This was a great weekend for buggy: fair weather, clean(er) roads, and Mini Raceday. If you are reading this post you are probably already familiar with the concept of Mini Raceday and all that it entails, but if you stumbled upon cmubuggy.org through a fluke of the internet, let us explain (because we wouldn’t want this to be the confusing post). Despite what the name implies, extra small buggies with Thumbelina-sized drivers did not zip around the course this weekend. What actually happened was that freeroll (crosswalk to Hill 3) and backhills runs were timed by Sweepstakes and others (Ed the Sweepstakes chair, Guochen ass’t chair, and Matteo a SDC mechanic). The organizations with the fastest men’s and women’s teams then receive bragging rights, congratulatory back slaps, and a fabulous mystery prize from Sweepstakes. This year the fastest freeroll went to PiKA, fastest men’s backhills to SDC, fastest women’s backhills to CIA, and fastest overall time to SDC. The prize has yet to be announced by Sweepstakes. Probably because they don’t know what it is yet. The times are summarized in a table at the bottom of the report. In the end, the point of Mini Raceday is to simply get an official gauge of where the teams stand at this point in the year. However a lot can happen in the spring semester.
Mini Raceday excitement aside, it was an all-around good weekend of rolls. Saturday 6 teams made it out; 7 if you count Robobuggy. We only had one stop on Saturday which was due to a flagging malfunction, and there were no other incidents. Sunday saw all 11 teams rolling, many with a large fleet. Obviously this was to get timing data on as many buggies/drivers as possible, but it did slow things down a bit. Sunday was a fairly clean day. One driver had a spin at the top of the freeroll, but both driver and buggy were uninjured. Also, one SDC driver had a slight issue with one chute turn, but came to a complete stop before any collisions.
In Attendance
| Org | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze | |
| Apex | Ember, Phoenix | Ember, Phoenix |
| CIA | Impulse, Icarus, Ascension, Equinox | Impulse, Orca, Icarus, Ascension, Equinox |
| Fringe | Balius, Bissa, Beacon | Balius, Bissa, Beacon |
| PhiDelt | Perun | |
| PiKA | Banshee, Raptor | Banshee, Raptor |
| SDC | Malice, Havoc | Malice, Havoc, Avarice |
| SigEp | Kraken, Pandora | Kraken, Barracuda, Pandora |
| SigNu | Krait | |
| Spirit | Inviscid, Zuke, Fuko | Inviscid, Zuke, Seraph |
| Robo | Transistor | Transistor |
Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery) Continue reading
After 3 weeks of no or singular days of rolls, we finally had a glorious full weekend of rolls. 11 teams, several bicyclists, and a few joggers made their way around the course over Saturday and Sunday. While the latter two weren’t exactly welcome, they didn’t impede too much in the grand scheme of things. However, a couple of the bicycles made it to the chute flaggers before anyone noticed. Active flaggers are, of course, looking the other way, but perhaps the non-active flaggers should keep an eye out for unwanted visitors. More than course-intruders, an excessive amount of leaves near the chute turn caused a significant delay in the roll order on Saturday. The first four teams to roll must have had negative things to say, because after the fourth team there was an all-hands-on-deck effort to clear the leaves from the turn. For 30 minutes rakes, brooms, blowers, feet, and stop flags were used to free the road of leaves. Annoyance of the leaves aside, the teammate was great to see.
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 
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.
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.