Saturday was rained out and mercifully cancelled before 8pm Friday night, leaving time for other plans.
Sunday was just one of those days. Some hold-up with the police and the outer barricades meant things didn’t get started until 7:40 or so. From then on, the same teams and buggies that rolled super efficiently last week dragged through the roll order. JB owes me “big money” on a bet that they would make it through the roll order a second time. They were 6 orgs short. Continue reading
Saturday 10/3 (full gallery here)
The rain stopped around 8pm Friday night, and sweepstakes was brave enough to bet on the course drying in 11 hours. It pretty much did. I wouldn’t have called it dry, but with a little extra caution from the orgs and drivers, things went pretty smoothly. Only 6 teams really rolled (SDC also sent one buggy down one time), so maybe the others called it a drinking night without checking the radar first.
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One nice day in September is a great way to start the year of buggy. It’s early enough to capitalize on all that recruiting momentum and good weather. At the same time, the G20 superseded rolls (and everything else in pittsburgh) Sunday and next weekend. That give us all time to adapt to the fact that buggy happens way to damn early in the morning.
Rolls started right on time which I always think is a good metric on which to evaluate new sweepstakes committees. Only 8 of the 14 teams on the roll order made it out, with SigNu being the most notable absence. The starting line ups for the year were:
– Spirit : Haraka and Seraph
– SDC : Psychosis, Malice, Rage
– Fringe : Blizzard, Bantam, Bedlam, Banyan
– CIA : Firebird, Conquest, Quasar
– AEPi : Kamikaze, Zephyrus and Camo
– PiKA : Knightfall and Zeus
– PhiKap : Svengali and Schadenfreude
– SigEp : Barracuda and Pandora
Observations (Full gallery of pictures here) Continue reading
Sweepstakes 2009: Yes, there is a person in there – and Holy &!^@ did she go fast!
It was another record breaking year, something no one might have expected after last year’s impossibly fast times. The men’s and women’s course records (2:04.35 and 2:28.84) were shattered after only a year, replaced by SDC’s new times of 2:03.3 and 2:25.6.
Members of the Buggy Alumni Association will receive a special post-raceday wrapup email in the coming week. It will feature more facts and figures, observations from the hills, and a team by team analysis of performance this year. You can join today by visiting cmubuggy.org/Join. Until then, here are some highlights:
* It is the lowest First Day place for PiKA since 1969…they did get 3rd this year and in 2004 they were 4th after day 1…also 3rd in 1997 and 1989…the last time PiKA had a lower final place was 1985 due to the dqs. (thanks Revo)
* Fringe put on a great 40th anniversary show for their returning alumni, just edging out PiKA to take 2nd on the last roll of the day for a new team record 2:07.25.
* SigEp men’s A sliced 6 seconds off last year’s time, coming in with a 2:08:61, a time that would have won four of the last ten Sweepstakes. The SigEp women’s team got a trophy for the first time with third place.
* AEPi posted an 11th place finish, their best ever, separated from a spot in the finals by only 3 seconds.
* Beta was DQ’d and then banned from participating in buggy until fall of 2010 due to fire safety violations (5 gallons of flammable fluid were found in the Beta truck.)
* CIA produced their first new buggy in nine five years, named Renaissance. It’s a radical departure from their traditional style of building, yet they still somehow made it look like a CIA buggy – including a windshield that is several inches longer on the left side than it is on the right, for “passing on the inside.”
* Due to a change in the conditions for winning the Spirit of Buggy award, exhibition heats were one of the highlights of Saturday morning. Anyone who went back to the old school practice of switching wheels at the bottom of hill 3 would be considered for the award, so Pioneers, KDR, AEPi, and CIA all made the switch after the chute. AEPi had an entire F1-style pit crew working on the buggy, complete with a gas can, a foot massage, and a lollipop-sign guy. Pioneers won the award on their driver’s performance – she actually got out of the buggy, pulled the replacement wheel out of the buggy, replaced it herself, and then got back in to drove the rest of the race.
* Despite winning the Spirit of Buggy award, this might be Pioneers’ last year. There are currently no members of Pioneers planning on returning next year. There is some word on the street that KapSig might be in line to race their buggies.
For more highlights from the weekend, check out the Tartan’s Sweepstakes coverage. We’ll excuse the minor inaccuracies since they were awfully quick to go to press with this story. Also, it’s pretty obvious the author took buggy descriptions from our Raceday Guide that has unpainted buggies from before Truck Weekend. We’ll take that as a compliment!
Also view a video of AEPi’s pit stop.
Sweepstakes was able to pull off two successful days of rolls this weekend, despite some delays. Many organizations were able to complete their qualifications for Raceday.
Saturday, April 11 – all orgs present (Saturday’s pictures here)
Sunday, April 12 – all orgs but Beta present (Sunday’s pictures here)
While the proposed start time of rolls was 6:20, rolls did not officially begin each day until approximately 6:50. By some mis-communication, Pittsburgh Police did not think rolls were taking place this weekend. This delayed closing the roads until CMU Police could send 1 or 2 officers and organizations could send volunteers to man the four sets of outer barricades. Saturday was further delayed by a sprinkling of rain at 6:55. It cleared quickly, and rolls were able to start at 7:05. Continue reading
The last regular weekend before truck weekend was a pretty good one, nice and long with 2:20 of daylight and temperatures starting in the low 30’s but the sun warmed things up quickly.
Saturday
In Attendance (11 Orgs, 26 Buggies)
Observations
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I’m guessing a lot of people went to sleep thinking that rolls would be canceled Saturday morning, but Sweepstakes found a way to make it happen. The light rain didn’t stop until around midnight, but the roads were only a little damp by 7am. Orgs were required to bag buggies their first time through the roll order to keep speeds down to a safe level while things continued to dry. Safety conscious Pioneers skipped their first 2 times in the roll order while CIA scratched for the entire day. The slower speeds with the bags seemed to confuse some drivers, as buggies were consistently turning earlier and sharper than usual at the Chute flag during the early rolls.
Observations (check out the full gallery from Saturday here)
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First, sorry for the delay in getting these posted. Going out at night and getting up for rolls both days in a weekend is tough to maintain when I can’t just sleep all day in between like I did back in the day.
New Buggies Galore
With five more buggies coming out for the first time this weekend, we’ve reached a total of 7 in the buggy class of 2009, the most since 2004, when there were 8. Continue reading
Aside from the Rolls Report, here at Buggy Alumni HQ we’re coming up with ways to feed your inner gambler. One way we’re doing this is by taking times at various spots on the course to give a cross section of team performance. Today we give you times from down in the chute: transistion to chute flag, chute flag to window 0, and a ratio of the first time over the second time. We recorded as many times as our crude stopwatches would let us. Here’s today’s sampling. It was a pretty slow day overall, with SDC and PiKA well off the pace.
The ratio is a number we’re throwing out there to give some idea of how well the buggy maintains its speed in the turn. For example, Mirage came into the chute flag nearly 0.8 s faster than Psychosis, yet Mirage had only a 0.3 s advantage after the chute. Where’d the half second go?
Tomorrow we’ll be looking at a different part of the course.
After holding off on the semester of rolls for two weeks because of lower-than-desired temperatures, sweepstakes gave it a try on Saturday at 27 degrees and things worked out just fine. Sunday was forecast to be colder so they canceled again, although it turned out to be dry and 29 degrees at 7am.
In attendance
PiKA – Zeus, Knightfall, Chimera
Pioneers – Chaos
KDR – Powder, Perun
SigEp – Pandora
PhiKap – Svengali
SDC – Rage, Addiction, Psychosis, and Raceday09
Fringe – Brazen, Blizzard, Banyan, and NewBuggy09
CIA – Mirage, Firebird
Spirit – Haraka, Seraph Continue reading
