you gotta watch em'
 

No- it wasnt FUNNY

Now we have a guard watch him at the airport....

(BTW- this pic was taken minutes before he threw that ticket in the garbage!!)

818 was a nightmare. I didn't do anything bad personally, but I know most of what went on. The GLR was relatively calm, mainly because we bussed the team to and from the arena daily. And Nationals was relatively calm, except for the management yelling at a room full of guys with a GameCube and Super Smash Brothers - it got a wee bit competitive, which led to some very loud trash talking. :) West Michigan, though, was a nightmare...

By the end of the trip, it seemed like our team had done as much as possible to trash the hotel. I can't recall everything that was done, but here's what I can remember...

-Ice completely coating the carpet on our team's floor
-Two buckets of ice ended up in the ceiling...no one would have known, but the ice melted and left a very visible ring on the tiles...
-Pizza boxes thrown out of windows
-Almost everything that could have been frozen was. Towels, washcloths, random personal items...if it could be coated in water and stuffed in a freezer, it was. This led to...
-Bowling in the hallway with frozen rolls of toilet paper. This one got a few people in trouble.
-The one event that was most memorable to me: two of my friends got a hold of a CD and put it in the microwave. Sparks flew, and they ended up with their microwave soaking in their bathtub...

Looking back at some of the things other 818 members pulled in Grand Rapids, I'm surprised that no one got in major trouble. I'm a bit disgusted with all that was done. I'm glad that I didn't participate in anything like that. I just hope things run a bit smoother next year...

[edit]I hate typos. Fixed a stupidly obvious one.[/edit]

Trying to find our hotel this year coming from the Airport in Houston was interesting. I remember the street signs there being about 5 inches wide and then 2 seconds later the street appears. It was... suspenseful... to say the least.

Sleeping at the wheel?
 

When traveling, the Prank Monkeys don't have much style. We ask and beg teachers, parents, mentors, and administrators until we find someone who has a van and some free time. When we went to the Indiana FIRST Teams Workshop in Kokomo (about an hour away), one of our drivers was Dr. Wang - a semi-narcaleptic (unofficially) man who has wrecked a car by falling asleep at the wheel (no one was badly injured, I'm told). The most unforgetable memory of that trip is when I met up with him and his group and he said, in a joking voice - "we still alive" (he's chinese). He knew I was worried and releived to see everyone still walking, but the joke was more terrifying than funny, especially considering the pale look on the passengers faces.

In 2002, 6 Academites (not yet Monkeys) took a trip to Grand Rapids to watch the regional and get kids interested. Dr. Wang was again our driver. It was scary that time as well, but the funny part of the trip is that he slept in the stands a lot (even through the finals!). So when we split up from him for a while, he fell asleep and didn't meet up with us. And as our group leader, I had the pleasant duty of going to pit administration and (with a straight face) asking them to page Dr. Wang. Those who were listening got a kick out of it :)

While on Team 71, I had a blast on our road trips. Before every competition, my mother would buy me a giant bag of Twizzlers (double for the championships), so during the Great Lakes Regional, I started the 'Twizzler Diet' and ate nothing but Twizzlers for three days, with only a little bit of actual nourishment in between. Kinda silly, but hey, I lost 3 lbs.

The Prank Monkeys truly live up to their name when travelling. Besides all of the above adventures they had before they were official and before I got there, we've had some fun for ourselves. While travelling to St. Louis, there was no fancy bus or plane - myself and two others drove all of our kids all the way, stopping only in Terre Haute (because we were hungry, and because most of my boys wanted to see the famed Rose-Hulman). I only got a *little* scared in St. Lou with all the traffic and construction, so to make up for it, we drove down the highway blaring Nelly at obnoxious levels. We pulled up each day for competition playing either Nelly or Ludacris, obnoxiously. Waking the kids up every morning was a feat, considering we were up until 2 or so every morning either coding or just talking about competition. I would have to start jumping up and down on the beds to wake the kids, or in extreme measures, pour a cup of water on them. (My penance was almost getting thrown into the pool.)

All in all... I'm a little afraid to see what 'those darn monkeys' are going to do this year. =)