too many stories...
 

this was 2 years ago.

For the West Michigan regional the hotel we stayed at had a free coffee machine in the lobby. One of those dealies where you choose Regular, DeCaf, 50/50, Espresso, Hot Chocolate.

I had more Espresso's than I can remember and each time I had less and less clothes on. (There is a picture of me in just my pants, I hope that's as far as I went.. The picture itself is not to flattering, I'm flexing in front of the room window with a very strange grin)

Well, that whole weekend I got a 1/2 hour of sleep, which was at the competition on practice day. Each night I did something different to the girl's room down the hall, and in true FIRST fashion, always involved duct tape. I don't remember which team it was but someone was handing out red duct tape (Thank You!).

One night when I heard the 'Paperboy' come around, I got up and collected a few of the newspapers and forced them under the door. Then I duct tape'd the door with a few big X's. I knew what time the girls were getting up so I sat there with a video camera watching their door. When Jenn opened it all I heard was "What the [expletive deleted]" then Steph "What now?" Jenn, still half-asleep, tried to rip off one of the X's and fell into the other one. The next night I duct tape'd their newspaper to the carpet in front of their door. They didn't even try to pick up the paper so I guess a hotel attendant had to struggle with it.


That's my story, not as fun as most I know, but bleh.

Thought of another one that isnt a competition travel story.. but it involved traveling.

Most of the team from 247 came down to our annual (hopefully for them) training seminar at SMC. (By the by, Dave Johnson, Thanks a lot for these, they've been more helpful than you may think). Anyhoodle, we all meet at our classroom to go down there and Chris asks "Anyone else bring their card?" a general feeling of "What card?" came over those around him. So he pulls out his FIRST-SME card. Many inside jokes through the day somehow all stemmed from this. Some where mean in hindsight but we all had a good laugh and so did he.

Alligators
 

159 has a team member that is the funniest man alive. He's just the MAN! We'll call him Joe for this post :-). So Joe was staying in a room with Jesse and Tyson at Nats 2002 and he went into the bathroom and stayed...for a while. Anyway, Jesse asks him if he flushed and Joe said yea, but when they got back that evening and Jesse went to go pee, he yelled, "Joe! I thought you flushed!!!!" Joe yelled back, "It's not my fault! It's like trying to flush a small alligator!!!"
our team is psycho.......:-)
lauren

Re: Alligators
 

That was just gross :rolleyes:

OH My Gosh.....
 

it's not gross, it's just.....special :) !
anyway, we have fun.

lauren

come on more stories!!!
 

I know for a fact that more than 5 teams went to robotics competitions. Come on more people have something funny or stupid!

LAUREN NO! (btw, it's not me, but i didnt' need to remember that...)

hm... Dan got patted down in the airport twice in a row. *beep* oh come over here. *pat down* okay you're good. (goes over and gets suitcase thing) "oh is that yours? you'll have to take the vcr out. (empties suitcase, vcr is at bottom) *pat down #2* okay you can go (30 minutes later...)

Can't really think of much. At the end of a match (LA) our robot was locked on to a goal and we couldn't get it off. The FIRST staff started yelling "We have a schedule to keep here. You have 15 seconds to get your robot off the field." We took so long trying to get it off that the FIRST staff just gave up waiting and like 6 of us and them lifted the robot and goal together entirely off the field and they brought in a replacement goal.

Oh, and coming back home from LA we had the robot in it's six foot tall crate on top of a VW bus/truck thing. It was rather scary being like 12 feet tall overall, but somehow it made it back alright.

Although I was busy with back surgery 2 years ago, and didn't end up at WMR, that does sound like a very "Jenn" think to do. As for Chris' slip up with the SME card....I'll never forget it.....

Chris..."so, were we supposed to bring these?" *takes his SME card out, still around his neck, but previously under his shirt*

Gadget: "SMC....not SME"

Me: *begins to laugh*

Chris: *Looks Puzzled* "Oh" *puts card back under shirt*



As for my personal travel story, Cleveland 2002.

A team mate and myself were very bored during the day of pratice rounds, so we decided to make a game out of the contents of our pockets. "Nickel Races" were born. Two players, each with a nickel in the crook of their index finger, stand at a line in the tile of the outer walkway of the venue. On "go" each player throws their nickel in a bowling fashion, and chases it. There is no winner, although it's cool if your nickel goes further, but we must have ran around the stadium about 30 times, until tradgedy struck...both of our nickels rolled into the women's restroom.

Every time we got on a plane to and from Florida last year, I was searched (4x in total). I tired quickly of taking my shoes off and opening my backpack.

On one flight, the attendants asked a really really tall guy on our team to remove his legs from the aisle before takeoff. Needless to say, he couldnt fit with his legs in front og his seat, even with it reclined all the way. They tried to relocate him to the exit row (more legroom), but he was too young, so they had to kick some people out of the first row, just so his feet would fit:D

(Here is why i dislike Delta)
going from Atlanta to Orlando, i was just sitting down, and the flight attendant came up and asked me what I wanted. I was really confused, and responded that I didnt want anything. She then proceeded to tell me very rudely that I should not play with the call button, that it was something she expected out of three year olds, not people of my age. Well, I had been flying for five hours, sitting in an airport at like 4 in the morning, felt sick from the air on the plane, so this really made me mad.

gah /me doesnt like Delta much

Cory

flying to nats 2002:
really annoying kid on our team refuses to check his bag.... when we go through the metal detectors (post sept 11) his labtop sets off the alarms... we're stuck waiting because they have to check his computer, his shoes, his bag, and we just leave him there...

way back, some idiot puts a screw threw some paper hats in one of my teammate's bags.... stuck waiting for 10 min while they search and search and search for the source of the beep... i come over, look inside, pull out the screw (it was right there on the top) and go "is that it?"

regionals, same year:
someone in the hotel room before us takes a huge crap, my roommate (same annoying kid) flushes the toilet and the room is flooded, i mean really flooded... annoying kid calls the hotel, asks them to fix it, is rude, yells, is annoying... someone comes and turns the knob behind toilets that turns off the water.... turns out the annoying kid knew about it all along. his reasoning was, and i quote "its their job to fix it" while the room is filling with some dirty $@#$@#$@# water

:confused: what kind of logic is that?

That was quite a bit more detail than I would have liked...:rolleyes:

Cory

evil bus
 

On the way back down from Nationals to Miami it was around 7pm and we were already running late....half of us were dead asleep and the other half watching whatever movie they had playing! our bus driver had been driving like a bat out of hell.....when all of the sudden the bus like takes a swerve off the road and we all get sent flying to one side of the bus..and we were like "what in the world just happend".... Throughout the rest of the bus ride everyone was holding on to dear life! it was funny:D