it out here.