After a mid-semester break siesta, buggies were back and rolling this past Saturday. Sunday was preemptively canceled due to it being Halloween weekend. Sweepstakes figured the teams would be too exhausted from a late night of bobbing for apples and pumpkin carving. Yup, definitely that. It was also Scottie Saturday/Homecoming weekend, so the BAA had a table full of coffee and donuts. Of course, that was mostly devoured by the students. A veritable horde of recent SDC alums descended upon the course as well to cheer on the current members. It’s always great to see a strong showing of buggy alumni.

A few members of the BAA were testing out the new collaborative timing app, but there weren’t quite enough people to get it functional. The app relies on multiple users indicating when a buggy passes certain points on the course. Hopefully next week we’ll have enough people working with it for it to be operative. The more standard Speed Trap didn’t make it to rolls even though the teams were ready with reflective tape on their buggies in an attempt to increase accuracy. It should also be out and functional next weekend.

A missing radio club member caused rolls to start on the later side of the morning (~7:50am). When the backup arrived, buggies started rolling. It was a fairly smooth day that ended a bit earlier than usual. Interestingly, a hay bale was missing from the light post prior to the turn. Fortunately this wasn’t an issue.

In Attendance

Observations (Saturday Gallery)

Because of how smooth rolls went this Saturday and how early we are yet in the season, we’ll refrain from filler and only note the noteworthy.

CIA and Apex again rolled together (“CIApex”) due to a lack of a CIA follow car. SigEp and SAE were similarly paired for rolls and were dubbed “Sigma Squad”. Overall, combining the teams (especially the smaller ones) actually helps rolls to go a bit quicker, and enforces some much needed camaraderie in Buggy.

CIA, SDC, and Fringe continue to be the fastest teams around the course. SDC and CIA are consistently close down the Freeroll, but SDC loses a touch more speed in the Chute turn. Fringe is slightly behind in terms of time, but persists as the most consistent and stable team rolling.

In the past few years, PiKA and Spirit have been amongst the top speedsters during rolls, but this weekend they were trailing the front runners. We aren’t sure what is going on with Spirit, but PiKA seems to be having issues with the Chute turn. During at least one roll, their buggies were entering the turn without confidence and were all over the place with their line.

SAE finally made it out to rolls and Lucy got to stretch her legs, bringing the total number of teams rolling up to 8. We’re still holding out for PhiDelt and SigNu. As previously mentioned, it was a wonderfully clean day of rolls with all the teams making clear progress as they dust out the cob webs and the drivers get back in the swing of things.
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Rolls Report Contributors:
Ben M.
Natalie M.