Welcome to the special Frankensweepstakes Edition Rolls Report! I got to wear two hats: Rolls Reporting Officer and Safety Chairman. Since Jake and Tishya were out of town this weekend, Sophia (Buggy 100 Chair) and I filled in for the rest of Sweepstakes. It felt good to be back in the seat and I felt oddly nostalgic giving out accident reports again. This Homecoming Weekend saw a great alumni turnout and a (mostly) incident free day of practice, where teams got up to 5 rolls in.

It also seemed that I missed the Sweepstakes memo on matching socks… (thanks a lot Sophia and Diya).

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Left: Bumper (Fringe 2018); Right: Bempest (CIA 2019)

If you’re seeing double, don’t worry, you’re not alone! CIA’s Bumper-inspired “Bempest” was turning heads all weekend. CIA got into the Halloween spirit early this year with a whole squad of costumed buggies. Pittsburgh was also in the Halloween spirit, casting a gloomy fog accompanied by an ominous murder of crows flying above the course.

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Welcome back for another exciting Rolls Report installment. This weekend we saw the debut of a new team and the return of an old so our buggy family is growing bigger and bigger! Sweepstakes was a bit of an odd tri-generational mish mash with Jake missing and Tishya still broken. Willy Clark (last year’s Assistant Chairman) was a real hero and stepped up to fill in for Jake. And I gave Tishya a HAND (badum tss) with her Safety Chairing duties. There was of course the addition of Bingo (Diya’s dog) to this weekend’s Sweepstakes Committee, tagging along in the safety vehicle when things got RUFF (I’m on fire today).

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Welcome back for another rolls report (now with double the days and double the content)! Since you’re reading this, I’ll assume I didn’t offend you too much with my first report so here goes Round 2.

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Hello again all you crazy buggy enthusiasts! Whether you’re new to the sport of buggy or just here reading for inaccuracies, I welcome you to the 2019-20 season with this first Rolls Report. Here, you’ll find pictures, data, snarky commentary, or whatever else I feel like including in the follow up to this past weekend’s rolls practice. So let’s get started.

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Carnival and Raceday 2019 are upon us! Pittsburgh’s weather has finally picked a season and it should actually feel like a Spring Carnival this year. The warm, dry weather was a boon for teams scrambling to get in their last few rolls this past truck weekend. Hopefully, the rain will hold off just long enough for an amazing Raceday.

This coming weekend we will see 9 organizations battle it out with 24 women’s teams and 28 men’s teams. A complete listing of the 10 women’s heats and 13 men’s heats can be found here.

Following tradition, you won’t be getting the details of last weekend’s practice as we are sending out the much anticipated Raceday Preview tomorrow. This year our dedicated team at the BAA has compiled team summaries, photos, alumni interviews, predictions, and other buggy-goodness into one amazing document. You may be asking yourself how you can get your hands on such an amazing piece of Buggy Awesomeness. The answer is simple: pay your BAA dues ($10)! BAA dues go a long way to helping us keep you up-to-date on the latest buggy news as well as provide critical support to the current students. Plus, you get the Raceday Preview; that alone is worth the $10. You can join the BAA or renew your membership here.

We would feel bad if we kept all the news from Truck Weekend from you, though. Below you’ll find the attendance from Rolls and timing data from a video-based system.  We’ll let you pore over the numbers and make your own predictions for RD2019!

In Attendance

Org	Saturday	Sunday
Apex	#lit, Azula, Phoenix, Firefly	#lit, Azula, Firefly
CIA	Equinox, Tempest, Icarus, Aurora	Emperor,Equinox, Tempest, Icarus, Aurora
Fringe	Blueshift, Bumper, NB19	Blueshift, Bumper, Boson, NB19
PhiDelt	Argo	Argo
PiKA	NB19, Cliodhna	NB19, Banshee, Cliodhna
SAE	Eileen
SDC	Bane, Vice, Vanity	Bane, Vice, Vanity
SigEp	Kraken, Barracuda, Beyonce, Hydra	Kraken, Barracuda, Beyonce, Hydra
SigNu	Krait	Krait
Spirit	Kingpin, Seraph, Inviscid	Kingpin, Seraph, Inviscid

Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery)

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After two weekends off thanks to spring break and missing permits, Buggy was back on this weekend. However, the Pittsburgh police did not grace us with their presence on either Saturday or Sunday. While the rules now state that Rolls can go on without them, it made for increased traffic at the chute barricade. Interestingly, as we understand it, the police feel it necessary to be at evening push practice, and their absence has caused cancellations of push practice. To quote one of our local alumni “what gives?”

Saturday was clear, dry, and cold with temperatures in the upper 20s. Sunday was a much “better” day weather wise with less wind and temperatures above freezing. Ben Brown out with a modified speed trap design at the monument getting some great results that we hope to share with you soon.

Sweepstakes had a nearly full dance card this weekend, with everyone but SAE out on Saturday and the full horde out on Sunday with a couple new buggies to boot. Several teams were putting in full Hill 1’s and 2’s in preparation for the rapidly approaching Raceday. While this is about when we would expect teams to breaking out the full push-offs, buggies just aren’t going as fast as we might predict. As the temperatures rise, we hope that speed will too.

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It was a cold Saturday morning, with temps were hovering just around freezing and overcast skies hid the sun. Road conditions have not improved as the freeze-thaw cycle of a typical Pittsburgh winter continues to chew up the concrete around Flagstaff Hill. Sweepstakes appeared to resort to drying the course with a roll of paper towels prior to rolls.

Teams seemed to be scared away by the low temperatures and attendance on Sunday with only PiKA, SDC, Fringe, CIA, Spirit and Robobuggy turning up to roll. In addition all the teams were generally sticking with 1 – 2 buggies per roll. With all those factors we completed a whopping 8 full roll-orders.

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It was another beautiful winter-turning-to-spring weekend last week in Pittsburgh. Temperatures creeped to just above freezing to reach an almost comfortable 33F. Unfortunately, Sunday Rolls were cancelled due to wet forecasts. It did rain between Saturday and Sunday, but high winds ended up being the real danger on Sunday.

With Raceday just 6 weeks of questionable weather patterns away, teams are beginning to take a serious look at their Hill 2 push offs. Unfortunately, the pot holes along the hill make it exceedingly difficult to get much definitive information. Perhaps next year we can introduce a new sport: Buggy Slalom Races.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time of year we’ve been waiting for since that time last year: spring rolls are here! Sort of.

Wintry weather on Saturday had Buggies in hibernation for one extra day this past weekend. By Sunday the temperatures had warmed just enough to coax 6 teams out to the course. The first roll was in a chilly 21F, but by the end of practices it was a balmy 24F. Our on-scene reporter relayed that it was “quite chilly if you didn’t have a wind breaker.” So, take that as you will.

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