Good news everyone! This weekend of rolls was completely and totally 100% incident-free! That’s right; not a single buggy spun, crashed, or even came to an unintentional stop. In addition to this glorious piece of news, more roadwork has been done to the back hills and there are now shiny parking lines. This doesn’t seem like much, but it will take some of the guesswork out of measuring rollouts. With better comparisons between buggies, we can spend even more time trying to predict future success amongst the teams.
In less exciting news, it’s mid-October in Pennsylvania and we had the first snow of the season. It didn’t impact this weekend’s rolls, but was a friendly reminder that winter is coming. Fortunately, the weather for the next couple weeks looks damp, but not so cold as to allow for more snow. Hopefully we can keep rolling buggies until Thanksgiving.
In Attendance
| Org | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze | |
| Apex | Ember | Phoenix |
| CIA | Equinox, Icarus, Orca, Ascension | Equinox, Icarus |
| Fringe | Balius, Bissa, Beacon | Balius, Beacon |
| PhiDelt | Perun | Perun |
| PiKA | Banshee | Banshee |
| SDC | Malice, Avarice, Havoc, Vice | Malice, Avarice, Havoc, Vice |
| SigEp | Pandora | |
| SigNu | Bungarus Krait | |
| Spirit | Inviscid, Zuke, Seraph, Kingpin | Inviscid, Zuke, Seraph |
| Robo | Transistor | Transistor |
Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery) Continue reading
Both CMU and UPitt celebrated their homecomings this weekend. The title of this post might be a little misleading because buggies have been rolling during Ceilidh since CMU re-branded their homecoming festivities, however this weekend saw a fairly large number of buggies parading around Flagstaff. Also, there were donuts provided through the Buggy Alumni Association, so that’s cool. The donuts seemed to be quite popular as Saturday welcomed many parents a quite a few alumni. It’s always great to see parents out supporting their children’s odd choices in extracurricular activities. It’s similarly great to see alumni foregoing sleep in favor of their former odd choices in extracurricular activities.
In terms of buggies, this weekend was relatively smooth. The average freeroll speed picked up as many organizations were sending their buggies with full hill 2 pushoffs, and more and more drivers are comfortable in bagless buggies. We saw a few spins in/near the chute, but all drivers came out fine and it was otherwise a crash-free weekend.
What a weekend we had, while Sweepstakes had a smooth Saturday, the BAA had a small showing at this year’s 
Sunday was possibly the most chaotic day as this was the first year that rolls have happened the same day as the Great Race. Any other year, the City would have not granted permits for this day, and now we know why. With a good portion of bus routes blocked off due to the Forbes and 5th closures, many were re-routed up Schenley drive, straight through the course. Being a little shorthanded, Sweepstakes got a little help from past chairs and other alums to help ease the mess. Eventually, the routine became easier, but then rolls ended. Teams were still able to get a few rolls each, but Sweepstakes is looking to never coincide with the Great Race again.
Sorry for the delay, we are working out the kinks of our new reporting machine here at BAA HQ. Special thanks this week to Anthony Pacella, Tom Wood, And Lou Conley for notes, video and pictures from rolls with more to come as we continue to untie the knots.
Truck weekend generally went smoothly, if a bit slow. All teams were frantically getting as many rolls as possible with this being the only two-day weekend of the season. Amazingly, all teams managed to qualify completely so there are going to be no need for any exemptions. Saturday photos will be posted this evening, there were some format issues that prevented them from getting out earlier.
This weekend unfortunately had an other missed day with Saturday getting rained out through the morning. With that, teams have only had a total of 3 days of rolls this spring, and it is beginning to show. There were several stoppages through the morning as teams attempted to pick up speed while also working on getting their required pass-tests. Aside from the regular rolls, Robobuggy tested out their new shell and the crash test SURG ran their first, real-buggy experiment.
The weekend started on a sour note as Saturday got cancelled on account of snow early in the morning. Fortuantely, someone still got use of the roads as the crash test SURG project was able to test their setup by running a weighted mock buggy into the haybales at speed. There was no data gathered, but the results were still spectacular. Sunday was frigid, but lacked snow allowing teams to roll. Many drivers seemed to be having trouble with sun glare going up the backhills. Teams have only one regular weekend left before Truck to get the rolls they need. We can only assume that there will be several more exemptions than normal this year, the only hope being that it doesn’t also cause an increase in incidents.
Finally able to kick off the year, all teams were out on Saturday for the first Day of Spring rolls. After weeks and weeks of cold and icy roads, the weather finally cooperated long enough for Saturday. For some reason there were no permits for Sunday, so even though the weather was nice enough, teams were forced to sleep in and/or stay warm. As it happened, this Saturday was also Greek Sing which made it even more impressive to see the teams (including the frats) in mostly full force. Clearly the teams understand what needs to get done in this extremely short lead-up to Raceday.
With Saturday being sub 20 degrees, rolls were cancelled by Friday afternoon, but Sunday warmed right up and made for a surprisingly pleasant last day of rolls. Rolls were delayed early on due to wet roads and some teams were a little more hesitant than that and waited to see how everyone else did before giving it a go.