How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

As I'm finishing the 3 hour drive from Becker High School to North Dakota State University (it was 5 hours in a blizzard this time), I'm wondering how crazy I am. I drive 3 hours every single weekend during the build and competition seasons to mentor my team.

My question is, how far do you travel to mentor your team, and by extension how insane am I? The fact that I'm posting at 5 AM kind of answers the second part...

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I travel hundreds of miles to volunteer but our robotics site is only 13 miles from my home.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

First, I'd like to call BS on that line. You've been everywhere, so I think that it should be "I travel tens of hundreds of miles" or "many, many hundreds of miles" or "well over 1000 miles." Or there are some Koko Ed clones out there using your name.

I'm lucky, the three teams I'm working with are all within 5 miles of my house. On Wednesday I need to do two places, so that's a little longer. So all in all my weekly commute is less that three hours total.

As far as it goes with Ginger Power, how's the school work? What are you missing out as far as campus activities? Interaction with friends? I'm all for former team members coming back as mentors, but not at the expense of their University education and experience.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

~ 17 miles by car.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

About ten miles to our school. About 25 to Bisbee, to help the new team there, but not every day.

It's the competitions that get me some miles behind the wheel....our visit to NYC this year is going to be quite a trip! The rest of the team is smart, so they're flying, but I offered to take the robot and stuff in my old Suburban. 25 hours of driving time each way.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

My furthest team is about 2.5 hours round trip two or three times a week.
But I don't go during snow storms, since they close.

Event-wise I'll volunteer at five or so events, and my team will compete at a couple.
I'll see you in NYC :)


No matter how crazy we think we are, there's always somebody crazier.
Well maybe not Ed...

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I've never checked the mileage, but I'm 20-30 minutes depending on route selection and traffic (and whether I start from home or work--work is longer).

Events... this year there are two that are about half an hour to an hour from home (volunteering at both) and another that's closer to two hours (volunteering there, too, but that's where a hotel comes in handy).

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

You're not crazy! We have 4 mentors who travel 2+ hours each weekend. Keep up the good work.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

About 25 minutes each way 5 days/week.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I travel for work, so sometimes it's a flight from VA to NH, sometimes it's a 6 hour drive from NJ to NH, and sometimes it's a 2 hour drive from my actual home in MA to NH.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I live about 3/4 of a mile from our school. Long drive.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

The main team I mentor is about 10 miles from home, or just 5 miles from work. I've been helping/advising about 5 other local teams this year (mostly rookies) ranging from ~5 miles away to as much as 25 miles. We have a high team density here in OC, but mileage sometimes doesn't represent time due to traffic of course (it can take an hour to get to the farthest team on bad days).

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I drive 60 miles to mentor 4901, and then I drive 40 miles to mentor 5632.

Occasionally I help my original team 1102 and they are 15 miles away.

I-20 and I are very well aquainted.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I think I have you beat, I live about 1/4 mile from our lab about 3 mins when I drive it.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

- School is easy. Robots are hard :D but seriously my schedule right now is nothing to worry about. 15 credits and I'll end up with a good grade in all of my classes.

- I'd like to think I'm getting my fair share of campus activities. I founded Bison Robotics at NDSU which now has around 100 members. Managing that takes up a significant amount of time, and the people I've met through the team are incredible.

- Friends are pretty much covered by Bison Robotics. It's great not being the only FRC-crazy person in Fargo. There are plenty of awesome people here.

Sorry to make this post about myself! I just wanted to clarify that deciding to volunteer 3 hours away was a calculated decision, and one that I believe is reflecting on my life in a positive way. I may indeed be crazy, but there is a method to the madness!

Thanks for the responses on this thread. Very interesting to hear the habits of some of the best mentors in FIRST!

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

It's a little over 2 miles to my team (857). For the rookie team no one else is available to mentor (5989), it's 62 miles (1hr 10 minutes) one-way. I've gone twice this build season.

*Edit: By "no one else", I mean no one from one of the 3 veteran teams nearby. 5989 meeting during school hours makes helping them interesting.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

3.3 miles. Google, who is now stalking me on my phone, says it's 9 minutes home, always with a 1 minute delay because of "light traffic on Washington Street", no matter what time day or night. I can trim 2/10ths of a mile going instead via Polley Lane, but that has more turns and the car doesn't know that way as well.

Oddly, I used to take one of the student/mentors home which was a mile from the school, and further away from my house, but leaving his house it was only 2.8 miles to my house. Walpole has a temporal space anomaly.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

22 miles each way, 5 times a week. so about 200 miles total per week right now!

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

~20 minutes from home
~45 minutes from work in typical afternoon traffic

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

Google has started recognizing the school as home instead of my house... so I travel 0 miles to mentor, but about 5 minutes home to sleep.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

About 45 minutes (traffic permitting) each way, every other day.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I only go 3 blocks. This makes it possible for me to be there whenever they need me. Usually right after school so they can use the machines with an adult present.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

1-2 hours by bus both ways, 4-5 times a week. The bus and I are now very well acquainted and I use that time to do class readings or do a bit of programming work for my classes. Or occasionally sleep when I need it.

IMO losing out on weekend partying is worth it to help change a few lives.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I'm lucky that 1648's shop is literally 2 miles down the road from Georgia Tech. Before i had my car (parking passes are VERY expensive in downtown Atlanta!) down here, i used to walk the 2 miles. Now i can drive from my apartment or from school and it takes about 10 minutes.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I'm in about the same situation as Ginger Power, about 3.5 hours from Iowa State back to the Twin Cities. I don't make it back every weekend but probably skype about 15 hours a week with the team working through design and prototyping.

So to answer your question, not as crazy as you, but close.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

QFT

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

Only 3.2 miles, but the commute takes about 25 minutes taking a city bus. Not so bad, really.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

3 minutes to the shop by car. Before I moved after 2014, it was about half that.

I guess my travel time to our regional in 2014 would be zero as the venue parking lot is where I parked anyway?

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

Our build site is 15 miles out of my way for my work commute and 18 miles from my home. I drive roughly 100 miles a week for robotics during build season.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

2.5 miles from home,
2 miles from school
4 miles from work

7 times a week

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

2 miles home to shop. There's a hardware store on the way, on the right side of the road. I think I put in more mileage going to and from Home Depot and Lowes than from the house to and from the workshop. The rookie teams we mentor are about 45 minutes away; so far, most of the travel has been them coming to us. Fountainbleu FLL tournament is about 30 minutes away, and the state FLL tournament is about 45 minutes away; the team provides the core of the referee, traffic control, and field reset for both. Bayou Regional is about an hour away from anywhere in Slidell. St Louis last year was about the only 100+ mile trip I've taken so far to mentor or volunteer.

Edit: Perry regularly walked home from school last year in decent weather, even though there was a bus.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

2.3 miles from my apartment to our shop at the high school. 461 is lucky to be almost right next door to Purdue university so many of our mentors are within walking distance from the school.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

How long was Jared's commute when he was at RIT?

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

Let me apologize in advance...
I drive only 4mi to the school where I teach and mentor. On a good day (no red lights) its 10 min.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

1/2 mile bike ride from my house!

We meet 4 days a week, so the days off are nice too!

-Mike

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

About 50 miles one way, usually takes me an hour to get to the school. Luckily for me, our district event at Kennesaw will take me 5 minutes of walking to get to. :rolleyes:


Perhaps this question could be changed to a poll?

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I find it interesting how far some people go to mentor a team. Anybody want to share why they drive upwards of a few hours each trip to mentor their team? Is there not a team closer? I've always been a bit spoiled with team distribution (4 nearby teams when in high school and 4 nearby teams while in college).

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

For me, it's because 1923 is my home. I've worked with other teams & learned a lot, but nothing beats my MidKnight family.

I drive 3.5 hours (not counting traffic) every Friday night, and back on Sundays - from where my job is in MD, to my mom's house & my team in NJ. Not just during build season - I think I've had maybe two weeks off since Kickoff 2015?
[Edit: Three, since the Northeast's Snowmageddon this year shut down my travel plans.]

When I was doing my undergrad at Clarkson the drive was 7 hours but I didn't go back every weekend, since I was splitting time with 229. During my Masters at WPI, 5.5 hours each weekend.

To be clear... I absolutely 100% do not recommend travel-mentoring like this. The schedule is exhausting and you need to make sure you're ready to sacrifice a lot to commit to it. I'm exceptionally bad at taking my own advice, is all.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I'm gonna go 2300 plus miles )BOTH WAYS) driving to Vegas in week 5.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I currently drive 35min one-way from my home to the robotics build site on weekends. However, the build site is directly on my way home from work, which is 55 minutes away from home.

I started the season off with a team that built about 10min away from my apartment. Unfortunately, my lease ended and I had to move further away than I'd like too. In October, I got a job at a company further away than the team but in the same direction (ironically I got the job because of my connection with the team), but just didn't have enough time before build season started to move back to the general area. I plan to move after build season and will hopefully be sub 20min away from both for competitions and next season.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

When I touched the vortex and started mentoring for 195 in 1998, it was 45 minutes each way.
No point in going home, so my day started at 6:00 am, and went to 10 pm.
Every day, during the build season.

Now my trip is much shorter (15 minutes), so I can go home after work and more easily return to our build site.

Also, the district system is so much better. Sat-Sun competitions, no time off of work.
Also good from a field trip standpoint for the students. No school missed.
We used to travel to Philly on a coach bus and stay in expensive hotels.
Now we use a school bus, and if we travel to a competition that is farther from home, the hotels are less expensive. This year, every competition is a day trip.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

The school is about 40 miles from home and work. It's about an hour drive normally.

I live in an area that is fairly affluent, and the vast majority of parents are professionals. The students at those schools have lots of great role models in their own home. I choose to mentor at a school in which most of the students have never met a real engineer before joining FIRST.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

If a team that has played Einstein each of the past three years meets four times a week during build season, that makes me feel good about our M-W-F-Sa schedule.

My weekday drive from the high school to my kids' schools to home back to the high school is 44 mins (17.7 mi) a day, according to Google. On Saturdays, it's 9 minutes (3.7 mi) one way.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

12.5 miles from home or 17.1 miles from work. The work route has tolls too.:mad:

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

40 or so miles. Depending on traffic that can be anywhere from 40 minutes to well north of 3 hours. (I hate Boston traffic). I'm with 125 because I like working with some of the mentors down there. Plus Brando kinda dragged me in.

Seriously, the minute he found out I was moving up here "You're joining 125" and that was that.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I live just about 30 minutes from the center of Meriden, CT, where GUS is based out of. The space we are working out of for this build season is in Southington, which is another 5-10 minutes away, though the shop is very close to the highway so it doesn't take much longer to get there. After working with Shaker for six years (~10 minute drive away), giving up at least an hour of my day to travel is definitely a big change and a huge challenge for me. Shaker also only met for 15 hours a week on average in build season, whereas GUS meets for at least 20.

While there are at least two or three teams closer to me, I'm a lot less familiar with them, and I had nothing but positive experiences competing alongside GUS during my times in previous seasons. I knew they were a team that wasn't stuck in an established way of doing things, they were a team that valued being competitive on the field, and I would be able to focus on the areas where I'm most effective - engineering, strategy, drive coaching, etc. As I was just starting my career I was worried about biting off more than I could chew by joining a team that needed more help than I could provide without burning out. So here I am! 228's great.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I do 2 hours each way (or 6, depending on where I'm working) because if it wasn't for 319 (and FIRST) I wouldn't have discovered robotics and would probably be a line cook at Applebee's right now. 319 has competed for 21 years and, before 2012, never had any mechanically oriented engineers. I'm more than happy to help out a team that changed my life for the better.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

Libby, the MidKnights are lucky to have you. As a team coach I am blessed to have three that are driving 2 hours from college on Friday/Saturdays to mentor and work with our team. One of them helped found our team nine years ago and has not missed a build season yet. Not sure what it will be like to build a robot without him when he graduates from college next year.

For all of you who are doing the long drives I cannot tell you how much those of us who are in the trenches with them every day appreciate your presence on the weekends so on behalf of all of us THANK YOU! :D

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

While I have not seen Ed face-to-face in quite a while (we're still waiting for him to grace us with his presence at the SBPLI Long Island Regional. Closer than Vegas! :D )

I can tell you that when he says he travels many thousands of miles he's not even remotely stretching the truth. This is not including post season events he volunteers at.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I have that info for my taxman somewhere (I get 0.55 a mile so it's important to know that kind of stuff).

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

At one point I was driving 45 minutes to an hour 15 to mentor (and before, as a student). Another time it was under 30 minutes (although downtown Louisville traffic can be a pain). In my area those two teams are all there is minus a bunch of FLL and a few FTC teams about the same distance away. Southern Indiana (my part at least) is completely devoid of FIRST. Sad, really.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I'm lucky enough to only travel around 10 minutes to my team (both from work and home).

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

My commute is only about 25 minutes from my university to the high school (taking the highway; back roads would be longer), but sometimes it gets bumped up to about 45 when we get a real bad snow storm. Had whiteout conditions last Friday and still showed up, even though the meeting was already most of the way over by the time I got there. It's the thought that counts, right? :p

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

20-30 miles almost daily for me.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I have a home less than 8 miles from Mount Olive High School. Thing is I am often required in Downtown or Midtown Manhattan in person. On the best day my commute one way is 2.25 hours from Mount Olive. On the worst it can be 6 hours one way. The last leg is on the PATH train because it can take even longer by car. With a 5+ hour commute per day, a 9-12 hour work day, MORT running almost everyday during build season, plus multiple businesses in addition to my managing director work, I usually can not make every night at MORT. Sometimes I get lucky and can work from home for a bit or can take some time off. Those times I show up more frequently.

I manage an International team. So a lot of this can be done remotely and even from NYC is still remote. Unfortunately even with my Honda Insight getting 50MPG I waste enormous amounts of energy travelling for a job that I could do without physical presence. I could even help MORT since I now have a 2015 KOP robot with all the bells and whistles. Doing the CNC mentoring was more difficult because you had to be physically present and I do not own a Haas TM1 to show the experience outside the school. The current CNC mentor has his own Haas mills at his workplace so he has a remote work opportunity.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

I used to live 10 minutes from the 1885. Then I moved to be closer to more 'civilization' (I kid!), about 30 minutes from 1885. I didn't know it at the time, but I had moved to within 2 blocks of one team and 1 mile of another team. Then I bought my house, and am now 45 minutes from 1885. It turns out that I am commute-wise within 15 minutes of 6 FRC teams (perhaps more but for the beltway's evening traffic). For now I stick with 1885 since they do way more than FRC, and it all needs support.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

Every weekend, I drive 4 hours to the team build site Friday, then 4 hours back to college on Sunday. Also planning to volunteer at 4-5 competition events, up to 8 hours away. Worth it!!!

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

No, that sounds about right.

20 minutes to 422 and back. I pass by a few other teams and am pretty close at the 20 minute mark to other teams but the blood oath I shook on won't let me leave.

Re: How far do you Travel to Mentor?
 

While I was in college I was driving 400 miles per weekend (~6.5 hours total) to mentor.

After spending my high school years on Team Driven (#1730) I started mentoring our "rival team", The Broncobots (#1987). It was a lot of driving but since I felt I was making a worthwhile contribution it was worth it. Oh, I also really enjoy driving - so that helped. A nice road trip proved to be a great break from college stress!

These days though I'm down to a short 10-ish mile commute. :)