Buggy kicked off the 2012 season just as scheduled with one day of fast-moving rolls for the six orgs that managed to get caped and ready in time. The weather didn’t complicate things at all, and the new sweepstakes committee had things running smoothly on day 1. Rolls started on time which is no small achievement this time of year, and they manged to get all the chores done with the skeleton crew of teams. Spirit has inherited PiKA’s primary chore of putting haybales out in the chute in the wee hours. That bodes well for Spirit’s manpower and organization, I always wondered who else would be able to get it together for that big chore.
In Attendance
I’m a few days removed, and sweepstakes doesn’t have their roll counts up yet for the year, so there’s a chance I have a thing or two wrong, but the starting line-ups for 2012 were:
| Org | Sunday |
|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze |
| CIA | Ascension, Freyja, Renaissance, Firebird |
| Fringe | Bedlam, Banyan, Borealis, Blizzard |
| SDC | Bane, Malice, Psychosis, Rage |
| SigEp | Mamba, Barracuda |
| Spirit | Zuke, Seraph, Fuko, Haraka |
Observations (Sunday Gallery)
Fringe – Can you say superbowl hangover? Fringe got off to a pretty rough start with a series of problems that kept them from getting around the course. With only six orgs out, most were getting as many rolls as they could handle, but Fringe only got a couple of buggies back to hill 5 all day. Ailments included fogging and helmet-based visibility problems and new driver navigation mishaps. I honestly couldn’t keep track of which buggies were having which problems on which roll. If I had an itemized list, it would be long. To their credit, nobody ever crashed or damaged any of the buggies, so it seems they were using sufficient caution while they work up the learning curve. Bonsai was safely in the garage throughout the tough day, probably good thinking.
CIA is borrowing PiKA’s spot on the Tepper lawn until they make it back into buggy and I’d say they’re channeling some of the PiKA energy and confidence. They were numerous, loud, and having a good time. Their buggies rolled just fine for day 1 and they had time to kill for more sophisticated pursuits such as giving Freyja a super(wo)man cape and bagging and shoving the follow car. They’re out for more than fun and games though, I noticed what I presume is some sort of data-logger on Ascension’s outrigged wheel. That’s a pretty early start for data collection.
Haraka (if I’m right that it was out) still has Rage edged by one year for the honor of oldest buggy on the course. The freshmen out at buggy for the first time this weekend were learning how to walk when those buggies were built. Impressive.
AEPi, SDC, and SigEp got off to good clean, uneventful starts on the year. I’m sure there’s more to be said about them, but I guess I’m rusty too. I didn’t even get a single picture of SigEp. I owe them a SigEp-only rolls report one of these days.
Spirit’s raceday 2011 paint jobs make their buggies even harder to tell apart from each other than usual. The feather pattern is like zebra stripes that distract you from the little clues that differentiate them.- KapSig didn’t make it out after being on the “scheduled to cape” list earlier in the week so hopefully they’ll get things together for this coming weekend.
- Jake Reid was nice enough to add some background on the status of the unaccounted for orgs in the comments last week. One thing that caught my eye was the report that Pioneers’ Chaos was “fatally wounded” meaning they’re out until further notice. Chaos finished both of its races in April, and although it failed drops for the men’s race, I’m curious what could have happened over the summer.
- You can now “like” and “+1” news stories and pictures in the gallery. Do it! It’s very encouraging to those of us working on the site when there’s some sign you’re actually out there and appreciating.
- I will be out of town this coming weekend and so far there have been no volunteers to cover for me and put together a rolls report. If you’re in town (rolls are only scheduled for Saturday), Do it! I’ll hook you up with everyone you need. You can put it on your resume!
And because I love you cmubuggy readers so much, here’s a surprise bonus time-lapse of the first day of rolls 2011:
Bryan Bleda says:
Photo 4 of the gallery is a picture of SigEp’s Barracuda, so you didn’t completely miss out!
Sam Swift says:
Sure enough, don’t know how I missed that. To be fair those first three rows of pictures were contributed by Guillermo from CIA, so he gets the credit.
Ben says:
First off, great to have you back for what should be another awesome year.
What sort of camera were you using for the timelapse? I’ve played around with that sort of stuff for a while (or trying to) but I’ve always ended up just taking the pictures by hand… also, if you can set it below 10s per image I think it might turn out a bit better (i.e. like 5s/image or less)
If no one steps up for a full report, I might be willing to contribute some notes, but I probably won’t be able to be as thorough as yours.
Also, thought that I would add that DTD was out there doing their chore, which is of course much appreciated.
Sam Swift says:
The timelapse was done with a first gen android phone looking for a reason to remain relevant. That’s actually why I started messing around with timelapse, just as something to put the perfectly functional phone to some use. I agree the effect on this one is a little jumpy, I’ll keep experimenting with the interval, playback rate, and maybe even a different app.
I think that any and all contributions to a rolls report would be appreciated by the readers out there, so don’t be intimidated by any particular standard. If you look back at my first ones, they were much more brief. Maybe I’ll put together a google doc so that multiple people can contribute, I’ve had another offer for notes.
DeVos says:
From what I’ve heard, Chaos’ “fatal wounding” happened when the mechanics stopped the buggy after hill 5(on Raceday, I assume). Someone grabbed the pushbar to slow the buggy and its mount failed. This led to the pushbar folding on the top of the shell and causing significant damage or delamination of the carbon fiber in that area. Apparently, the damage was enough to deem the buggy unsafe or too much work to fix.
This is all second and third hand info so I may have some of the details wrong. Anyone want to confirm or elaborate?
Sam Swift says:
Interesting, thanks for the theories. I know the pushbar/shell failure on Chaos happened originally on truck weekend (http://cmubuggy.org/news/2011/04/here-comes-raceday-mini-truck-weekend-report/) so since it rolled on raceday I assumed it was fixed. If not, slick move on their part getting through raceday.
Carl says:
Thank you Sam.