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.
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.
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 
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.
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.
How do you know it’s late March in Pittsburgh? 1) It was 20 degrees or less at rolls 2) 8 of the 11 orgs put up their fastest time of the semester this weekend (and the other three were the 1 buggy orgs). The cold was killing walkie-talkie batteries, fogging windshields, and fogging my brain, but impressively the buggies were flying.
All of a sudden spring break is behind us and we’re in the 4 week sprint to raceday. We stodgy alumni thought the kids were taking a bit of a gamble not scheduling rolls for either weekend of spring break, but it seems to have worked out pretty well for them. The first weekend of the break would have been entirely rained out anyway, and the skies were clear this weekend so it’s all good. Saturday was one of those super slow days with no clear culprit, but everyone shook off the rust by Sunday and put nearly twice as many buggies down the hill in the same amount of time. We’re up to 11 rolling organizations, and 5 new buggies in the class of 2011 (plus Apache from the late fall); raceday must be near.
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.
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.