A new year, new ideas; your help wanted

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 2 Comments on A new year, new ideas; your help wanted

I know I don’t want to admit it, but the reality is that the end of summer is in sight, and the Buggy Alumni Association wants to be ready for another big year (our 4th!).  After the buzz from raceday died down, we all took a healthy break from buggy madness, but a few things have been coming together on those rainy days.  The theme of these projects is that we are hoping to get more of our members actively involved this year making the BAA and cmubuggy.org better and better.

Buggy Orientation Event

For the second year, current students will be holding a multi-org, non-partisan introduction to buggy for the incoming class near the end of orientation.  This is exactly the kind of thing that we want to be happening on campus, so we want to support it any way we can.  Right now the agenda includes buggies on display, an intro talk explaining the sport and basic terms, and an outdoors demo session.  Want to help pull the next generation into buggy?  Help is needed advertising the event, setting things up, and talking with interested freshmen, etc.  Current students are especially important to have involved. Contact Ben Matzke (ben.matzke@gmail.com) if you want to help out.  Details:

Saturday, August 27th
3:30 – 4:30 @ UC Connan : basic Q&A
5-6 @ CFA Parking lot / base of Hill 1: rolling buggy demos

BAA Project Zone

Continue reading →

2010 videos now on cmubuggy!

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 5 Comments on 2010 videos now on cmubuggy!

If you’ve been on cmubuggy in the last 5 days since our new site debuted (and over 2,000 of you have), you’ve undoubtedly checked out its biggest new feature: the video library.  For the launch we had 264 videos capturing buggy from the 1950’s through raceday 2009.  Thanks to our partners in this project over at cmuTV, we have been able to share all of their terrific (and constantly improving) coverage from 2003 onward.

Part of that deal is that we keep each year’s races “in the vault” for a year while they sell DVDs which help to pay for the production.  Well guess what folks, it’s been a year since raceday 2010.  With no further ado, we give you …

cmubuggy.org/video#2010

This year’s installment comes with 40 videos including a great set of cmuTV-produced buggy promos  composed of footage from rolls and set to kickin’ beats.  Put a link to your favorite video on facebook and spread the word to folks that don’t yet know that all of this is online!

Other notes while I’ve got your attention:

  • The Lead Truck Auction will end at 9pm tonight.  Get in on the bidding.  Riding in the lead truck is a great way to experience raceday, and a great way to support the BAA’s financial contribution to the dual jumbotrons we can no longer do without.
  • Our Members-Only Raceday Preview has been getting rave reviews from our members.  And I quote:  “wow, loving it, awesome”   and “its awesome … you should make sure more people read it bc i didnt even realize what i was missing.”  Join or renew your membership here and forward us your confirmation email to join@cmubuggy.org.
  • If you sent us an e-mail yesterday and didn’t get a response, try again today, we fixed a problem with the join@ address and weren’t sure how many people were affected.
  • If you have emailed about other problems with the website and haven’t gotten a response, I’m really sorry.  We’re a little behind here in headquarters.  I’ll try to get everything fixed up before raceday.  Oh shit, that’s the day after tomorrow.

Lead Truck Auction 2011 kicks off

Posted on | by Sam Swift

At 9AM this morning, bidding will commence in the 3rd annual Lead Truck Auction. Don’t show up fashionably late to the bidding this year as we’ve got only 36 hours (bidding closes at 9pm wednesday) to divvy up the rides because the heat selection was held later than it has been in recent years. For the uninitiated, bidders bid on the chance to ride in the lead truck for a specific heat. Winners get to ride with the head judge and other race officials with a view of at least the lead buggy around the entire course.

Last year’s auction was a huge success and it allowed us to help sweepstakes rent not one, but two jumbotrons so that spectators can really watch the entire race from the most popular spots on the course. We saw this coming, but once you have two jumbotrons, it doesn’t sound like any fun to go back to one (or god forbid, zero).  We alumni reap the majority of the benefits of these jumobtrons so if we want them to stick around we’ve got to pitch in.  Bid on a lead truck ride and you get to do your part for the big screens and take a fun ride to boot.

Rides are transferable, so you can give them as gifts if you won’t be in town.  Refunds are available in the event of races being rained out.  Plenty of other details at:

http://cmubuggy.org/auction

(discussion thread in the forum)

Here comes raceday + mini truck weekend report

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 4 Comments on Here comes raceday + mini truck weekend report

I hope the rolls report faithful weren’t too distraught today given the lack of rolls report following an exciting truck weekend.  As you may remember, after truck weekend the large and well compensated BAA staffers spend the night producing an in depth and comprehensive report for our generous supporters: the Members-Only Raceday Preview.  Lucky for you, there’s still time to become a member or renew your membership via our new and improved membership page.  Starting this year, there is no set or minimum contribution to become an official member.  If you’re willing to throw something in the pot, you’re on the team.

The preview has just gone out to members, and it’s about 100x better than what compubookie slapped together, so don’t miss out.  If you didn’t get a copy of the Raceday Preview and you think you are a member, check our new roster of members to confirm and then let us know.  Remember if you become a member now, forward your gift confirmation email to join@cmubuggy.org so that we can get that Preview right out to you.

In other week-of-raceday news, the heat selection meeting was held Monday night.  We’ll get the heats incorporated into our system soon. 49 teams is 6 fewer than last year but just one less than in 2009. There accordingly 2 fewer heats overall.

With all of that business taken care of … it was an interesting truck weekend, so I won’t ignore it entirely.

In attendance
Everyone was in attendance, it was truck weekend!

Observations (Saturday Gallery, Sunday Gallery)

  • I didn’t do much observing on Saturday as we were doing a dress rehersal of the timing system.  I will be head timing again this year, operating the same system we rented last year.  It took a while to remember how everything plugged together, but once we got it figured out, it worked like a charm.  Hill 5s, practice your best frozen profile poses, they’ll be part of the official record.
  • SAE had a gnarly wheel failure while entering the chute on Saturday.  It looked familiar in many ways to the failures Spirit and CIA had and it ups the expectation that the road quality will inflict some casualties this raceday.  SAE has their act together though, and they whipped up a spare in time for rolls on Sunday.
  • Fringe and CIA both lost rear hatches in the chute.  Figure out those tape strategies before next week everyone!  On a general note, chairmen, take a moment and remind everyone in your org how they can avoid DQing the team.  Sounds simple right, but every year there are tons of DQs for stupid stuff.  Don’t be in the stupid club next week.
  • SigEp had some cool looking transponders on their buggies.  I’m guessing they were GPS or accelerometers of some sort.  Barracuda was flying all weekend so I’m guessing the data looks good no matter which variables they were measuring.
  • Both SigEp and Pioneers both had trouble at the finish line when they stopped the buggy by the pushbar and heard that terrible sound: carbon crinkling, breaking, crunching.  Pioneers’ problem looked to be in the top of Chaos’ shell while Mamba’s failure was a crack right across the composite pushbar.  Word from SigEp is that it’s already mended and stronger than ever.  I hope Pioneers is doing the same since they have no backup.
  • Fans in the chute were fairly well entertained this weekend.  Not to be lowbrow about it though, there was lots of speed on display and some thrilling driving. Both SDC and PiKA’s RD2011 are routinely drifting through the turn at full speed. PiKA was losing big chunks of rubber in the process but rolling out well. AEPi hit the inside curb after the hay bales in what looked like a visibility issue. SN’s Skua ended the semester of rolls with a distinctly squirrely entrance line and then a pretty quick spin that sent her into the bales tail first. SDC took the cake for most exciting incident without even stopping when Avarice swung out all the way outside and tapped the bales with her outside rear wheel with enough force to throw some hay in the air. The recovery was truly impressive though as she got back on track and managed to roll out a number of windows. Youtube of those three below.

Non-Rolls Report: Nov 6 & 7 (and homecoming)

Posted on | by Sam Swift

Rolls weren’t to be this weekend, but the BAA had a good homecoming weekend anyhow.

The weather report for Saturday morning was pretty bad – temps just above freezing, and a rain / snow mix forecast above 50%. It was also the last day of rolls before daylight savings was to end, so there was only 1 hour scheduled. Given how many days of rolls they’ve had, it was an easy call and sweepstakes called it off by 9:30pm Friday night. As it turned out the precipitation never really materialized, but what are you gonna do about that.

Sunday was supposed to be much better with two full hours of warmer drier weather. Somehow, all of the other factors conspired to cancel rolls anyhow. First, there were multiple cars left in critical spots around the course, one of which was booted making it tough (impossible?) to tow away. Second, none of the hired cops showed up to close the roads. It’s still unclear why that happened, but it’s not the first time. As if that wasn’t enough, some large portion of the hay bales somehow went missing. I don’t know how you could make off with more than a couple of hay bales, but apparently someone did. With all of that together, things were called off before the pushers and alumni woke up, but not early enough to save the mechanics from carrying everything out and then back to the garages.

Not all was lost from the weekend though, because we had the best table in the UC of all of the alumni-oriented operations. We borrowed Bachi (’99) from Fringe for the day to add some variety and give my Blackjack a break and Tom Wood brought out T-2 and White Lightning to accompany his History of Buggy presentation. From the table, we met quite a few alumni from the 60’s through last year, many of whom didn’t know about us but walked away as dues-paying-members. We also introduced the strange concept of buggy to some prospective student tours and the line of people waiting to get into Rocky Horror Picture Show in McConomy. To finish things off in pan-organization alumni fashion, former PiKA driver Melissa Lee got almost all the way into Bachi for a photo-op.

Thanks to Tom, Shafeeq, Carsen, and Aiton for helping man the table, and for everyone that stopped by and became members!

BAA Homecoming Schedule

Posted on | by Janice (Golenbock) Schneekloth

Hi everyone!

This weekend is Homecoming, and I hope if you’re in town, you’ll all be out at rolls this weekend!  Here’s the full list of other exciting things the BAA has planned.  Please join us for the fun or just stop by and say hello.  Leave a comment on this post if you’ll be around this weekend!

Note: don’t forget about daylight savings this weekend.  We get an extra hour of rolls on Sunday!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6

Freerolls
8:00-9:00 a.m.
Tech and Frew Streets

Buggy Alumni Association Welcome Table
11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
Wean Commons, University Center

The History of Buggy, presented by Tom Wood (E’74)
2:00-3:30 p.m.
Activities Room, University Center

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7

Daylight Savings Day!
Freerolls
7:00-9:00 a.m.
Tech and Frew Streets

State of the BAA report – 2 years in

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 1 Comment on State of the BAA report – 2 years in

Last night, a historic 2 hour conference call marked the peaceful transition of power from the founding committee of the Buggy Alumni Association to the 50% newly elected committee that will lead us forward into 2011.

We covered administrative details of course, but we wanted to take this moment to step back and appraise our progress towards advancing the five goals stated in our mission.  The questions we asked ourselves were, “How have we done in our first two years?” and “What ideas do we have to keep things moving forward?”

Preserve and make accessible the history of the sport
Grade so far : B+

Efforts so far
–  Created a database of buggy history, solicited data, and put it on the web
–  Created an online gallery of pictures and solicited pictures from the university and alumni
–  Helped to promote and facilitate the now-perennial History of Buggy presentations

Ideas for 2011
– Improve the integration between media and history [enable tagging of people / buggies]
– Create a data entry back-end so that new data can be quickly included and not sit in a queue
– Make it easier to contribute pictures and video
– Offer to help digitizing analog pictures and video
– Look into a physical space to archive buggy memorabilia Continue reading →

Sweepstakes and BAA elect new leadership

Posted on | by Sam Swift

Both of these elections actually happened a few weeks ago, but they deserve to be officially announced and introduced.

The 2011 Sweepstakes Committee is

  • Chairman – Chris Shellhamer (Jr., 2010 Assistant Chair, PiKA)
  • Assistant Chairman – Janice Chen (Sr., Head Driver, AEPi)
  • Safety Chair – Fritz Langford (Sr., Chairman, SigEp)

and the 2011 Buggy Alumni Association committee, decided by a hotly contested online election is

Good luck to both teams next year!

Vote now for BAA Chairman

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 7 Comments on Vote now for BAA Chairman

After collecting nominations and doing a little discussion of the nominees in the forum, it’s time to vote.  Just to review, the two positions up for election this year are Chairman and Assistant Chairman.  The other two positions, Head Mechanic (currently: me) and Treasurer (currently: Chris Stengel) will be elected next year.  The idea is to maintain some continuity by staggering things.

We’ve only got one accepted nomination for Assistant Chair, so Shafeeq will be stepping right into that role.  Janice and Carl have both bravely stepped up to lead us around the course next year, and they’d both do a great job I’m sure.  It’s up to you to pick who gets the job!

Chairman

  • Janice Golenbock: Fringe driver/head driver ’98-’02, Sweepstakes Chair ’03 & ’04, Design Chair ’03 & ’04, Head Judge ’05   (forum posts)
  • Carl Nott: SDC pusher ’95, Spirit mechanic ’96-’98, Spirit MFIC ’98, Head Judge ’01    (forum posts)

Assistant Chairman

  • Shafeeq Sinnamohideen: CIA mechanic/head mechanic ’98-’00, Race Starter ’10

Click through to vote or see results: Continue reading →

Free memberships for graduating seniors

Posted on | by Sam Swift

Seniors, sign up between now and graduation to get a year’s worth of members-only benefits for free!  Congrats on graduating, and congrats on making it 4 years without seeing a single day of races rained out, and congrats on joining the exciting world of being a buggy alum.

We need to prepare you for something difficult now: you’ll have to make it through next year without buggy.  It’s going to be tough.  Take our word from it, we’ve been there.  Let us help by offering you a year of Dues-Paying-Member benefits for free (a $10 value!).  Those benefits include:

  • Fall 2010 Report – get in depth details about the fall semester
  • Spring 2011 Raceday Preview – get the comprehensive coverage of each and every team so that you’re in the loop when you come back to your first raceday as an alum
  • Raceday 2011 Reception – mingle with other alumni after the races
  • Raceday 2011 Wrap-up – a look back on everything that happened

All you have to do is sign up before graduation:

http://cmubuggy.org/seniors