How far does your team drive?
 

I'm just curious how long most teams drive to go to their regional competitions. The closest one to us is Boilermaker regional, nearly a 4 hour drive. This year though, we went to Cleveland, a 6 hour drive. Is it me, or does FIRST seem to neglect the whole eastern midwest/northern south (if I may use such words...). But the Knoxville addition this year was a great move, kudos for that.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

We drive to Florida regional every year and its about 30minutes drive. :)

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

We drive to Waterloo and GTR which are 2 and 3 hour drives on a school bus. This year we went to Buckeye for the first time and were on the bus for around 9 hours, but a coach this time. Part of that 9 hours was waiting at the border to get all of our stuff cleared.

We will be driving to St Louis on a coach. The bus company is projecting an 18 hour drive, including stops, but we think we can make it in a little less than that. We will be leaving Tuesday evening and arriving Wednesday afternoon.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Well our closest regional is a Hawaii, it's a bit hard for us to drive 8000km (5000 miles) across the pacific...

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

It depends on concentration of FIRST team where they put their regionals. Unless your region has a sudden growth in a lot of teams you may just have to travel. :o

I drive 15 mins to our home regional of GSR with Boston and WPI about an hours drive away.

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SVR is about 20 minutes from our school! One of our mentors lives so close he rides his bike there!

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

In the past, we've driven to St Louis and Kansas City (each about a 9 hour drive). With the introduction of the Lake Superior Regional, however, we now only go 2.5 hours :). Of course, 10,000 Lakes and North Star are only about 20 minutes away!

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

WPI and Connecticut are a little over 2 hours away from us. Someone told me once that CT was closer, but I still don't understand the geography here very well.

I'm hoping for an RPI Regional someday. I'd love to just roll out of bed and go.

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We went 4 hours to Palmetto and 5 hours to North Carolina. Now it's 12 hours to St. Louis! Peachtree is the closest at 1.5 hours.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

We are 1.5 hours from the Philly regional. When we went to the Jersey regional we were 1 hour from there. We have gone to the Chesapeake regional before and that is 4 hours. We have driven to Championships in Atlanta and that was a 14 hour drive. We also drove to Florida once for Championships, that was about 18 to 20 hours on a bus.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

My family takes yearly trips to Disney World, and we always drive, so I'm use to whole thing about sitting still for 18-20 hours... but with FRC, it's like 10 florida drives just to get from Dayton to Cleveland. I guess it's just the anticipation. :p

- edit -
I long for the day I can drive from my home to the competiton in <1 hour. It'd be awesome to get a good night's sleep in your own bed before competing.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

We have drove in the past 4 years...
4 hours for Traverse City
40 minutes for Detroit
1 hour for Kettering
1.2 hours for MSC/GLR
6 hours for Boilermaker
14 hours for Atlanta

And those aren't even the closest competitions to us.

Within an hour of our school is...
Troy: 10 Minutes
Waterford: <20 Minutes
Livonia: 50 Minutes
Ann Arbor: Around an Hour

And of course St. Louis is a nice 9 hour drive, but we aren't going this year.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

We are doing 40 minutes to Midwest, 2 hours to Wisconsin, and 5 hours to St. Louis this year. (Wednesday crew is driving, everyone else is taking Amtrak)

Furthest we have done is 8 hours for 10k lakes.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

40 minutes bus to Israel regional

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

In recent years our drives have included ~1 hour to Boilermaker (West Lafayette, IN), ~3.5 hours to Chicago, ~5.5 hours to St. Louis, ~9 hours to Toronto, and 12+ hours to Washington, DC. The Boilermaker Regional is close enough that we make the trip there and back each day.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Before they moved Palmetto to Charleston we drove 1.5 hours, now its more like 4 (w/ stops). Atlanta for Championships was a little over 3 hours, now I'm going to be taking a 12 hour trip next week to get to St. Louis.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

1075 being from Whitby, ON, our travel times recently have been:

FLR Wk 1, 2011: 3.5 hrs
Waterloo Wk 4, 2011: 1.75 hrs
Greater Toronto East Wk 5, 2011: 1 hr
Brunswick Eruption, offseason 2010: 10 hrs
Kettering Kickoff, offseason 2010: 6 hrs
Championship, Atlanta 2010: ~18-20 hrs
Greater Toronto Wk 5, 2010: 1 hr
Waterloo Wk 4, 2010: 1.75 hrs

All told 2 seasons, 86 hrs of travel time.

Since our founding in 2003, we've done:

Canadian Regional/ Greater Toronto Regional / Greater Toronto East Regional: 2003-2004, 2006-2011
Waterloo Regional: 2008-2011
Finger Lakes Regional: 2011
Championship: 2010
Kettering Kickoff: 2007-2010
Brunswick Eruption: 2008-2010
Wonderland Invitational: 2004 (2006, too, technically, but we broke the robot the night before and didnt compete)

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

I agree, that'd be awesome.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Some close regionals to us:

New Jersey: 40 minutes on a bus.
Philly: 30 minutes on a bus.
New York City: 2 - 2.5 hours on a bus.
Chesapeake: 2 hours on a bus.
DC: 3 hours on a bus.
Pittsburgh: 6-7 hours on a bus.

All of those times decrease about 10-20% when driving in a car, if not more.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Its 30 Minutes to SVR for us, and 2.5 hours for Sacramento.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Let me tell you, it is nice to do that.


Great Lakes ~1 hour
Chicago ~5 hr
Detroit ~1hour
West ~2.5hrs
CMP ~14 bus


With the new District Model with 397/3450:
Kettering: 5 minutes
West: 2.5 hrs
TC: 4 hrs (397/3450 didn't compete here but many of the mentors were there)
Troy: 1hr
MSC: 1hr (for the team, for many of the mentors who live outside of Flint it is a longer drive because there is no straight path)


The gist of it, in SE Michigan we lucked out and are no more than 2 hours away from a large number of events.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Prior to the Michigan District model, we drove down to Chicago (~5.5 hours) on a school bus. To top that off, we left at 2am in the morning to get there at a "reasonable" time.

Other than that, ATL was the longest drive. Normally, it is about 12 hours on a coach, but last year was significantly longer. We were to leave at the beginning of school (7:15am), but the bus we were assigned was broken so they had to get another. We didn't leave the school for another two hours or so. Then, our bus was having some annoying alarm going off, so we stopped at a gas station for 20 minutes. Then the bus broke down right outside of Metro Airport (spent another hour at least there while a new bus was brought to us). I think we got to ATL around 12 ish.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

This is roughly how much Team Titanium has traveled, and when:

('08-'11) Kansas City: 30-40 mins.
('07, '11) St. Louis: 4 hrs.
('09-'10) 10000 Lakes/North Star: 8 hrs.
('08, '11) Denver: 10 hrs.
('09-'10) Atlanta 15 hrs.

I'm glad we get to stay in state for Championships this year. For Atlanta last year we left at 11pm and got down there at 2pm the next day.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

FLR is 11 miles away from our site which is about 20 minutes away.
The Jones dome is 812 miles away. That's about 13 plus hpurs away and they are taking a bus there.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

2005: Florida - ~1 hour, Atlanta - ~10 hours
2006: Florida - ~1 hour, Boston - ~2.5 hours(Flight), Atlanta - ~10hours
2007: Florida - ~1 hour, Waterloo - ~4 hours(Flight+Drive), Atlanta - ~10 hours
2008: Florida - ~1 hour, Colorado - ~3 hours(Flight), Atlanta - ~10 hours
2009: Florida - ~1 hour, Connecticut - ~3 hours, Atlanta - ~10 hours
2010: Florida - ~1 hour, Colorado - ~3 hours(Flight), Atlanta - ~10 hours
2011: Florida - ~1 hour, Tennessee - ~12 hours

All times are given for trip there, for entire travel double each time.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Same trips, different years, plus Oklahoma at 5 hours.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

It'll be about 15 miles, after we fly 4300+ miles to get there. :)
being in Orlando doesn't help when you still have to get home later this week.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

This year, it was about four hours (maybe 3.5) to Peachtree and about two hours to Palmetto.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Our team drives 1 hour to get to the Kettering District event. We also go to the Ann Arbor District event, which is housed in our school, making this trip a dreaded 6 minute drive from home :D . Michigan State Championship is across town, so this is a 15 minute drive. To top it off, our team will drive to St. Louis. This drive will take 9 hours.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Team 20 has gone to WPI in just over 2 hours, CT in around 2 and a half, NH in about 3, FLR in about 3, Atlanta in about 20 hours and St. Louis is going to be 15 minutes less than Atlanta (hooray!!!)

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

3411's "home" regional, Bayou, is an 6 hour drive on a car, and a seven and a half hour drive on a bus. Smoky Mountain is also 6 hours away. :yikes:

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Hahah I have you all beat ;)

Two years ago we drove 48 hours over the course of three days to get to Atlanta.

This year we're drive 22 hours in one day to get to St. Louis

Regionals are fairly close 4 hours to Phoenix and 2 to Vegas

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

About an hour long carpool to Denver. This year we took a charter bus to KC, which was about 12 hours, and I want to say it was along the lines of 18 hours when we took a charter out to Atlanta in 09

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

One of the convenient things about being in Connecticut is that there are a lot of options nearby. We've done the ~40 min drive to the Connecticut Regional (once called the New England Regional) every year of our team's existence. In 2010 we drove ~1.5 hours to WPI for our second regional, and this year, we drove ~6 hours to Baltimore for our second regional.

The years we went to Atlanta we flew rather than driving, and we won't be going to St. Louis this year, but if we were to have gone, we would have flown there too.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Each year we drive ~30 minutes to the Philadelphia Regional.
For the past two years we've driven ~6 hours to the Finger Lakes Regional.
This year, we drove ~2 hours to the Chesapeake Regional.

3 years ago we flew to Atlanta, tho I forget how long it took...I know we had some parents who drove down to meet us. However, they were stopping other places cuz they were making a vacation out of it.

This year we're flying down to St. Louis. and again, I have no idea how long it will take us haha I know we're planning on possibly seeing the Arch Wednesday afternoon, and we're leaving our workshop at 9 am that morning

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Our team drives for about a half hour, give or take. We are located just outside of Seattle, so getting there quickly is just a matter of how much traffic there is.

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

Over the last 3 years:

Davis/Sacramento Regional: 2.5 hour drive
Silicon Valley Regional: 20 minute drive
San Diego Regional: 10 hour drive (but we flew so it doesn't count haha)
Seattle Cascade Regional: 2 day drive.

We've always flown to anywhere out of state but this year our gracious mentor decided to save us the pain of working with FIRST to try and ship the robot up to Washington and drive our robot up to Seattle. We're verrryy grateful that he did that haha

Re: How far does your team drive?
 

FRC 3320's loyal to the Lone Star Regional so about a 3 hour drive from Austin, TX to Houston, TX.