After finally starting rolls last week, Teams were getting back into the swing of things. Everyone was rolling well, but it seems like teams are getting in a semester’s worth of stops in these few weeks we have left. Despite the crashes, stops, wheel losses and other issues, most teams are still getting things done and already have a few combinations qualified for Raceday. We still have one weekend left before Truck weekend, here’s hoping teams can sort out their issues and become the lean mean racing machines they need to be.
In Attendance
| Org | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze | |
| Apex | Phoenix | |
| CIA | Impulse, Orca, Ascension, Freyja, Quasar | Impulse, Orca, Ascension, Freyja, Quasar |
| Fringe | Banyan, Bedlam | NBXIII (BAMF), Bedlam, Banyan |
| PiKA | RD2013, Chimera | RD2013, Chimera |
| SDC | Vice, Bane, Avarice, Malice, Rage | Vice, Bane, Avarice, Malice, Rage |
| SAE | Rubicon | Rubicon |
| SigEp | “Dora”, Mamba, Barracuda | Mamba, Peregrine |
| Spirit | Kingpin II, Seraph, Haraka, Fuko | Kingpin II, Haraka, Fuko |
| No-Shows | ROTC, SigNu | AEPi, Apex, ROTC, SigNu |
Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery)
This weekend saw some of the slowest rolls this year with no one thing to really pin it on. Saturday had a few incidents, but things were mostly just slow for some reason. SigEp was the first incident of the day where “Dora” pulled a 180 in the Chute, or just before when trying to stop due to some visibility issues. At the top of the hill, Spirit had something go wrong with Kingpin II before making it up hill one. It was hard to see from where I was standing, but it looked like a wheel had fallen off or some other wheel issue. Later in the day, Fuko got pushed off hill 2 but barely made it halfway down the first hill before losing a rear wheel and spinning around. Spirit quickly recovered and moved Fuko off the course to allow the rest of their buggies to roll. They almost left the two-wheeled Fuko stranded on the sidewalk before getting a loud reminder from sweepstakes.
Sunday had a similar number of scary incidents that brought rolls to a screeching halt. CIA has been trying out some new fairings on Freyja and tried them out on Ascension as well. Ascension was sent first and everything seemed good until after two buggies were sent behind her and word came that she had come to a complete stop before the chute. Apparently the Fairing on the outer wheel was not rotationally constrained well and rotated around the wheel where it got stuck underneath the wheel like a ski. The follow car was there to help, but without an extraction kit, they were asked to just move all three buggies off the course so rolls could continue. It seemed a little odd that the two buggies behind weren’t allowed to be pushed through, but CIA seemed very embarrassed for the whole situation. Later on Sunday, Spirit was working on a pass test, but the passing buggy seemed to miss her line at the transition flag and instead found the pedestrian ramp. Pandora made this same maneuver last year, but this time, Fuko found the light post and from the chute it looked like she pole-vaulted and fell to her side. Fortunately the driver was fine and was even able to pull herself out of the buggy. The only other thing I saw that day was at the finish line which didn’t slow down rolls at all, but Chimera hit a deep pothole. The sound that Chimera made was a little scary, but it looks like only one of their fairings fell off.- Something that hasn’t helped teams recently is the lack of Walkie-Talkies for teams to use during rolls. Currently only the farthest teams have been getting them and everyone else has to pay close attention and listen for the screams from the top of the hill. I don’t know what happened to all of the Walkie-talkies, but that would at least help everyone know what’s going on. Aside from the early morning incidents, everything else ran smoothly, just oddly slow. Sweepstakes only made it through the roll order a little over twice on Saturday.
With all the incidents, it was somewhat hard to keep track of other things that were going on around the course, but from what I can remember, we had the usual couple bikers and runners on the course, but the real surprise was a man in a motorized wheelchair who made his way up Hill one and turned up Schenley Drive. I don’t think I’d seen something like this before, but he didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Another annoyance came when someone parked in the Scaife lot insisted on getting out out a half hour before rolls ended. This wouldn’t normally be a problem since they can exit through Roberts Drive, but because of the construction of the new building, their only option is to leave via Frew, fortunately they were able to wait a little and got out between rolls. The other fun car issue that came up is the reason that we have double barricades on most roads. Coming up Schenley from Pitt, the car didn’t see the barricade, or was just going too fast to react and ran into the outer barricade knocking it over.
The good news for teams is that many of them have been getting in their much needed pass tests. Many of the top 10 from last year have gotten their pass tests and are close if not already qualified for Raceday. Surprisingly, Fringe has completed no pass tests, and Spirit and Pike have only gotten their pass tests for their new buggies. With their one buggy, Apex is the only org to be completely done with pass tests, but Phoneix will need a few more rolls to qualify for Raceday. AEPi continues to look less and less interested as SAE, who has only been out for one weekend, has gotten in 5 rolls with their one driver to AEPi’s 3 rolls which is split between two. Still no sign of ROTC, but word is they are looking for an experienced driver to help get them to Raceday.
We are now 2 weekends away from raceday, where one of those is Truck weekend and some teams still are quite a way from being qualified. As a surprise to me, SAE even has a new buggy that they tried to cape, but weren’t able to get it out this weekend. Fringe finally brought out their new buggy on sunday this weekend for all of two rolls. Even more surprising is Bonsai with only 4 rolls this semester and no pass test where the driver Becky has been in Bedlam and Banyan as well. I don’t know what Fringe is up to, but it seems like they are splitting up their practice even though we are very low on time. I mentioned them previously, but AEPi has only been rolling Kamikaze and has rolled with two separate drivers each of the two days that they have come out getting 1 and 2 rolls for their first and second days respectively. If they continue this trend, I don’t know how they will be allowed to race on Raceday.
Live Streaming
This weekend I’ve been playing around with the Webcast, starting both days at the top of the hill, and walking down to the chute halfway-through. I think it’s been going well and on Sunday we had the most live viewers at a steady 5 throughout the morning, peaking at 6 briefly. What was even more exciting was being able to use the live chat and talk with you guys as rolls were going. Check out the playlist from this weekend and let me know if there are other things that you’d like to see during rolls, or if there are other places I should set up for a while. If you watch through the end of sunday, you’ll notice the quality jump immensely after I found the HQ button. This isn’t full HD, but it is significantly better than what I’ve been streaming so far. Expect all future casts to be much more visible now.
There was a lot going on this weekend, so it’s more than likely that I’ve missed something. Feel free to add it in the comments below.
Connor says:
Apex is fully qualified. Took Sunday off to celebrate
ben says:
I forgot how many you guys got in the Fall, so Congrats on being the first entire team fully Qualified.
Connor you know nothing... says:
… and no one cares either.
Seriously? says:
Who moderates the comments? Can we get this one removed? It doesn’t contribute anything and it’s a baseless attack.
Zatch says:
Agreed, but if we don’t have a comment moderator just ignore this nonsense. I like the updates from the teams myself, I wish more would do so.
Sam Swift says:
I suppose I moderate these comments, but I tend towards a pretty light-handed approach. I agree this anti-Connor meme is pretty silly, but uselessly antagonistic nonsense is sort of how this site was founded. Plus, I’ll testify that Connor is the shit and the fact that he’s inspiring committed detractors seem like a badge of honor to me.
Seriously! says:
Good point Mr. Swift, I had almost forgotten that this website was founded on principles of ribbing and heckling, and for a second there mistook it for a respectable online community! I’m glad we’ve cleared that up ;D
PS – your wheels suuuuuuuuuuck
Connor you know nothing says:
It’s nice to know that I’m a trendsetter… Good work! Next time, mimic me a little better though
Shafeeq says:
SDC timed things oddly and and had 3 buggies close together in the chute on Sunday – the last two buggies, presumably attempting a pass test, caught up to the slow moving Rage at the moment Rage was attempting to repeat last weekend’s crash ahead of the inner haybales. Fortunately, the driver recognized the curb from a couple of feet away and swerved just in time to avoid it and not blunder into the path of the buggies behind her.
A number of buggies (Vice, Addiction, Chimera, amongst others) seem to be “hopping” noticeably at the apex of the chute. Perhaps the seasonally enhanced potholes happen to resonate nicely with the elastic elements of their “suspensions”.
From the pace of things on Sunday, it doesn’t feel like there’s only 1 weekend before truck. PiKA has their new buggy up to the edge of sliding on their unusually short, wide black wheels. White put in an appearance in Spirt’s rainbow of wheel colors.
ItsABanana says:
In response to how rolls seem to be going slowly… maybe things would go faster if certain buggies didn’t need to be aligned perfectly to within 50thou of the UPHILL portion of hill 2…
rlbrowne says:
There was a whole bunch of gravel and dust in the chute entrance on Sunday, and rolls were delayed while we tried to sweep it up as best we could, but there was still a lot left after we got the huge piles of it gone. That may have been why some buggies were hopping a bit.
rlbrowne says:
Also Addiction is not rolling (though SDC put her logo on the back of Vise, trolls! =P ), so I assume you meant Avarice?
Bordick says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it a major safety violation and fine for not having extraction tools on hand during rolls? Driver safety should not be compromised, ever. It could shut down the whole shebang.
Zatch says:
Unless something changed, it’s a fine.
Ryan says:
A whopping $15 dollars. Don’t know how we’ll ever pay that off.
Shafeeq says:
Yeah, and not a large one at that. I’d assumed the 3 stooges act was because they’d left the tools in the follow car, and left the follow car at the transition flag. And then discovered they needed to run back halfway around the course to get them. At least they didn’t find they’d locked themselves out of the follow car…
Forgetting to bring the tools along at all is an easy mistake to make, but that doesn’t help if it’s the one time you need them. If we were serious about safety, the safety chair and EMS would additionally have the set of tools needed to get into every buggy, which would come in handy if a team forgot to bring its own, if there’s more than one crash, or the follow car is still at the top of the hill. Also, it would help not compromise driver safety if the people who know the “don’t move the buggy until the safety chair says so” rule also know the exceptions to it.
ben says:
I have heard that they had the tools for half of the buggies that were stopped, so I could see how they put together a few sets and accidentally grabbed an incomplete one. Forgetting tools happens so infrequently (specially for CIA) that I don’t know if we need to change the rule just yet, but if the safety chair had a general tool box, that might be a start without requiring teams to tell them specifically what they should have.
Frinja says:
I have heard rumors that NBXIII’s name is Bandora.
the Pope says:
+1 (funny)
blue says:
Well, it was between that and Bolaris. It’s just harder to find wrapping paper/fabric relavent to that name.
RedTachyon says:
or even relevant.
blue says:
spelling is hard :(
especially when google doesn’t automatically correct it for me.
felmley says:
I am sorry, but from what I have seen this semester and last, I have to put a good portion of this lack of organization squarely on the Sweepstakes Committee. Some early freerolls this semester were cancelled because not enough buggies were caped, but the Safety chair was not flexible enough in caping the buggies, even with the bad weather. Okay, so use the parking garage, or the enclosed walkway, under the bleachers. Get creative or get smart.
No radios? Cluster stops? Why didn’t the Safety tell those CIA buggies to get pushed through, instead of them sitting there between flags for 10 minutes? And another 15 minutes on the sidewalk. It was way dumb, and a HUGE waste of time, for a simple incident. Yes, lack of tools is a fine, but Sweepstakes seems to be taking this lack of rolls way too loosely. This is an event with over a 90 year history, and where people can get really hurt. (That is why we practice.) In neither case does Sweepstakes seem to be taking those facts seriously. C’mon, Sweeps, get it together.
Rachel says:
The incident with CIA’s buggies not getting pushed up was due to a series of miscommunications/misunderstandings. We’ve talked with the team, we talked about it at chairman’s, and it’s been dealt with. It’s not the first miscommunication in buggy, and it probably won’t be the last, but both sweepstakes and the team understand what happened and the seriousness of it.
If I remember correctly, there were one, maybe two days canceled due to not enough teams being caped yet. The majority of canceled rolls came from it literally snowing or raining every weekend. It would be sunny all week, then snow just Saturday and Sunday morning. It’s just Pittsburgh. I don’t know about the safety chair’s availability, but I know that I personally caped a team with the chairman when the safety chair was not available, and that he has continually offered the option of early morning capes before rolls, should weather not permit during the week. It wasn’t until recently that people started taking him up on that offer. The chairman and myself had also said we could be available if necessary, but I was never contacted. Early in the semester, when the safety chair would ask “do you want to cape this week so we can have enough teams to roll next week,” not everyone jumped at the offer. I don’t think any of us expected quite so many weather cancellations later on, so we didn’t know it would be important to start rolling that early. That’s not unusual, just unfortunate on the part of the weather.
As for radios, I don’t know what happens to them either, but every week in the fall we asked people to bring them back at chairman’s and somehow they just keep disappearing. We have something else planned to take care of it for the next couple of weekends (and raceday), now that it has gotten this bad. Trust me, we know about it, and we’re doing what we can to fix it. I personally charged and tested all of the remaining walkie talkies this past weekend, and gave them to the teams I thought needed them most, at the bottom of the hill.
Hope this helps. Sweepstakes does care, especially about safety (heck, I used to be a driver, I understand needing to feel safe at rolls), and we are doing our best. I’m sorry you feel otherwise :(
-Rachel Johnson, ass chair
Eric L. says:
Hahahahahha “ass chair”
See you at carnival!
felmley says:
Oh, the barricade down by the museum was actually busted in half, and it was a 2×6 x12′ City barricade, not the dinky 2×4 ones made a few years ago. Yes, thank goodness for multiple layers of barricades.
bordick says:
Ryan, it’s not about the money. From your flippant remark, I can guess that you have no perspective like Felmley is trying to share with you. Any organization that seriously injures a driver can quite literally shut down Sweepstakes for good. The safety rules are written so that this event can continue for years. I hope that the drivers are more respected and cared for than your response would indicate. They risk their safety every time they strap on a buggy and any org should handle that responsibility very carefully.
Sweepstakes is bigger than you or me or any one individual. When students don’t respect that idea, we risk losing buggy for good. Typically, the Sweepstakes committee has been the ones that guide the orgs to maintain focus and hold things together. I hope that Felmley is wrong and it has just been a tough few weeks.
This group (BAA) was formed for the sole purpose of trying to keep this event around for a while. When the expert eyes see a deviation from behaviors that sustain buggy, we should all pay attention and help get things back on track.
Ryan says:
Bordick, I can assure you that all members of CIA buggy, including me, have a great deal of respect for our drivers, and safety is our highest priority. We have one of the best, if not the best, safety records of any team rolling on the course today.
Yes, forgetting the extraction toos was a major mistake. Wanting to avoid another embarrassing response like what happened on Sunday is a much stronger deterrent than a $15 fine will ever be, hence my flippant remark.
Aileen says:
Perhaps those fines should be raised. You nearly earned yourself an angry alumni email there, watch your mouth.
Zatch says:
And I thought you weren’t a real mechanic until you offended an alum with a picture of your work or a comment in this site…
The Other Ben says:
It’s important to speak clearly the first time to avoid this sort of misunderstanding. As Aileen mentions, the fine might not be enough at present (it’s less than the fine for making someone else cover a barricade or sweep), and I say this as a member of the organization which incurred the fine. Furthermore, everything Bordick has said is entirely correct; a dangerous sport needs to be overseen with a watchful eye to sustain itself.
Something that everyone seems to have missed so far in the comments, but hopefully not in the motivation for them, is that safety is bigger than Sweepstakes and the history of the sport. Failure to bring extraction tools has the potential to leave a driver in an unsafe situation for too long, allowing further injury to occur. If a driver gets seriously injured, this should be enough of a concern even without considering the potential consequences for the sport.
Elmo Zoneball says:
I appreciate the zeal in getting a driver out of a dangerous situation by extraction, but that zeal should be tempered by some historical facts and real world first aid considerations.
AFAIK, the only really serious driver injury in the history of Sweepstakes was a DTD driver who wrecked in FR in the ’60s, Apparently he was screaming about being injured, and somebody got carried away, got the hatch off the buggy, and they extracted the driver on the scene. The trouble was, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the driver’s spine was broken. They twisted him extracting him from the buggy, and severed his spine, paralyzing him for life.
It very nearly ended Sweepstakes. It sure screwed up that guys life, for life.
It was for this reason that in the ’70s, anytime there was a suspicion of a possible injury, the protocol was to leave the driver in the buggy, and shove the whole thing in the back of the CMU ambulance, and take it to Shadyside Hospital ER with the driver still strapped inside the buggy (the buggy’s pan acts as a “backboard,” and as long as the driver is secured to it and it doesn’t flex and move, it is safer to transport them that way.) They let the doctors at the ER determine how and when to extract the driver. The point was to NEVER take a chance at inadvertently aggravating an injury such as a broken spine.
Whatever the current safety protocols are, I suggest they be reviewed with this in mind. Err in haste, repent in leisure. A severed spinal column is irreversible.
I wasn’t in school when this incident happened, but it what I was told in the early ’70s. Perhaps one of the older members who recalls it can correct any factual errors I have in my second hand version of the story.
Cred: I was certified in Standard and Advanced First Aid, and served as a member of the National Ski Patrol for a number of years before and during my time at CMU.
Shafeeq says:
The rules are clear about waiting for the ambulance if a spinal injury is suspected. I can’t recall an instance in which an ambulance has been called to a freeroll practice. If the driver says she’s alright, would anyone suspect that they’re seriously injured? I can recall ones who’ve gotten out of the buggy on their own, and then passed out, and one who got out of the buggy and was later discovered to have been injured enough to spend months in a neck brace.
The majority of “crashes” these days involve no impact at all (spinning out, stopping), low speed impacts (spin out and roll backwards into the hay), or glancing brushes with the hay. Treating all of these as equal to the most severe crash may be counterproductive because you expose the (likely uninjured) driver to some chance of being hit by a following buggy, and now you have two potentially injured drivers to worry about.
Shafeeq says:
In the past many of the non-crashes would’ve been dealt with simply by pointing the buggy in the right direction and letting the hill 3 pusher continue with it rather than getting an uninjured driver out in the middle of the road, so it is a case of more caution being worse for everyone involved.
Jake says:
A few thoughts:
It was noted to me by 2 safety chairs in a row (JB and Fritz) that sweepstakes is essentially one bad injury away from not happening or changing dramatically. The PiKA crash that sent a girl to the hospital with broken wrists and a severely lacerated lip was plenty scary, and that’s back when sweepstakes was being run smoothly and safely, and the correct protocols were followed. I thought buggy was done that day.
So, make sure you’re following the rules and safety protocols. Always, always have an extraction tool. I think it’s criminal for the head mech in the follow car not to have a good multi-tool, for unscrewing, cutting harnesses, and plier-ing bent parts.
Furthermore, while I haven’t attended, I’ve heard the chorus of complaints about sweepstakes this year. At this time last year, I was getting a veritable shitstorm of e-mail about raceday preparations from cmuTV, WRCT. sweepstakes, my team, and just about everyone else.
Compare to this year: not a word. The chairmen’s list is still talking about buggy books and rosters; I sincerely hope that somewhere behind the scenes, everything is hunky-dory, because I haven’t heard about a single thing.
Are the jumbotrons rented?
Are trucks and tents rented?
Are we being sponsored again? If so, by who? If not, why not?
Did someone coordinate with cmuTV to see what they need? WRCT too?
Is there a lead truck auction?
So many questions.
I’m most disappointed to hear about the low roll counts and inefficiency. I remember that the first few rolls in the spring are sluggish, but due to the shortened schedule, sweepstakes committee really needed / needs to iron-fist the teams into being efficient. I remember certain chairmen in the spring skipping orgs if they didn’t start pushing within 30 seconds of being clear.
I also can’t believe the walkie talkies aren’t being utilized. It’s nigh impossible to run rolls well without good communication. More of a personal gripe: sigep is not a team “at the top of the hill”, and not giving them a walkie talkie requires us to post a mechanic or pusher at the top of the hill to run the news down to us. This is borderline ridiculous… go out to home depot and buy 10 new walkie talkies. Log which team has which walkie talkie. If you don’t get it back, fine them the price of the walkietalkie. this isn’t hard.
If you had all winter to prepare, why not make sure the first rolls went super well? i know crashes slow things down, but let’s get on track.
Aileen says:
Really? They’re giving more than 30 seconds? Even drunk McCue/Arnold combo would pass your ass in the roll order if you weren’t there and ready to go 30 seconds after the chute was clear.
Aileen says:
Then again, we all also had functioning walkie-talkies.
Zatchmo says:
Ugh, that’s been my pet peeve for the last few years, sweepstakes not enforcing teams moving their buggies along in a timely manner. Certain teams continuously are not ready when they are cleared, take a long time to get to the line, and space out their buggies so much that one could be well into the back hills before the next is released. Maybe a little bit of a rush to get roll counts up will get sweepstakes to regain the habit of skipping teams for not moving things along at a decent pace. SDC.
Will Motley says:
What’s equally disturbing is the lack of controls during midnight push practice. I was out observing practice Wednesday night. As I was getting ready to leave, there were orgs on Hill 1 with NOBODY flagging at the top of the hill, NOBODY observing what was going on, AND THERE WERE NOT ANY FREAKING BARRICADES UP!!!!!! There was a car leaving Hill 5 and turned onto Tech Street, and almost made it to the edge of the 1-2 transition zone before someone at the top of the hill woke the hell up and stopped the car. Meanwhile, THERE WAS A BUGGY ALREADY COMING UP HILL 1! As an alum, I should not have to tell another organization that they need to at the very least have barricades up, and have someone flagging the hill.
I hate Andy Bordick with a passion (just kidding Andy) but I FULLY agree with him that there is no issue more important than a driver’s safety. Any compromise in driver safety is borderline unforgivable in my book. I was ready to punch someone in the mouth after what I saw.
Felmley… the “Angry Black Man” was almost resurrected!!!!!!
Carl says:
I agree with Will: Bordick (who is basically an intestinal parasite lodged in the festering colon of life) is entirely correct.
Bordick says:
I love you guys. You’re both getting big , wet, sloppy kisses on race day from me.
My prediction for races is carnage.
Connor says:
There are only two weeks left in the year. Unfortunately there is little we can do in retrospect. Most teams will get qualified and those who do not are the teams who did not start rolling until way too late in the year. I say the alums should give sweepstakes a bit of slack. We have had no problems with money this year and all in all things have gone smoothly. Yes rolls have been slow but honestly, nobody has been saying anything about it at chairmen’s where we could talk about these things and come up with solutions. Sweepstakes have refused teams rolling for being too late to the line and have told us multiple times to pick up the pace at rolls. We are all working extremely hard to get everyone ready to do their best on raceday in limited time. This leads to mistakes and crashes as we try new things and pick up speed much faster than we would with more rolls. It is an unfortunate truth we just have to deal with, many teams will not qualify and it is on them for not getting their buggies to the course in the fall or earlier this semester.
Will Motley says:
Conner, you better be thanking God, Buddha, Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, and 2 Month Old Sweet Baby Jesus that the weather has cooperated for the last three weeks. Otherwise you would have had a disaster on your hands. While we (the alums) don’t disagree that the current Sweepstakes crew is doing the best it can, it simply is not enough. The observations of some of the alumni are from people who have been involved with buggy longer than you have been alive. From our collective experience, this year’s Sweepstakes committee leaves a whole lot to be desired. Take it as constructive criticism and don’t try passing the buck. Some of the things I have seen personally are inexcusable.
Connor you know nothing Pt 2 says:
While I support the efforts of Sweepstakes and don’t have anything negative to say at this time (lack of walkies is a little hellish though), Motley brings up a good point. Connor – while I respect you starting a team from scratch and am fully impressed by what you’ve achieved so far, you need to remember that one year of buggy experience means nothing compared to the people who have dedicated most of their lives to this sport. Not only do you barely have a year of working experience, you don’t have decades of alumni support and experience to back you up. There is something to be said for carrying on a legacy. Not only does it lend legitimacy to your cause, but it provides you with years years of stories (both the good and the bad) to learn from.
tl;dr You’ve done good. But drink some humble juice.
Shafeeq says:
If one has only seen the last couple of years, it is hard to see how things could be improved. If one has seen years where things were run more smoothly, it is easy to see where they are not now. It is easy to fall into the trap of cutting corners and getting away with it often enough that it becomes the new normal. Alumni made our share of mistakes when we were students, but we know they were mistakes because we all had at least one time when we did something dumb and didn’t get away with it. If you stick with this long enough, you will too. Sweepstakes has a tough job, made tougher because each new committee has to relearn everything every year. A mistake from them (or any team) puts buggy at risk for everyone else, which makes it everyone’s business.
Connor says:
If I am coming off as cocky or entitled I really apologize that is not what I am trying to portray. All I am doing is trying to defend sweepstakes. They have sacrificed a ton of time and really are under a ton of pressure from the alums which I feel is unfair. We are students primarily and buggy people secondarily. Sometimes things happen that are out of our control, other things are in our control. Forcing teams to roll faster is impossible with the current rules system. No team is being given more than their allotted time to get the buggies onto the road and rolling. 3 teams were scratched to start off the day today as PiKA, AEPi and then Fringe either were not ready or ran out all of their time out before getting buggies on the road. What more can sweepstakes do without modifying the rules (something that really seems too late at this point)?
blue says:
Just wanted to comment about that last bit: the reason 3 orgs ended up scratching is because we were getting ready on a schedule that assumed the people before us were rolling still. Going from having 10 minutes to load into buggies and carry them out to having 30 seconds to get your buggies rolling on the hill is hard to recover from timing-wise.
(I’m staying out of all of the rest of this conversation/argument if possible)
Connor you know nothing Pt 2 says:
Connor, you’re missing the point a little bit. This has nothing to do with your stance on Sweepstakes, but it’s more a comment on how you approach the entire sport. While I’m sure you may not intend to come off so entitled, you need to realize that in many situations (this being one of them), it really isn’t your place to be commenting. Particularly when it comes to other orgs. It’s a great thing to be supportive of other teams, and I think as a sport everyone has reached a good place of camaraderie and competition, but you need to focus more on your own team and less on everyone elses. It is up to the people who run their teams to speak up for themselves, and if they chose to do so then by all means speak up. But it is not your place to be asserting anything on behalf of anyone except for Apex.
Connor you know nothing you know nothing says:
This is cmubuggy.org. 90% of the comments here are pure speculation by alumni who haven’t physically seen a buggy since RD2012. Calling someone who offers a first person perspective on buggy entitled makes you a moron.