This past weekend of rolls was a doozy, and we don’t mean that in a “everyone got 6 rolls” sort of way. Between several crashes, a twisted ankle, and a rather angry motorist, we only got through the roll order 2.5 times. In addition, wet weather on Sunday meant that this was not a very productive weekend for the teams.

In Attendance 

Observations (Saturday Gallery)

Saturday morning began with unseasonably warm weather, clear skies, and Robobuggy taking the first Roll. The team made it to the first transition before removing their buggy from the course. While obviously not a complete Roll, this is progress from last week when they were simply pushing their buggy all the way around the course. By 7:15am, humanoid teams began taking their turns. Unfortunately Apex, PiKA, and SDC were the only teams able to navigate the course without incident. After last week’s rough start, SDC seems to be back in full competition mentality and is counting down their Hill 2s.

. On their first Roll, Fringe’s Boson and Blueshift made it around clean, but the third buggy, Bissa, took a too-wide Chute turn and brushed against the outer bales early. The driver appeared to regain control, and came to a stop at the end of the Chute. The flaggers didn’t see the incident and failed to throw a stop flag. Fortunately, Bolt (4th buggy) was able to navigate the Chute without any problems. The Hill 3 Fringe pusher tried to retrieve the stopped Bissa and was promptly yelled at by EMS. The driver was cleared and allowed to be pushed back to Fringe HQ in the buggy. The rest of Fringe’s Rolls were uneventful. Bissa was rolling later in the day and the team was starting to do some full Hill 1 send offs.

Spirit was next to bring unfortunate excitement to the day. The first buggy through, Zuke appeared to hit a slight bump entering the Chute and soon literal sparks were flying. While we aren’t sure what exactly happened, it looked like the front wheel pushed up into the buggy when a structural strut failed. Zuke skidded to a sparky stop. The driver was fine and all the following buggies were able to stop safely in the Freeroll.

Rounding out the trio of misfortune, CIA’s Orca had a dramatic spin on the team’s first Roll. The driver reported not being able to turn hard enough to make it into the Chute due to mechanical issues. Consequently she glided in against the outer bales early in the turn. The outrigger caught between bales causing Orca to swing hard and go nose-first into the hay. The driver was extremely (and understandably) shaken after the event, but after a full evaluation from EMS she was able to walk away from the buggy and was later reported to be doing well. Orca on the other hand… the axel was bent fully back such that the wheel now sits perpendicular to its normal plane. The buggy will be needing a fair bit of fixing before it comes back to the course.

The last major delay came from an incident on Hill 5 requiring EMS attention. While details aren’t clear, there was a buggy-human interaction that resulted in an okay-buggy and a twisted-ankle human. As far we know all parties are doing fine.

Hopefully next week we will be back to calling rolls uneventful with a dash of awesome rollouts.

Below is a running total of buggy/driver roll counts. An asterisk in the following table indicates a new driver:

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Rolls Report Contributors:
Ben M.
Natalie M.