Summers for the BAA are a bit slow (as we all know), but that doesn’t mean things don’t happen!
We hope many of you have kept your eye on the forums over the past few weeks and for those of you that have, you might have noticed that we have a new person interested in being an officer!
Jeremy Tuttle (SDC ’10) has thrown his hat into the ring for VP, and with no objections or opposition in the forums, it’s time to officially vote him in! Continue reading
Despite the freak snow storm earlier in the week, Pittsburgh decided to warm up and clear up just for the weekend. At the start of last week, there were also only two orgs with caped buggies, but by the end of the week, there were enough to make rolls happen. Against all odds, rolls were certainly possible, but come early Friday evening rolls had been cancelled… Continue reading
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!
Click through to vote or see results: Continue reading
This post was written in advance and scheduled to get posted this morning automatically, because we don’t have time to be writing posts anymore … It’s RACEDAY!! Well, the purists would say raceday is tomorrow, but us BAA folks are at design comp passing out stickers and tshirts. Come on down and see us if you’re in town.
For the past 10 weeks, we’ve been polling the audience to see what the readers of cmubuggy.org think about the pressing issues of the day. 1,300+ votes later, we thank everyone for weighing in and arguing their case on some pretty entertaining topics.
So, what have we learned? Continue reading
Today is the last Thursday we’ve got before the circus comes to town, so I’m going to cut straight to the heart of the matter with this, the final Thursday Poll of the year. Who do you think is going to go home with a trophy from this year’s races?
When it comes to raceday predictions, picking the winners is the more obvious game, but it’s not nearly as interesting. Over the past 10 years, we’ve only seen 3 teams win the men’s or women’s races. It’s the same three teams in each contest, and I don’t think you’d find many people betting on anyone else to win either of this year’s races.
Picking the trophy winners (1st-3rd for the Women and 1st-6th for the Men) on the other hand, requires a more nuanced and sophisticated look at the field. 8 different women’s teams and 13 men’s teams have taken a trip on stage to claim hardware in the last 10 years. 3 of last year’s 9 winners were not on stage the year before. So, with that historical context, pick which teams you think will have something to drink from this year.
Keep in mind, DQs and spins are part of the equation. Look at that 2004 column if you don’t believe me. Teams on the ballot have either won a trophy in the last 5 years, or made it to day 2 last year.
Click through to vote or see the results … Continue reading
As we announced recently, we are very excited to be helping to bring not one, but two jumbotrons to buggy this year. The first will be at the top of hill to next to the leaderboard just as it was last year. The second will be down in the chute so fans in either of the primary viewing areas will be able to follow the entire race for the first time.
After the general idea was announced, we were happy to facilitate a spirited discussion about which particular location in the chute area would be best for the new jumbotron. If you haven’t been following, you can catch up here in the forums. There are pros and cons to almost any location, but the some of the things to consider include:
The black rectangles are the actual size of the jumbotron’s footprint. The beige rectangle is the rough size and location of the cmuTV scaffolding. The actual viewing area is a bit larger and wider than depicted. Let it be said that this can not be a purely democratic decision. In the end, sweepstakes is responsible for this decision, and they are responsible to more concerns than us fans. Getting a sense of the popular opinion is important to them though, hence this poll. So, if you were in charge, where would you put it?
Click through to vote and see results Continue reading
Ah, design comp. How many competitions can you think of that some people respond to by wearing suits while others … well … do not make the same effort to make a good impression.
The list of buggies entering design comp hasn’t been announced by Sweepstakes yet this year, but I hope that it will be long and that it will include all of the exciting new buggies and those we expect to challenge for the win this year. I fear, however, that it will be similar to last year — a competition that less than half of the field chose to enter.
Of course, this topic has already been covered at length on this site so I won’t rehash the pro and con arguments, but feel free to review
Both of those discussions were fairly constructive and I think it was useful to have all of those opinions aired publicly, but true to the alumni tradition it was mostly just talk with no steps towards doing anything. It’s too late to do anything this year either, but for this week’s poll I want to know which design comp fix is the most popular among the cmubuggy.org crowd.
Click through to vote or see the results Continue reading
We probably should have run this one about a month ago to be timely, but this topic came up in the forums, and I’m in no position to turn down a decent poll idea at this point.
The topic this week is “buggy vs. relationships” or “relationships via buggy” depending on your perspective. Out in the real world, if you say you’re regularly hanging out with someone before the sun rises, it would be fair to assume you’ve got something cooking. At CMU, it’s probably safer to assume that your extracurricular activity of choice is buggy. Whether it’s the hours you spent with people at buggy, or the hours you gave up when other people were making their moves, it seems that buggy and romance do not operate independently. How did it work out for you? (or how is it working out currently?)
Click through to vote in the poll and see results … Continue reading
The kids are on spring break this week, and it’s been breaking 60 degrees here in Pittsburgh all of a sudden. With warm weather finally on the scene, we’re close to rolls, and with rolls, we’re close to new buggies. Back in my day as a head mechanic, building buggies was challenging, but finding a good name for them was next to impossible. It’s tough to sum up all those efforts and all those ambitions. It’s easy to end up with something that is so random that it doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Maybe even worse though are names that are so obvious that they’ve already been used. Are there some names that are good enough to use more than once?
Click through to vote and see the results
Continue reading
First, let me apologize for letting the regulars down on the Thursday poll this week, and thank you for letting me know that you noticed. You’d be surprised how quickly Thursdays come around when it comes to dreaming up poll questions. In exchange for your patience, I have generated a neat graph.
This one goes out to the pushers. There’s no doubt you need all 5 to get this race done, but depending on who you ask, not all hills are created equal. Which hill do you think really captures the spirit of our crazy sport? Which hill is the key to victory? Which hill can you screw up on enough to sink your whole team? For which hill is it the hardest to find the perfect athlete? Wrap all of those together and pick the hill that you think best represents the glory of a buggy race.
Click through to vote and see the results
Continue reading
