Table of Contents: Intro & 1920; 1921-1923; 1924-1927; 1928-1932; 1933-1935; 1936-1939; 1940-1945; 1946-1949; 1950-1953; 1954-1956; 1957-1959; 1960-1963; 1964-1966; 1967-1969; 1970-1973; 1974-1976; 1977-1979; 1980-1983; 1984-1986; 1987-1989; 1990-1993; 1994-1996; 1997-1999; 2000-2003; 2004-2006; 2007-2009; 2010; 2011; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019; Recap & 2020; 2021

You didn’t think we were done, did you? Yes, the 100 Years of Buggy History series began as a celebration of Buggy100, and we covered 100 Years during the 2019-2020 school year. But then I realized – Just because the school year (abruptly) ended, Buggy didn’t. Buggy history continues to be made. And why force someone celebrating the 200th anniversary in 2120 to try and find some random notes on this old thing from 100 years ago called the “internet” to piece together what went on in those years. I continue to try and come up with new ideas for how to uncover information about 1937 (to no avail as of yet), but wouldn’t it ave been easier if my counterpart in 1937 just put together a full recap of the year way back then?

So the 100 Years of Buggy History series lives on…with a couple of tweaks. First of all, you’ll notice that the name of the series has changed slightly. We can’t really call it “100 Years of Buggy History” anymore, because we’re headed to years 101 and beyond. So we did what all good CMU students who stay longer than 4 years do…we’ve added a “+”. Second, we’re taking things a little slower. My goal is, and has always been, to tell whatever stories I can find about the year in Buggy, whether good or…not as good. But as I learned while doing Rolls Reports, it does feel a little awkward to talk about current goings-on as if the people doing those things aren’t actively doing them. So going forward, the 100+ Years of Buggy History series will be on a 4 year delay. That means that for the year being covered, most (though maybe not all) of the students that participated in that Raceday will have graduated. I’m hoping that this also makes those alumni more willing to share their own stories in the comments, because as a reminder, once you’ve got that degree from CMU, they can’t take it away from you! The goal for the series will be to release a new article each year around the start of the Fall Semester, just in time to remind everyone that Buggy is back!

So for the first article of the 100+ era of the 100+ Years of Buggy History series, we turn the clock back to 2021. The world has been shut down for the better part of 6 months, the COVID vaccine is still being formulated, and CMU and its students are still figuring out how they’ll handle a return to normalcy. Within that environment, a ragtag group of Buggy folks are doing everything they can to keep a sport, that requires so much hand-on participation and knowledge transfer, alive.

2021

Raceday: Spirit on Saturday, May 1 at 7:45am, All others on Sunday, May 2 at 6:30am*

Sweepstakes Committee: Tishya Girdhar (Chair); Natalie Herrmann (Ass. Chair); Bethany Bauer (Safety); Carl Young (Design)

Men’s Results: (1) SDC A – Bane (2:11.30); (2) CIA A – Emperor (2:14.98); (3) PiKA A – Banshee (2:17.88); (4) Spirit A – Seraph (2:19.56); (5) Fringe A – Blind Faith (2:20.88); (6) Apex A – Firefly (2:23.51)

Women’s Results: (1) SDC A – Bane (2:37.50); (2) Fringe A – Baltic (2:49.04);(3) Spirit A – Seraph (2:54.61); (4) CIA A – Kingfisher (2:55.18); (5) SigEp A – Kraken (2:58.11); (6) Apex A – Molotov (3:41.02)

Design Comp: (1) Fringe – Baltic; (2) Fringe – Blind Faith; (3) Apex – Molotov

Other Awards: (Anne Witchner Chairman’s Choice) CIA; (Tom Wood Spirit of Buggy) Fringe

Weather: Sunny, 38-43 Degrees on Saturday; Cloudy, 60-64 on Sunday

Buggy Book: N/A

Raceday Video Playlist: Raceday 2021 Playlist

Photo Gallery: 2020-2021 Photo Gallery

Prediction Score: N/A

• Pandemic Pandemonium. The arrival of COVID-19 in March of 2020 led to the cancellation of rolls that year, but early hopes were that 2021 would return to normal.  That quickly turned out not to be the case, however.  For the Fall 2020 semester, CMU adopted a hybrid model, where classes were taught both online and in-person, with no large lecture classes meeting in person.  Going even one step further, CMU limited the number of students living in dorms and recommended that students who could, should stay home and attend school remotely; those in the dorms could choose either the Fall or the Spring semester to be on-campus, and would be forced to live off-campus and attend classes remotely for the other semester. CMU also cancelled all intercollegiate athletics for the Fall semester, and on August 13 announced that all “in-person student organization events” would be cancelled until further notice. The City of Pittsburgh also cracked down on large-scale activities, prohibiting outdoor events of more than 100 people.  This spelled trouble for Buggy, but Sweepstakes wasn’t content to let it go without a fight.

• An Attempted Fall Return. By mid-July, Sweepstakes had begun having discussions with SLICE to devise a plan to allow for Fall rolls. And by early September, a plan had been finalized. It wasn’t without stops and starts though. CMU initially approved the organizational plan in mid-September, resulting in a potential first rolls as early as October 17. However, by the beginning of October, CMU had changed their mind and required a COVID safety plan to be put together and approved prior to any Buggy activities on campus.

• Fall Plan – Shop Time. Sweepstakes split Buggy up into two components – shop time (the indoor piece) and rolls/capes (the outdoor piece). Because buggy shops are indoors, Sweepstakes knew they had to limit the number of people that could be in the shop at one time. So they made an early concession that no new builds would be permitted during the 2020-2021 year. In addition, the number of concurrent people who could be in a shop at one time was limited to 2-4, with 10’ spacing at all times between the people who were present. The plan was acceptable at a high level, but CMU required each team to complete a form before the team would be permitted to enter their shop. Unfortunately, CMU hadn’t created the form yet, and teams needed to be able to enter their shops in order to properly mechanic their existing buggies and get back out to the course. So while a rolls plan had been worked out, it wouldn’t be until October 27 before CMU would finally create and send out the forms to the teams, delaying the possible start of rolls into November. But once CMU finally approved, teams acted quickly to get going, and by November 8, several teams, including CIA, Fringe, and Spirit, were all ready to roll.

• Fall Plan – Capes. The plan for Capes was similarly limited, but given that capes are conducted outdoors, the limits weren’t as impactful.  The biggest change was that teams would only be allowed to cape one driver per buggy within a three day period. In addition, teams would be limited to 5 capes participants at a time – 1 pusher, 2 catchers, 1 flagger, and 1 driver. The Capes plan was approved in mid-October, and capes began on November 8 as teams got ready to roll the following weekend.

• Rolls Plan. The most significant changes came in the plan for Fall Rolls. Even though rolls are an outdoor activity, the typical presence of a significant number of team members and spectators, as well as tents for staging the buggies, presented risks that CMU was uncomfortable with. This led Sweepstakes to come up with a heavily modified plan for Fall rolls. Among the changes:
  • Organizations were assigned either Saturday or Sunday, and were only permitted to roll on their assigned weekend day.
  • Organizations were limited to a maximum of 2 buggies per organization per day.
  • Only 1 driver was permitted to drive in a buggy per weekend (so a team could not have 2 drivers share 1 buggy during a single session of Rolls).
  • Each mechanic was assigned to a particular buggy, and could only work on that buggy at Rolls.
  • Teams were permitted to have a maximum of 15 people at Rolls, with a maximum of 8 in the buggy staging area.
  • Organizations needed to provide a list of all participants appearing at rolls on a given day, with attendance being taken on the course.
  • All participants were required to wear facemasks at all times, and extra masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer were made readily available. In addition, all tools had to be disinfected between uses.
  • No tents were permitted on the course, and no teams were permitted to stage indoors.
  • Organizations were assigned a specific time during which they could perform Drop Tests, and Drops were limited to a total of 3 people – Driver, Dropper, and Catcher
  • Additional time was built in between teams being cleared to roll.
  • Drivers were required to be assigned their own safety equipment and were not permitted to share with other drivers (even other drivers of the same buggy).
  • No catchers were permitted at the end of the course – The Hill 5 pusher would be responsible for slowing the buggy.
  • No spectators were permitted on the course.

• Last Minute Disappointment. CMU finally approved Sweepstakes’ Fall Plan on October 5, with a goal of first rolls occurring on the weekend of October 24. However, as noted above, teams were not able to get into their shops, creating a further day. Once the shop forms had been approved, teams starting moving quickly, and things were looking up for a very abbreviated Fall season, with rolls set to begin on the weekend of November 13-14.  Permits had been obtained by Sweepstakes, and by November 9, at least 3 teams had already passed capes. Unfortunately, on November 9, the hammer finally came down. After previously approving the plan, CMU backtracked and officially cancelled Rolls for the Fall Semester.

• Springtime – Buggy is Back... As disappointing as the cancellation of Fall rolls was for the students, the good news was that they had a leg up on the Spring. Sweepstakes already had a plan in place for how to run Buggy in a manner that complied with CMU’s COVID practices, and they resubmitted that plan for the Spring semester. The start of the Spring Semester had been delayed until February 1, and CMU further delayed in-person activities until February 15 at the earliest. But on March 3, the first set of good news came, as CMU approved capes and bales, and left one final approval for Spring Rolls.  That approval came on March 5, and Sweepstakes moved quickly to secure permits for every weekend beginning on March 20-21 and ending on May 1-2.  Capes took place the week of March 13, and on March 20, nearly 13 months after PiKA’s Banshee cleared the Chute and orgs headed home for Spring Break 2020, buggies were back at the corner of Tech & Frew.

• …But Not Without Hiccups. PiKA planned to be one of the 7 teams coming back for Rolls in 2021. However, their return to the course was delayed, as members of the organization came down with COVID just as they were preparing to cape. This caused a delay in when PiKA could get back onto the course, which ended up altering the Raceday plans slightly.

• Teamwork Makes The Dream Work. Due to the limitations on the number of participants at rolls (as well as the lack of manpower on campus), some teams got creative in how they would get through the mornings. Spirit, CIA, and Apex took this the furthest, combining their efforts into a grouping affectionately referred to as SpIApex. This gave each of the teams a chance to conserve the total number of people on the course while still having the numbers necessary for each team to roll.

• Modified Raceday Rules. Although Sweepstakes did decide to hold a Raceday in 2021, it was anything but a traditional Raceday. Because of the COVID limits that CMU placed on in-person events in the Spring, Sweepstakes had to make some changes to the typical competitive nature and pageantry of Raceday. Taking guidance from Mini-Racedays that typically occur in the Fall, Sweepstakes devised a plan allowing for as many people to compete as they could fit within the then-current CMU guidance. This meant that the rules for Spring Rolls, as referenced above, were largely still in effect. The modified Raceday rules included the following:
  • Each organization was permitted to enter 1 Men’s team and 1 Women’s team
  • Each team would run on its own, in time trial format – No buggies or teams would face off head-to-head
  • Each team would have two runs – The fastest of the two would be used as the team’s final time
  • Teams were not permitted to heat or chemically treat their wheels
  • All team members were required to wear facemasks at all times, and no person was permitted to be within 15’ of any other person while unmasked – Any mask noncompliance violation would result in a full team disqualification (i.e., both times that the team put up would be wiped out by the DQ).
  • For other DQs that affect a particular roll (pushbar, loss of mass, etc.), the roll in which the DQ occurred would be disqualified, but the team’s other roll would still be permitted to count as its final time.
  • No alumni or spectators were permitted on the course.

• 2 Days of Racing. Because of the limits on the number of people that could be present at the course, Sweepstakes had too many teams to compete in 1 day.  Therefore, Raceday was split across both Saturday and Sunday. Spirit would race on Saturday, while the other 6 teams – Apex, CIA, Fringe, PiKA, SDC, and SigEp, would compete on Sunday.  Spirit wouldn’t be alone on Saturday; PiKA had gotten a late start at Rolls due to members of the organization testing positive for COVID, and therefore PiKA came out on Saturday as well to get some practice rolls in and give the Spirit pushers and drivers a breather between their races. And Saturday wasn’t just for the race. The first hour of Rolls on Saturday allowed Apex and CIA (as well as PiKA) to get some additional practice in; beginning at 7:30, Apex and CIA left the course and Spirit entered, in order to maintain the limits on the number of people present on the course.

• Raceday Roll Order. With the modified setup, Sweepstakes had to decide the order of the races on Sunday. So they turned to the Heat Selection list and assigned slots based on where the teams qualified for heat selection.  This led to a roll order of Apex, SigEp, Fringe, CIA, PiKA, and SDC for the Men’s and Women’s races. And in a departure from a normal Raceday, there were a mere 5 minutes from gun-to-gun.

• Musical Pushers. One impact of each organization only fielding 1 Men’s team and 1 Women’s team was that rosters were limited.  This led to a number of roster swaps, particularly on Hill 1 on the Men’s side. Clayton Edwards, formerly an Apex Hill 1 pusher, moved over to SDC, to fill the slot of Matias Jonsson, who went over to push Hill 5 for Spirit. This left an opening on Apex Hill 1, which would be filled by Apex pusher Jason Sterenko, opening up other Hills for newer members of Apex.

• The Streak Continues. After everything that had happened over the previous 13 months, it was a “no news is good news” situation for Raceday. For the most part, Raceday itself was uneventful, with no major issues or hiccups along the way. There were only two DQ’s – Apex Women’s first roll was DQ’d for a 5 second violation, and PiKA Women were DQ’s for mask noncompliance (their second roll also had a pushbar DQ).  SDC managed to win both the Women’s and Men’s races once again, resulting in the 1^st place Men’s trophy being awarded to SDC for a record 9^th consecutive Raceday.

• Droning On. With no alumni or spectators allowed on the course, and a limited student body on campus and permitted at Raceday, our video coverage of 2021 isn’t quite as comprehensive as it has been in the cmuTV era. But thanks to the CMU IT and Marketing teams, Raceday was broadcast in some form and fashion to eager fans around the world. And thanks to Radio Club/W3VC, a camera was placed in the Chute, live streaming Chute turns and Hill 3 rollouts to the most dedicated Buggy alums watching in the Discord. But that’s not all. A mysterious figure also magically appeared at the course on both Saturday and Sunday with a drone, getting us our first ever Buggy drone footage for some of the rolls. It’s Buggy’s first aerial footage since 1956! These videos would spur ideas to broaden drone coverage in the future and try to incorporate it into the actual cmuTV broadcast. You can watch the complete coverage that we have of each race in the 2021 Raceday Playlist (unfortunately, only 1 of the 28 heats is the complete race from start to finish – but if you have video from any of these races that aren’t included in these heat videos, let us know!)

• Buggy Centennial Display. Although COVID cancelled most of the Buggy100 plans for Raceday 2020, one of those was able to take place during Spring Carnival 2021. The new Buggy display, a look through time memorializing the status of Buggy on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, was unveiled on the walls of the Cohon University Center during Spring Carnival 2021.  The display features all sorts of facts and historical information about Buggy, as well as a plaque honoring all of the lifetime members of the Buggy Alumni Association. Along with the unveiling, a virtual presentation took place during Carnival, which you can still watch here. The display is on the first floor of the CUC in the northwest-most hallway (just past the bookstore and near the entrance to the Au Bon Pain).

• Buggy: The Video Game. As part of the Buggy 100 celebration for 2020, the IDEATE Lab at the CMU Entertainment Technology Center planned to release a virtual reality buggy game. However, with COVID cancelling all in-person activities, the IDEATE lab was forced to pivot. But they pivoted successfully, and on July 2, 2020, Buggy All-Stars was released.  The browser-based video game features the user controlling the pushers and buggy of “Super Buggy”, as they race against 3 buggies from across Buggy history, including famous buggies such as SigNu’s Pirate Ship, LSH’s Horpole Hode (aka Bathtub Buggy), SDC’s Malice, and many more. Players race around the actual buggy course, trying to finish as fast as possible, using Mario Kart-style boosts and trying to avoid obstacles such as potholes. The game is available at https://games.ideate.cmu.edu/buggyallstars – can you break the the 2:01 record?

• World Premiere of “Buggy”. But the display and the game weren’t the only ways that the Buggy community was trying to keep the Buggy spirit alive. With a remote school year taking place, the BAA looked for opportunities to engage with students and alumni in alternative manners. On September 26, as part of CMU’s Globally Plaid series, the BAA provided the world (i.e., YouTube) premiere of Buggy by John Mateer, a documentary made in 1985 featuring footage from the 1983-1984 school year and Raceday 1984.

• 2021 Photos. Now that we have a real gallery again, you can see all of our 2021 photos at the link!