Sweepstakes and the teams are on the ball and the 93rd season of buggy is scheduled to kick off this Saturday at 7:01am. Are you ready? Are you excited? Is this the last thing on the list telling you that you have to admit that summer is over?
Well get ready, and get excited, because it’s time to stuff the smallest ladies in Pittsburgh into carbon tubes, send them flying down the hill and then push them back up to the top. If it doesn’t put a smile on your face to think about our most peculiar sport ramping back up for a new season … your smile must be broken because you’re on this website, who are you kidding!
So, what does it mean to start a new season?
- Our highly-esteemed rolls reports will resume next week, with weekly coverage of the weekend’s action usually hitting the interwebs on Monday morning to give you something to look forward to as you start your week.
- Our fall activities are coming up. We’ll be running a welcome table at Cèilidh to meet and greet, Tom Wood will be giving his history of buggy talk, and we’ll be running the 2nd annual game of Fantasy Buggy scheduled around mini-raceday at the end of the fall season of rolls.
- Now is the time to start working on projects to make buggy bigger, more popular, and more fun for alumni and current students. Ideas tend to come up in March when the buggy buzz is really getting strong, but it’s tough to pull off the big projects in a month. If you’ve got a big idea, throw it out in the Project Zone and rally some troops to get it done. We don’t raise money for our retirement accounts, we raise it to fund fun projects. Let’s do it!
- It’s time to re-up on your BAA membership. BAA membership is an annual affair so any contribution now until the end of May makes you a 2013 supporter. A contribution of any amount >$1 gets you on the roster for the year and gives you the happy feeling of knowing that you enable the BAA to support buggy and make it cooler than it was the year before. Check out our membership page to see the past year’s rosters and for details on the money stuff.
How are we going to pull off this exciting new year of BAA activity?
- Well, that’s an interesting question. The BAA is at a bit of a turning point. The BAA will celebrate its 5th birthday at carnival 2013 and many of the folks who founded and have led this awesome organization have new, probably less awesome things vying for their time (babies, jobs, living in different cities, whatever). As a result, we’ve got opportunities aplenty for alumni with energy and ideas on how to continue to contribute to the sport of buggy even though you’re no longer paying your student activities fee.
- Janice Schneekloth is stepping down as chairwoman after 2 great years at the helm, and that is the primary role we need to fill. The BAA is a group effort. We work on things the community thinks are worthwhile and interesting and we try to do it by including everyone who can contribute. Still, we need one person to make the tough calls (there aren’t many) and keep the organization hanging together and moving forward. We also need more people to be part of the committee and adopt specific parts of the BAA operation and make them their thing. This post from May outlines the jobs that need doing.
- I am also one of the people who has been forced to move on a bit because I physically moved to Chapel Hill, NC this summer. Blackjack is already hung on our new wall, so I won’t forget about buggy, and being part of the beginning of the Buggy Alumni Association has been one of my favorite CMU experiences. This is my 147th post on cmubuggy.org, and I’m sure it won’t be my last, but I don’t think I’d do a very good job with the rolls reports from 500 miles away.
- So Ben Matzke (CIA chairman, 2011) is going to be taking over to start things off on the news front, but he could use your help. I’ll let him do the coordination, but rolls reports is an ideal job for a 2 or 3 person rotating team. You’d be surprised how nice it is to get out of the house early, go see some buggy, and then start your Saturday. That, and telling the ladies you write for cmubuggy.org works like a charm every time, trust me.
- So, for the next 8 days we will be accepting nominations for Chairman of the BAA and volunteers for the other myriad of roles that need filling. Next Friday, we will either announce the new 2013 BAA committee, or (if we have more than 1 candidate for Chairman) a ballot . Please comment on this post or email admin@cmubuggy.org to get involved. Get involved, you’ll love it, I definitely have.
Prelims were pretty awesome. We’re hoping Finals will happen and be awesome despite the threat of rain. Here’s the deal with what happened and what is scheduled to happen.
If you’re a member you should have found our legendary Members-only Raceday Preview in your inbox by now. Enjoy it. If you didn’t get a copy, you should know that it’s not too late. 
It may have been April 1st, but there’re no pranks here, rolls happened on Sunday, they were fun, and we’ve got the details for you. Saturday was rained out, but in one day we got more headline material than the last couple of weeks put together. One new buggy, one radical renovation, one new team on the course, one new animal-theme paint job, and a spin for good measure. Lots of alumni in the chute and following along with our live streaming broadcast was just icing on the cake.
After almost two full weeks of ridiculously beautiful weather while the kids took two weekends off for spring break, Pittsburgh slapped the reality back into us with a cool down and enough rain to cancel Saturday’s rolls. Sunday was still overcast but dry, and 8 of our teams made it out the morning after greek sing for four cycles through the order. I was out of town on Sunday, so big thanks to Zatch and Vincent who supplied the bulk of the narrative and all of the multimedia. Read on for the details of a Fringe buggy out of retirement, some new PiKA wheels, and a couple of chute mishaps, but no new buggies!