After last week’s hiatus thanks to midsemester break, buggies were out and rolling again this weekend. Well, they were rolling on Saturday. Apparently, most of the organizations didn’t want to do buggy things the day after Halloween. They must have been up late handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. This Saturday was also the last day before Daylight Savings, so teams only had 1 hour to get their buggies around the course. All-in-all it was a petite weekend of rolls.
Even if we only had one short day of buggies, it was still a pretty great day. We are happy to report there were no crashes or spins. There was one stop, but it was due to some hatch issues and was overall relatively minor. One of the most exciting things to happen was a visit from Sam Swift of BAA fame. It’s always good to have our alumni back for surprise appearances. Unfortunately no one manage to get a picture. Or an autograph. In lieu of a autographed picture of Sam, we present a picture of a bus that tried to come on the course. Apparently Sam was as amazed at the newly paved roads as the rest of us Pittsburgh folks were at the start of the semester.
Because of the singular short day of rolls, the individual write-ups are a little shorter than normal. We thought about just making stuff up, but didn’t want to tarnish the integrity of the BAA rolls report.
In Attendance
| Org | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze | |
| Apex | Ember, Phoenix | |
| CIA | Icarus, Orca, Ascension | |
| Fringe | Balius, Bissa, Beacon | |
| PhiDelt | Perun | |
| PiKA | Banshee | |
| SDC | Malice, Avarice, Havoc, Vice | |
| SigEp | ||
| SigNu | ||
| Spirit | Inviscid, Zuke, Seraph, Fuko | |
| Robo |
Observations (Saturday Gallery)
AEPi – Usually we only see AEPi out on Sundays, but with the premediated lack of buggy activity for All Saints Day, Kamikaze was out rolling this Saturday. The AEPi driver was rolling with bags for the entire day. While we aren’t sure what they are trying to work on, the buggy is moving fairly slow for this point in the season.
Apex – Both Phoenix and Ember were rolling without bags this Saturday and making clear gains in their speeds. One observer noted that Apex’s chute lines are starting to take shape smooth out. Hopefully we’ll be seeing bigger and better rollouts in the future.
CIA – Equinox missed her first day of rolls this season. Rumors as to why range from a lack of driver availability to garage trolls. Given the day, it was probably trolls. CIA is still leading the way with their impressive rollouts even while other teams make improvements. As always, the CIA drivers are taking more daring chute lines much tighter than the other teams and are flirting with the manhole cover on a regular basis.
Fringe – Describing Fringe at rolls is becoming like a broken record: very smooth, very quick, very stable. Despite the dependable nature of their rolls, Fringe buggies just are not getting the rollouts we would expect from them. We anticipate seeing more from them come spring.
PhiDelt – PhiDelt rolled this Saturday with only one of their 3 drivers. Slowly but surely they are increasing in speed and are now getting rollouts past the hay bales and making it into Hill 3.
PiKA – Banshee was screaming around the course, catching up to CIA’s rollouts. They continue to drift through the chute turn, scrubbing quite a bit of speed. They will be giving the other orgs a run for their rollout money if they can nail down the chute turn.
SAE – We are excited to report that SAE were back in action this weekend, returning to the course for the second time this semester. They are rolling on some fancy wheels which look like they have a dynamic camber as Lucy rolls and leans through the chute.
SDC – Although we have never described SDC as slow this semester, the team is significantly ramping up their speed. Both Malice and Vice are turning hard at the chute flag resulting in some skidding/drifting action. Havoc provided perhaps the most excitement of the day when she came to a stop just after Hill 2 due to a hatch issue. While this caused a significant delay in the schedule, driver and buggy are believed to be fine.
Spirit – With Fuko making her debut appearance for the semester, Spirit was out in full force rolling a slightly different combination of 4 of their buggies. Fuko’s previous hibernation was made all the more apparent by her paint job from 3 racedays ago. The team is continuously picking up speed and had a clean and quick days of rolls.
There was some buzz along the sidelines this weekend when Sweepstakes called rolls at 8:40am instead of waiting until 9:00am. Perhaps the bike lane bollards take more time to reinstall after rolls? Regardless, the lost 20 minutes seem quite precious. If you made it all the way to the bottom of this article and know anything about the truncated time or have some thoughts on the subject in general, feel free to leave a comment.
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Rolls Report Contributors:
Ben Matzke
Thomas Felmley
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 
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.