Rolls set to start Sunday, here we go again

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 10 Comments on Rolls set to start Sunday, here we go again

It’s that time of year again at the corner of Tech and Frew.  The permits are in and this Sunday the 18th is the first potential day of rolls.  The chairmen have been meeting for weeks, the drivers have had their meetings, and at least a few teams have their capes taken care of.  Currently these are the teams in the mix:

Ready to roll: CIA, Fringe, SDC, SigEp
Capes scheduled:  AEPi, KapSig, Spirit
Status unknown:  DTD/TriDelt, PiKA, Pioneers, SAE, SigNu

Those ranks are looking a little thin if the status-unknown crowd doesn’t show up soon.  Last year started with 8 orgs, so 7 isn’t that big of a drop but it’s the wrong direction for sure.  The schedule of fall freerolls is extensive though, so there’s time for the stragglers to get out.

Here at BAA headquarters, we’re preparing for another year of covering the buggy news you crave and generally putting the rest of the internet to shame.  Our #1 goal while we do that this fall is to get more people involved.  Personally, I’m about to (finally) finish grad school and it’s possible this is my last year in Pittsburgh.  Even this year, I will be missing a lot of weekends while I look for jobs.  The point being, I won’t be able to do rolls reports for much longer.  It is time to groom new buggy correspondents. Continue reading →

A new year, new ideas; your help wanted

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 2 Comments on A new year, new ideas; your help wanted

I know I don’t want to admit it, but the reality is that the end of summer is in sight, and the Buggy Alumni Association wants to be ready for another big year (our 4th!).  After the buzz from raceday died down, we all took a healthy break from buggy madness, but a few things have been coming together on those rainy days.  The theme of these projects is that we are hoping to get more of our members actively involved this year making the BAA and cmubuggy.org better and better.

Buggy Orientation Event

For the second year, current students will be holding a multi-org, non-partisan introduction to buggy for the incoming class near the end of orientation.  This is exactly the kind of thing that we want to be happening on campus, so we want to support it any way we can.  Right now the agenda includes buggies on display, an intro talk explaining the sport and basic terms, and an outdoors demo session.  Want to help pull the next generation into buggy?  Help is needed advertising the event, setting things up, and talking with interested freshmen, etc.  Current students are especially important to have involved. Contact Ben Matzke (ben.matzke@gmail.com) if you want to help out.  Details:

Saturday, August 27th
3:30 – 4:30 @ UC Connan : basic Q&A
5-6 @ CFA Parking lot / base of Hill 1: rolling buggy demos

BAA Project Zone

Continue reading →

Buggy loses a pillar: PiKA kicked off campus

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 25 Comments on Buggy loses a pillar: PiKA kicked off campus

Aw crap.  It was announced this afternoon that PiKA’s charter has been revoked by the school CMU chapter will not be recognized for at least four years. Losing PiKA from campus is obviously a huge loss to the greek community and to the broader social community at CMU in which they played a consistently central role.

Losing PiKA from buggy is devastating.  As they proudly and frequently pointed out, PiKA is (by far) the winningest organization in the history of buggy.  Their 27 men’s and 11 women’s championships tower over the historical competition.  Their presence at the top of the leader board has been a constant throughout the history of the sport and their consistency has played a large role in the stability of our race across its 91 year history.   Continue reading →

2012 Sweepstakes Committee

Posted on | by mccue | 6 Comments on 2012 Sweepstakes Committee

Letting Sam take a well-deserved break from running the site, I thought I’d update everyone with the results from last night’s Sweepstakes Committee election. Winners in bold along with their org and their class as of next year.

Chairman

  • Anthony Pacella (SigEp, Senior)
  • Jeff Bouton (PiKA, Junior)

Ass Chair

  • Kevin Jang (KapSig, Senior)
  • Jeff Bouton (PiKA, Junior)

Safety Chair

  • Mike Mackin (Fringe/KDR, Senior)
  • Jeff Bouton (PiKA, Junior)
  • David Fortner (SDC, Senior)

Invoking my creepy alumni rights, here’s a picture of the 2012 committee:

Sweepstakes 2012
Left to right: Anthony Pacella making out with a buggy, a bird’s-eye view of Kevin Jang, and the only acceptable Facebook picture of Mike Mackin.

 

Congratulations to the whole committee and good luck with the coming year. Let us know if you need anything at all (except for fixing the potholes — you’re on your own with those monsters).

Finals Cancelled (rain)

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 1 Comment on Finals Cancelled (rain)

Sweepstakes has decided to spare everyone a few soggy hours in the rain and cancel Saturday’s races now.   With 100% chance of rain for every relevant hour and a huge mass of green on the radar, it was definitely the sane call to make.
That means that today’s prelim results are final, and Fringe and SDC are the 2011 champions!
The awards ceremony will still be at 6pm as scheduled, but that’s the only thing on the schedule so enjoy some sleep during carnival!  What a novelty!

Prelim results and Finals schedule

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 9 Comments on Prelim results and Finals schedule

I hope you either made it out this morning or followed along online, because prelims 2011 were a fine day of  racing.  Luckily, some fine folks in the forums summarized the day’s events, so I’ll skip that and get to the details.

The full official results are here on our leaderboard:
http://cmubuggy.org/raceday/leaderboard

The schedule for finals is:

Women's finals

8:00 am:   PiKA A      SDC C
8:15 am:   Fringe A    SigEp A
8:30 am:   SDC A       SDC B

Men's Finals
8:45 am:   SPIRIT A    CIA A
9:00 am:   SDC C       PiKA C
9:15 am:   SDC B       SigEp B
9:30 am:   SDC A       Fringe B
9:45 am:   Fringe A    SPIRIT B

 

Obviously the biggest factor in all of the above is whether the large amount of rain that is forecast will materialize.  Exhibitions have been semi-cancelled to allow finals to happen if the rain comes late.  If the weather holds up, we will run robobuggy and exhibitions at 10 minute intervals.

2010 videos now on cmubuggy!

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 5 Comments on 2010 videos now on cmubuggy!

If you’ve been on cmubuggy in the last 5 days since our new site debuted (and over 2,000 of you have), you’ve undoubtedly checked out its biggest new feature: the video library.  For the launch we had 264 videos capturing buggy from the 1950’s through raceday 2009.  Thanks to our partners in this project over at cmuTV, we have been able to share all of their terrific (and constantly improving) coverage from 2003 onward.

Part of that deal is that we keep each year’s races “in the vault” for a year while they sell DVDs which help to pay for the production.  Well guess what folks, it’s been a year since raceday 2010.  With no further ado, we give you …

cmubuggy.org/video#2010

This year’s installment comes with 40 videos including a great set of cmuTV-produced buggy promos  composed of footage from rolls and set to kickin’ beats.  Put a link to your favorite video on facebook and spread the word to folks that don’t yet know that all of this is online!

Other notes while I’ve got your attention:

  • The Lead Truck Auction will end at 9pm tonight.  Get in on the bidding.  Riding in the lead truck is a great way to experience raceday, and a great way to support the BAA’s financial contribution to the dual jumbotrons we can no longer do without.
  • Our Members-Only Raceday Preview has been getting rave reviews from our members.  And I quote:  “wow, loving it, awesome”   and “its awesome … you should make sure more people read it bc i didnt even realize what i was missing.”  Join or renew your membership here and forward us your confirmation email to join@cmubuggy.org.
  • If you sent us an e-mail yesterday and didn’t get a response, try again today, we fixed a problem with the join@ address and weren’t sure how many people were affected.
  • If you have emailed about other problems with the website and haven’t gotten a response, I’m really sorry.  We’re a little behind here in headquarters.  I’ll try to get everything fixed up before raceday.  Oh shit, that’s the day after tomorrow.

Lead Truck Auction 2011 kicks off

Posted on | by Sam Swift

At 9AM this morning, bidding will commence in the 3rd annual Lead Truck Auction. Don’t show up fashionably late to the bidding this year as we’ve got only 36 hours (bidding closes at 9pm wednesday) to divvy up the rides because the heat selection was held later than it has been in recent years. For the uninitiated, bidders bid on the chance to ride in the lead truck for a specific heat. Winners get to ride with the head judge and other race officials with a view of at least the lead buggy around the entire course.

Last year’s auction was a huge success and it allowed us to help sweepstakes rent not one, but two jumbotrons so that spectators can really watch the entire race from the most popular spots on the course. We saw this coming, but once you have two jumbotrons, it doesn’t sound like any fun to go back to one (or god forbid, zero).  We alumni reap the majority of the benefits of these jumobtrons so if we want them to stick around we’ve got to pitch in.  Bid on a lead truck ride and you get to do your part for the big screens and take a fun ride to boot.

Rides are transferable, so you can give them as gifts if you won’t be in town.  Refunds are available in the event of races being rained out.  Plenty of other details at:

http://cmubuggy.org/auction

(discussion thread in the forum)

Here comes raceday + mini truck weekend report

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 4 Comments on Here comes raceday + mini truck weekend report

I hope the rolls report faithful weren’t too distraught today given the lack of rolls report following an exciting truck weekend.  As you may remember, after truck weekend the large and well compensated BAA staffers spend the night producing an in depth and comprehensive report for our generous supporters: the Members-Only Raceday Preview.  Lucky for you, there’s still time to become a member or renew your membership via our new and improved membership page.  Starting this year, there is no set or minimum contribution to become an official member.  If you’re willing to throw something in the pot, you’re on the team.

The preview has just gone out to members, and it’s about 100x better than what compubookie slapped together, so don’t miss out.  If you didn’t get a copy of the Raceday Preview and you think you are a member, check our new roster of members to confirm and then let us know.  Remember if you become a member now, forward your gift confirmation email to join@cmubuggy.org so that we can get that Preview right out to you.

In other week-of-raceday news, the heat selection meeting was held Monday night.  We’ll get the heats incorporated into our system soon. 49 teams is 6 fewer than last year but just one less than in 2009. There accordingly 2 fewer heats overall.

With all of that business taken care of … it was an interesting truck weekend, so I won’t ignore it entirely.

In attendance
Everyone was in attendance, it was truck weekend!

Observations (Saturday Gallery, Sunday Gallery)

  • I didn’t do much observing on Saturday as we were doing a dress rehersal of the timing system.  I will be head timing again this year, operating the same system we rented last year.  It took a while to remember how everything plugged together, but once we got it figured out, it worked like a charm.  Hill 5s, practice your best frozen profile poses, they’ll be part of the official record.
  • SAE had a gnarly wheel failure while entering the chute on Saturday.  It looked familiar in many ways to the failures Spirit and CIA had and it ups the expectation that the road quality will inflict some casualties this raceday.  SAE has their act together though, and they whipped up a spare in time for rolls on Sunday.
  • Fringe and CIA both lost rear hatches in the chute.  Figure out those tape strategies before next week everyone!  On a general note, chairmen, take a moment and remind everyone in your org how they can avoid DQing the team.  Sounds simple right, but every year there are tons of DQs for stupid stuff.  Don’t be in the stupid club next week.
  • SigEp had some cool looking transponders on their buggies.  I’m guessing they were GPS or accelerometers of some sort.  Barracuda was flying all weekend so I’m guessing the data looks good no matter which variables they were measuring.
  • Both SigEp and Pioneers both had trouble at the finish line when they stopped the buggy by the pushbar and heard that terrible sound: carbon crinkling, breaking, crunching.  Pioneers’ problem looked to be in the top of Chaos’ shell while Mamba’s failure was a crack right across the composite pushbar.  Word from SigEp is that it’s already mended and stronger than ever.  I hope Pioneers is doing the same since they have no backup.
  • Fans in the chute were fairly well entertained this weekend.  Not to be lowbrow about it though, there was lots of speed on display and some thrilling driving. Both SDC and PiKA’s RD2011 are routinely drifting through the turn at full speed. PiKA was losing big chunks of rubber in the process but rolling out well. AEPi hit the inside curb after the hay bales in what looked like a visibility issue. SN’s Skua ended the semester of rolls with a distinctly squirrely entrance line and then a pretty quick spin that sent her into the bales tail first. SDC took the cake for most exciting incident without even stopping when Avarice swung out all the way outside and tapped the bales with her outside rear wheel with enough force to throw some hay in the air. The recovery was truly impressive though as she got back on track and managed to roll out a number of windows. Youtube of those three below.