Meeting FIRST People in odd places
 

So, I'm down here at the University of Michigan for Band Week, and already, in just the Trumpet section, I've met three former FIRST people. One was from 226, one from 240, and one all the way from 374 in Anchorage, Alaska. Apparently, there are quite a few FIRSTers in the Michigan Marching Band that I haven't met, also. This got me thinking about something. Where have you met FIRST people in odd places? By odd places, I mean anywhere that you wouldn't consider a FIRST-related activity. So, what are your stories? They don't have to be much, but I think it would be cool to get an idea of where FIRSTers are in the "outside world."

I met a "First person" in a barber shop once.

One day at my post office I was wearing a t-shirt from my freshman year on team 93 and this guy asked me if I had been in the FIRST program. I started talking with him and found out he was one of the original mentors for my team, however he retired and left by the time I had arrived on the team. I just found it amusing and neat that in an area of 250,000 people, and maybe 500 having come in contact with he team, and two alumnus come across each other and are able to connect because of FIRST. Definitely one of my cooler experiences as a result of the program.

met a guy while camping at hart springs, whose brother had been the team captain for a miami team (not sure of number)

Waitress saw the FIRST logo on my shirt and asked if I worked with a team. She had never been on a team, never been to an event, didn't know anyone on a team, never saw a TV show about FIRST... so I asked how she knew about FIRST.

She is studing marketing, and one assignment was to pick out a cool logo they knew nothing about, and then research it and report back to the class what it ment and who it was for. She has picked out the FIRST logo cuz it was so cool looking, and then had to explaine FIRST's mission to an entire marketing class.

We're everywhere...

Sadly all summer I have been away as a camp counselor over the summer at a boy scout camp so I havn't been able to check up on the site (its been too long). However, while at camp it was about half way through the summer before I realized that during one of the nasty t-storm a fellow counselor was wearing a FIRST jacket :yikes: and for the rest of the summer we would always talk about FIRST in our spare time! :cool:

I was at Purdue the other day and I saw a kid wearing a 2002 OCCRA shirt, but I didnt bother to ask him what team he was from..

The other time this summer I saw someone was when I was in Indianapolis at a mall I saw some kid wearing a 2003 IRI shirt

I was at the In-n-Out right by UCLA's campus and saw a kid whose team I made a call against when I was ref'ing at the Chatsworth scrimmage. Though he was wearing his team tshirt, I would have recognized him anyway because I remember him not being too happy about being penalized. Apparently the team is located +1 hour away from my school so I don't know what he was doing there but I found it funny (not to mention my friends also found it really funny I was hiding from him...hey, he seemed like the type who would hold a grudge about the DQ).

Btw, all of you people who live outside of California and don't have In-N-Out are soooo deprived.

Well honestly I did not meet the person but when my family and I drove down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on the last full week of july through the first week of August we stopped at a restaursant called T-Bones... When I got out of the car I noticed that the SUV next to us had some that autodesk passed out hanging from the rearview mirror... I went to the back of the SUV and saw a team bumber stick it looked like... I forget where the licence plate was from but I bet it was someone that was at nationals...

I met one of 357's members while taking the SAT at good ol' Wissahickon..

a team mate and i were taking the SATs at another high school in the district. we bumped into a member from 115 (i believe) wearing a t-shirt from championship 2002. there was a WRRF meeting later that day, however, the 115 guy said he wasn't planning on attending.

in the beginning of august, my boyfriend and i went to play laser tag, and ran into "aonic" of team 1072.

at SVR 2003, i noticed someone on the leland team who looked familiar. upon speaking to eachother, we realized that we went to the same church, but had never really met (it's a big church...).

When I went to National Latin Convention this year at Trinity University, I wore my robotics shirt one of the days. I had a decent amount of people come up to me about it and we started talking. To think...Robotics geeks are also Latin Nerds...

I saw someone part of FIRST in a casino.

On the plane to Nationals this past year, I noticed the lady across the aisle from me had a FIRST business card sticking out of the folder she was carrying. Looking closer, I noticed she was wearing a FIRST vest. When the plane landed, one of my mentors and I started talking to her and it turned out that she was one of the FLL game coordinators/planners/whatever-you-want-to-call-'ems. We wound up talking about the possibility of my team hosting an edu-robotics competition sometime in the future. It was cool. :)

- Katie

I was walking around Disney, and someone was wearing one of the shirts they were selling at nationals at Epcot.. so I started talking to him, found out he was a mentor on a team somewhere in the mid-west, and was on vacation in Florida... I thought it was pretty cool.