This post was written in advance and scheduled to get posted this morning automatically, because we don’t have time to be writing posts anymore … It’s RACEDAY!!  Well, the purists would say raceday is tomorrow, but us BAA folks are at design comp passing out stickers and tshirts.  Come on down and see us if you’re in town.

For the past 10 weeks, we’ve been polling the audience to see what the readers of cmubuggy.org think about the pressing issues of the day.  1,300+ votes later, we thank everyone for weighing in and arguing their case on some pretty entertaining topics.

So, what have we learned?

• How cold is too cold to have rolls? : “Never” won with 20% of the votes, although I think that might be a lot of brave talk from old farts who pushed their buggies up hill both ways in the snow.
• What aspect of buggy should teams focus their energy on? :  “Pusher training for strength and speed” (29%) beat out “Classes & girlfriends” (22%), but pushers dominated buggies and drivers overall.
• What was the craziest recent buggy design? : Brooklyn (48%) luge format blew Valkerie’s curved pushbar out of the water.  Now we know what design to try out again if you’re looking for some attention on the course.
• How big will the 2010 margin of victory be? : Readers are calling this a close race.  75% of readers thought that the margin will be less than the 10 year average of 2 seconds.  34% thought it would even be within 1 second.
• Which hill holds the glory? : Hill 4 is king (24%) according to all of you, but the other pre-vote favorite Hill 1 was a close second.  Mechanics staged a significant protest of the whole idea, with 21% voting that the freeroll is more important than any pusher.
• Buggy names good enough to use twice : Voters approve of PiKA’s recent reuse of Nemesis (29%) which was also the name of Theta Xi’s 1987 build.
• For love or buggy :  Sadly, the most popular responses indicated that buggy and love lives are not very compatible citing fume-induced decision making (34%) and the problems that intrateam relationships can cause (25%).  It should be noted that 78% of votes were for the next 4 most popular items which are all on the positive side.
• What to do with design comp? : This poll prompted the usual contentious debate about design comp, but the most popular options, including ex-safety chairs as judges (48%) and having BAA financed cash prizes (39%) are both things we can definitely look into for next year.
• Where to put the jumbotron : This poll was a response to the obvious need people had to express themselves about where best to put the new jumbotron for the chute.  It garnered way more votes than any poll before it, and did a good job narrowing down the feasible locations.
• Who will win a trophy?: I don’t know how this one turned out yet because it hasn’t happened yet as I write this.  We’ll find out whether cmubuggy readers are smarter than compubookie in the next 72 hours!

Thanks everyone that voted and commented along the way, it turned out to be a great way to pass the time while we waited for the main event.  Leave suggestions for must-have polls for next year, or which poll result was most surprising to you in the comments.