One nice day in September is a great way to start the year of buggy. It’s early enough to capitalize on all that recruiting momentum and good weather. At the same time, the G20 superseded rolls (and everything else in pittsburgh) Sunday and next weekend. That give us all time to adapt to the fact that buggy happens way to damn early in the morning.
Rolls started right on time which I always think is a good metric on which to evaluate new sweepstakes committees. Only 8 of the 14 teams on the roll order made it out, with SigNu being the most notable absence. The starting line ups for the year were:
– Spirit : Haraka and Seraph
– SDC : Psychosis, Malice, Rage
– Fringe : Blizzard, Bantam, Bedlam, Banyan
– CIA : Firebird, Conquest, Quasar
– AEPi : Kamikaze, Zephyrus and Camo
– PiKA : Knightfall and Zeus
– PhiKap : Svengali and Schadenfreude
– SigEp : Barracuda and Pandora
Observations (Full gallery of pictures here)
- SDC, Fringe, and SigEp were going pretty fast already. All three got at least a few windows on their fast buggy.
Fringe had Bantam out with very stylish plaid on its out-rigged left fairing. It’s the first time Bantam had been seen on the course since it hit the curb near the transition flag last fall.
PiKA (I believe Knightfall) hit a curb in the chute. I was at the top of the hill so I don’t have a first hand account of things. I don’t believe it was serious since I didn’t hear anything else about it and they were going pretty slow. I will however use it as an opportunity for my annual complaint that the hay bales are dangerously poorly distributed. Bales should go well around both the inside and outside corners, not 75 yards down the straightaway. Zeus also had a controlled stop in the chute.- CIA had what sounded like a scary incident on the back hills with a driver hitting a parked car when the driver was blinded by the rising sun. According to reports though, the buggy did a good job protecting the driver and won’t be out of service long.
Spirit had a tire blow out right after hill 2. Pneumatics still offer a decent option for racing, but man, you couldn’t pay me to run a buggy team and deal with the maintenance and replacement costs of pneumatics these days.
AEPi had Camo and Zephyrus stop unintentionally on their way down the hill. Camo could be heard quietly begging to be retired.
Speaking of buggy retirement, there are quite a few buggies out that are refusing to call it a career. Conquest (’92), Schaddy (’94), Haraka (’95), Rage(’96), and Zeus (’00) have all paid their dues and continue to make it out in favor of newer siblings. Fringe missed the memo about throwback day and left Brazen in the garage.
Campus police decided that having a huge pile of flammable barricade building blocks a few hundred yards from one of the G20 event sites (Phipps) wasn’t a good idea and made sweepstakes move them off campus. So just a week or so after they arrived, sweepstakes had to rent a U-Haul and with Fringe and Spirit’s help move them all to sit in front of someone’s house for the week. What a hassle.
The plan for this year is to publish these rolls reports each Monday morning after weekends with rolls. That way all you eager readers have something to look forward to on otherwise dreary Monday mornings and don’t have to check the news section every 10 minutes all Sunday. The pictures are usually posted shortly after they are taken.
McCue says:
Awesome, thanks for posting this.
Sara Player says:
More plaid buggies!
JT says:
Other notable commentary:
Knightfall hit the curb right before the start of the bales pretty much head-on. It was pretty scary. Zeus went straight through about 6 yellow flags at chute following the accident, and only stopped when somebody got to the buggy and stopped it with his hand (not sure what team).
Also, one of SigEp’s buggies went (bagged) the wrong way around the monument. The chute flagger, being resourceful and not interested in wasting a roll, ran across the road and flagged the buggy as normal.
Aileen says:
Which CIA buggy hit the car?
Also, cars parked on the back hills? What the heck?
Bryan says:
Zephyrus actually stopped twice (two different rolls) during the freeroll, but both stops were intentional.
DeVos says:
CIA’s Conquest was involved in the accident. A new driver was blinded by the sun about a third of the way along Hill 5, drifted towards the parking side and ran into the rear wheel of a car. Both driver and buggy are fine.