The buggy alumni association’s coverage of the last 5 men’s course-record-breaking years continues this week with 1983.  Remember, these buggy books are just a sample of the exhaustive collection we are compiling for distribution on a CD available on raceday.

The year was 1983, and CIA’s 1981 course record of 2:10.50 was still the time to beat.  PiKA rose to that challenge and set the bar at 2:09 flat on a re-roll after an earlier collision with Beta.  Legend has it that PiKA’s hill 3 pusher was in the bathroom in Porter hall until the last minute when he ran out and helped brake the record by 1.5 seconds.  The new record marked the arrival at what would become a 25 year plateau in the 2:09 neighborhood.  In fact, the average winning time from 1983-2007 was 2:09.1.

Buggy Book 1983

Comments in the forum

Today marks six weeks from Design Comp 2009, and that’s right about when the weather starts to hint at getting nicer and that buggy itch starts to really get to you. So to help everyone in the buggy world get through these long weeks, we’re going to take you on a tour of racedays past.

Each Thursday from now until Design Comp, we’ll post the buggy book from one of the last 5 men’s course-record-breaking years. On Raceday, the Buggy Alumni Association will be distributing DVDs with high quality PDFs of every buggy book ever printed for a modest fund-raising price yet to be determined.

Without further ado, we bring you
Buggy Book 1981

In 1981, Carnival weekend was completely rained out, and the races were finally held on the Sunday after Carnival. CIA’s track athletes powered the sleek, four-wheeled Black Magic to victory, smashing the record by nearly 5 seconds with a time of 2:10.50, and earning the first win by an independent. The Zoo came in second with a 2:14.2, and PiKA A spun out, leaving their B team to third with a 2:18.5.

Comments and conversation about buggy books or 1981 in general in the forum

Sweepstakes is gearing up for another try at the first weekend of rolls, last week’s being thwarted by colder than desired temperatures.  So far, things aren’t looking too optimistic.  Last week, the 7am temperatures were 27 and 24 F which was cold enough to cancel things.  This weekend the 7am forecasts are 20 and 20 F.  Don’t worry, there is still plenty of time to improve on last year’s record-settingly late first day of rolls, March 23rd.

Update : Rolls are officially canceled for Saturday Feb 20th.  Too cold!
Update : Rolls are officially canceled for Sunday Feb 21st.  Too cold and snowy.

On the bright side, getting started a bit later probably gives teams more uninterrupted time to finish working on the new class of 2009 buggies.  So while we bide our time, lets think about what we’re likely to see on the course this year (in order of finishes in last year’s men’s races). Continue reading →

Alex Keene was kind enough to share some of the footage SDC has been collecting from their on-board camera in the last couple of weeks.  I’ve never seen video from this perspective, and I think it’s a really cool little thing to do during fall rolls.

(the action doesn’t start until 1:30 in the video)

Fall Rolls 2008 from seymour glass on Vimeo.

So once all us buggy folks appreciate the footage for it’s novelty, we’re left to ask, what is SDC collecting this footage for?

• pusher technique training?
• psych video material?
• pushbar rigidity measurements?
• pittsburgh filmmakers class project?
• flip video marketing?

No matter what the intention, thanks for sharing SDC.