Sorry for this being a bit late, hopefully you’ll find this a relaxing break before you enjoy some thanksgiving feast.

It’s the last weekend of fall rolls and from what I can tell it was a flurry of activity both days. The teams will now have a chance to sleep in on the weekends instead of sleeping in the afternoons, and make up all those assignments they neglected. By assignments, I of course mean builds, and from what I hear, there’s the potential for several this year. Only time will tell who will come out with new buggies when.

I sadly wasn’t able to make it out on Saturday, but thankfully Stengel was able to snag some pictures for me to look at. Pictures were also posted from the weekend of the 11th

In Attendance

(Saturday roll counts weren’t posted so the buggy lists may be inaccurate.)

Observations (Saturday Gallery – Sunday Gallery)

• Apex – Making out to their second day of rolls on Saturday, Phoneix and Mallory got to see the course again and make some great progress on getting their qualification rolls. She is now without bags and getting a bit of a shove which is amazing progress for a new org and new buggy. It’s too bad they didn’t get a little more practice this semester so they could figure out the kinks. Word is they might want to build again before Raceday and have two buggies rolling. Building is hard enough, but doing that and rolls at the same time can really put the strain on a small org, specially one so new. But if anyone has the spirit and will and energy to pull it off, I think it might be these kids. That said, I would still be surprised if they were able to pull off a second buggy with enough time to get it rolling and qualified for Raceday.
• AEPi – As far as I know, Kamikaze wasn’t out on Saturday. Since AEPi has been keeping to the Sunday only strategy, I would be surprised if they did otherwise. With one driver at 8 rolls (max carry-over for the fall) they decided to start working on another who made it up to 5 total for the semester. Whether this is telling of a new build or not is yet to be seen since there hasn’t been a new buggy since AEther in 2010. Jake Reid was the original architect behind project Mexican Thunder, but now that he is the safety chairman, I would expect any progress that had been made to have stalled. Hopefully I’m wrong in this, but I don’t expect anything new from AEPi
• CIA – Out both days as usual, CIA was able to roll all 5 buggies on Sunday and at least 4 on Saturday (possibly 5). With their new bright wheels, they’ve been rolling faster and faster all season getting twice the rollout they normally have, though this is still half or less than SDC’s or Fringe’s typical distance. On their first roll, Ascension was rolling mysteriously slow and stopped just after the first flag. Quasar didn’t seem to notice as quickly and swerved around the stopped buggy before coming to a stop herself. Apparently the flagger thought she heard to put out a yellow, but it turned out to be in error and the two buggies rolled through. Having built for the last 4 years, I have no doubt that they’d be stopping now, but with 5 buggies already rolling, they’ll have to figure out what to do with their fleet. As the only org still rolling frame and shell buggies, we will likely see either Firebird or Quasar retired. Quasar is older than Firebird, but has  was more recently been repaired and restored to be lighter and stronger. Firebird is the last remaining buggy to sport the dropping bar. The aerodynamic gains of dropping the bar has become more questionable with new technology, and keeping the bar working is a bit of a chore.  Rumors are that Firebird saw her last roll on Sunday, but we’ll only know for sure come the spring.
• Fringe – Rolling only one buggy each time, Fringe took the last day easy and relaxed. One roll, the follow car stopped the hill 3 pusher when another pusher leaped from the car and took over for what was left of hill 3. Looked like a fun way to end the season, but the original pusher seemed very confused. Fringe has the longest running continuous build streak to date (as far as I know) and I don’t imagine they’ll be stopping now. With the success they had with Bonsai, and the seemingly carbon-copy nature of their builds, I assume they’ll be trying to further refine and make an even faster version of their standard design. I would be thoroughly surprised and excited to see something new come from last year’s runner up.
• PiKA – Now that they’ve had some time to organize, Pike seems to be showing a bit greater force with both Raptor and Chimera out the whole weekend. That being said, they also took Sunday easy and rolled only one buggy each turn. Saturday was a bit tough as Raptor spun out and struck the haybales on Saturday and a slow Chimera missed the stop flag and rolled around the crashed buggy. Clearly there was little damage as they were both back out the next day. Raptor with Yisu Wang obtained her last carry-over roll on Sunday leaving the rest of the day to a second driver in Chimera, ending the semester with two drivers in about the same place roll-wise. With so much hardship after losing their house last year, I would not expect the brothers to produce a new buggy so soon though I definitely wouldn’t be disappointed.
• SDC – Continuing on as you would expect them, SDC has been steady and consistent all season (aside from Avarice losing her axle of course). All three buggies seem to have hit their stride and are ready for the new year. The question remains though, with an org that recently has had enough pushers to fill 8 complete teams, what will they do for a fourth buggy? Neither Rage nor Envy has rolled more than one weekend this semester and it’s unlikely that the team has lost their massive pusher pool after the sweep of last year’s Raceday. So, it stands to reason that we will see a new buggy out of the current champs come the spring. Since they didn’t bring one out last year, I expect they are well on their way to having a new one ready to go.
• SigEp – As the fraternity with the highest number of rolls for this semester, SigEp is taking the lead of the bottom bracket as every other independent aside from Apex got at least twice, if not three times as many rolls on a per-buggy basis. I can only assume that this will be different in the spring if the greeks want to be at all competitive come Raceday. With Colleen Casey in Peregrine topping their roll counts, neither she nor Mamba made it out on Sunday leaving the day to Pandora and Barracuda. On her first roll, Pandora forgot where she was at the chute flag and didn’t turn what-so-ever. Not even turning late as commonly happens in that situation, she drove under one of the barricades, blowing it apart before she came to a stop a few dozen feet onto the bridge. Everyone was fine, including the surprised barricader, and she was driven back and rolled again later in the day. With the build that was supposed to make it but somehow didn’t last year, I expect to see a new buggy out for these guys come the spring, the question is when, and what happened last year to make it so they couldn’t get the new one out.
• Spirit – At the end of this season, it looks like Spirit has finally gotten over their spin issues by some form or another. On Sunday, the org was out in force for possibly their largest showing all season. Instead of spinning, I believe it was Fuko Seraph that hit an unfortunate pothole just before the first flag and skidded to a stop with the front wheel pushed up into the buggy. The driver was safe and they will have plenty of time to fix up the buggy before spring. On Saturday, they had an exciting incident where their hill 1 pushed off to the unsuspecting hill 2 who was standing in the middle of the lane. The buggy rammed into the back of the pusher’s legs and bounced up into the air. When the buggy came back down, the rear axle bent such that the wheels were slanted inwards and she was taken back to the staging area. The fix must not have been too difficult as the buggy made it back out the same day. I’m not sure which buggy this was, so someone help me out. Sprit’s last build was Zuke in 2011, and it took them a while to get together. I’m not sure what’s brewing down in Spirit house, but I wouldn’t expect to see a new buggy out for the independent. Then again, I have heard rumors about strange noises emmanating from their space under Stever, but whether those rumors are true, is another story all together.

Fun Musings

From my accounts above, I believe we’re looking at around 4 pretty sure builds in CIA, Fringe, SDC, and SigEp, the maybes would be Apex and Spirit, and probably not anyone else. Who do YOU think is building over the winter? Those of you with inside knowledge should feel free to influence anything any which way you feel like.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, I sadly wasn’t able to make it to Saturday’s rolls, but I wasn’t the only one. Apparently both Josh and Jake weren’t able to wake up for the morning and Rachel ran the whole shabang (thus the lack of roll counts). A tip of my hat goes out to the assistant chair who was able to manage things well enough for rolls to still happen. A big thanks goes out to Stengel who was able to grabs some nice pics from Saturday for me to look at and get a little sense of what was going on. Thanks also goes out to Ryan Davis who gave me a little info about Saturday’s events.

I was able to get to rolls in time to get the stream live, though sadly I forgot to charge my phone the night before and the battery ran dry near the end. Because of the way iphones do things, anytime it popped up saying my battery was low, the stream stopped, so it’s uploaded in a few chunks. Surprisingly enough, my phone did in fact make it all the way through rolls, dying just after I turned off the stream. Since it lasted so much longer than expected, it was dubbed the Hanukkah battery and God’s miracle gift to the cmubuggy. I do recommend watching part three where one of the EMS kids in the chute had fun making “zoom-zoom” noises as the buggies passed.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3