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.