Push practice was scheduled to start this week, but just as teams were charging up their flashlight batteries and telling their new drivers that it’s “actually kind of fun,” Sweepstakes had to put a hold on things.
Apparently, the city has decided to take a closer look at the late night road-closing permits this year and they’re not sure they like what they see. The issue is that the road closure is informal during push practice and cars are allowed to come and go as needed – relying on students to keep everything safe and orderly. This has obviously been the system for years and years without any problems, but tradition is apparently not always persuasive if you are in the business of road closure permit issuing. This long-standing compromise of semi-closed roads isn’t ideal for teams or for the poor grad students leaving campus after midnight, but it’s a very functional compromise. We can’t do without push practice, and I doubt everyone else would be happy with fully closed roads 5 nights a week. Sweepstakes is working hard with the school, CMU & Pittsburgh police, and the city to get everyone comfortable with a plan. I really hope that all parties can find a non-bureaucratic solution that doesn’t require additional expenses for sweepstakes and logistical headaches for teams.
Sweepstakes chair Chris Shellhamer notified teams today that push practice would hopefully begin after spring break (11 days from now), but that that would be the soonest it is likely to be sorted out. We’ll keep you updated here.
Melting snow and rain kept teams off the course on Saturday, but Sunday was exciting enough to make up for it. Pika joined the new buggy 2011 club (with a standard tryke no less!) and Spirit entertained the chute crowd with a hat trick of spins and a rarely seen mechanical failure. Enough intro, let’s get to the details.
Rolls weren’t to be this weekend, but the BAA had a good homecoming weekend anyhow.
The cold finally showed up for Halloween weekend with rolls temperatures around 37, and with daylight savings time still in effect we’re down to about 60 minutes on the course. Sunday was cancelled in advance to make way for parties, so we’re still batting an impressive 9 for 10 so far this semester against inclement weather. Only 6 orgs made it out, so an hour was enough to get through the roll order 3 times. If I’m not mistaken, this was the first day of the year with no incidents at all, that’t not very ghoulish.
Teams must have read the 
Orgs decided that there would be no rolls on Sunday because of mid-semester break, and even Saturday was a minimal crew of the most dedicated folks (or maybe the folks least skilled at planning something fun for mid-semester break). SDC took the weekend off, and most teams had fewer buggies than normal except CIA whose 4 rolling buggies represented 25% of those on the course. The fall weather is starting to kick in as it was about 40 degrees out there, but we’re still getting lucky on the precipitation.
More perfect fall weather set the scene for a solid weekend of rolls with a SDC, Spirit, SigEp, AEPi, and the citizens of Pittsburgh stepping up and giving us some things to talk about.