This weekend saw some wet weather and Mini-Raceday! Rain and unsafe road conditions thwarted Saturday Rolls, but the demon Pittsburgh weather gods smiled on the undergrads, gracing the course with a balmy 35F and dry conditions for Sunday morning.
Sunday started with a long delay, as Sweepstakes became aware just after chairmen’s meeting that the entire second row of hay bales were missing from the inner Chute. The organization assigned to this chore had put out only one row. The delay lasted until approximately 7:18 with Sweepstakes and other organizations proving additional hands to get bales in place. Despite these delays we made it through the roll-order five times nearly without any incidents.
For Mini-raceday, Sweepstakes was timing the first Buggy of every org, timing from the crosswalk, Hill 3 line, and finish line. We don’t have the official times from Sweepstakes, but we can say that Fringe had two of the three fastest times of the day and was rolling slightly faster than SDC, CIA, and Spirit. From SDC, Malice was the only Buggy rolling fast, but none of those out had times resembling Raceday speeds. Spirit was by far the most consistent team rolling, with each of the Buggies moving at fair clips. CIA might have put up fast times all around if they were racing Equinox and Emperor up Hill 1. The proximity prevented the trailing Buggy from driving her course. All-in-all the teams performed how we might expect. We’ll be looking to Fringe, SDC, Spirit, and CIA this spring to starting tearing up the course.
Unrelated: Best pusher nickname of the morning: “Daddy Long Legs”
Conditions around the course this Sunday morning were mostly good; warm for rolls and the roadway remained in much the same condition that it was during Raceday. However, the inclusions of construction around the Posner building displaced CIA to the bottom of Hill one. In addition, three dumpsters on the back hills required some extra bales to be distributed and the pushers to be more awake than usual. Well, just awake anyway.
Our new Sweepstakes chairpeople for this year have developed a rotating system of overseeing Rolls. The new chairman, Hunter Rideout, was absent this weekend, but some familiar faces were present: Elyce Milligan, last year’s Assistant Chairman, has returned as Safety Chair, at least for the Fall Semester. Joyce Chen, the SDC chair RD18, has taken the mantle of Assistant Chairman for Sweepstakes. Jasio Santillan is back running things, but we aren’t quite sure of his official position. All of them grooming are “Bonnie” for the safety chair role she will fill in the spring semester. It’s all a little unconventional, but given the breadth and depth of knowledge at the top of the hill, we predict smooth rolling.
The first Roll was scheduled for 7:00am, so the 7:10 start due to some frantic last-minute Chute sweeping was not bad at all. The delay also gave Atlas a chance to sneak in an early Roll. We started the Roll order with 9 teams present, missing only SigNu and SAE from the predicted list. Hopefully we’ll be seeing those teams later in the semester.
Pittsburgh’s weather didn’t get the memo about how close Carnival is and how desperately teams need Rolls, and it decided to snow on Friday night. Teams awoke to a film of icy snow covering the roads and Sweepstakes was forced to cancel. Fortunately, the precipitation held off the following evening and the course was clear, but cold, for Sunday. RoboBuggy didn’t seem to mind the chill in the air and rolled throughout the day with the rest of the teams. The first human Roll was delayed until 7:30 in hopes that the sun might raise the temperature a bit. It reached a balmy 28F.
This past Saturday saw the first day of Spring 2018 rolls! With only 6 short weeks until Raceday, this practice was eagerly anticipated; at least by a few teams. While the skies were bright and clear on Saturday, the temperature was just warm enough for pushers and drivers to do their thing. Sunday Rolls were called off on Saturday morning in anticipation of temperatures below 25F and subsequent low team turnout.
This past weekend, Pittsburgh saw some more wintry weather. While snow wasn’t flying, a 20F morning on Saturday lead to cancelled Rolls. Fortunately the temperature on Sunday crept up above freezing and we were able to have Mini-Raceday! The tl;dr is that Spirit took fastest Freeroll, the PiKA women were the swiftest on the backhills, and SDC took both fastest men’s backhills and fastest overall time. The official Sweepstakes times are towards the end of the post along with timing data from the BAA’s own Shafeeq S.