After two weekends of no rolls, many teams were excited to take advantage of the longest day of rolls thanks to the end of daylight savings. Unfortunately, the longest day is always preceded by the shortest day, which can always feel like a let-down for teams getting only a few rolls.
Unfortunately, Sunday rolls were called early due to weather, citing the precedent set from last year that rolls would not happen below freezing. While it is a little sad that rolls didn’t happen on the longest day of the year, it was nice to not be out in the freezing weather. Sadly this also means that I didn’t make it out to rolls this weekend, so thanks to everyone that I got info from to put this together, and sorry that there are no pictures.
As a note, I will not be able to attend any more weekends of rolls this year and I require volunteers to take notes and pictures so these can continue to happen in my absence. If you are interested in helping out, please email me at ben.matzke@gmail.com. Students and Alumni are both welcome and encouraged to help out. The more information the better!
In Attendance
| Org | Saturday |
|---|---|
| CIA | Orca, Ascension, Freyja, Quasar |
| Fringe | Bissa, Bonsai, Borealis, Bedlam, Banyan |
| SDC | Bane, Avarice, Malice |
| SigEp | Mamba, Barracuda, Pandora |
| Spirit | Zuke, Haraka, Fuko |
| No-Shows | AEPi, Apex, AEPi, DU, KapSig, PiKA, ROTC, SAE, SigNu |
Observations (No Pictures) Continue reading
To follow the weather, the teams decided to match the weather and showed their own version of bipolar. There were no incidents on Saturday and having forgotten my tripod for the stream, I was able to get a lot of different pictures from around the course. The continuous rolling made the frigid morning a bit more bearable. With the warm weather on Sunday, teams seemed to lose their cool and we saw a few crashes and spins.
It was Homecoming this weekend which brought back buggy alumni from around the area. Some new along with some veteran made for a fun Sunday morning after a rained out Saturday. Unfortunately, Sunday saw its own issues delaying rolls until 8:00am, after which, everything went about as well as it ever has.
Saturday saw a flurry of activity from the orgs, and also the Pittsburgh community. No new and exciting wildlife this time, just a pack of bikers, flock of runners, a car, and a police bike that sat and watched from the curb. The car came through from panther hollow and took a quick right down towards the pond. Word on the course is that the bikers came through the Westinghouse barricade. Fortunately, none of it was out at the same time as a buggy and if anything just caused some minor delays. The newest addition to the course was what I can only guess to be a Phipps staff member sweeping up trash on all the parking spaces. He seemed very calm though all of it and was only called off the road when he started to stray close to potential buggy lines.
PiKA made their return this weekend and joined the other orgs to make it 6 for the day. All orgs have been picking up speed and some people are taking advantage of the extra practice that comes with so few buggies on the course. This will hopefully make for an exciting show come Cèilidh next weekend.
Sunday was the only day of rolls again this weekend, but this one is thanks to the diabetes walk that happens every year, so it’s not like we didn’t see this one coming. Next week we only have Saturday and from then on we should be back to the full weekend. With so few scheduled days to start with, and fewer still that will likely happen due to Pittsburgh doing what Pittsburgh does best, I’m interested to see how this will affect the spring, if at all.
Sweepstakes (I assume it was them) also made some nice giant signs to help alert people of the weekend closures.These signs allowed Sweepstakes to get things running on Sunday and things ran well. Aside from the typical shenanigans that accompany the first day of rolls, everything ran incredibly smoothly and some drivers are already maxing their fall rolls. It was an exciting day for everyone and the surrounding wildlife, so lets get into some of the details.