[Andy Baker]

We did learn some lessons in Pittsburgh... and I wanted to post this today so that other teams will not make the same mistake we did.

This was the first time that we ever tried to go to back to back regionals.

We "assumed" too much. We really made 2 mistakes:

1. We should've used Midwest Conference Services' preferred shipper to insure that our robot would be picked up from St. Louis on Saturday (FedEx has no Saturday pickup). MCS would've made sure our crate was going to be in Pittsburgh.

2. We should've called FedEx to coordinate a pickup at the St. Louis Drayage site on Monday morning. We did not do this, and we assumed that MCS was going to handle this... wrong. FedEx picked the crate up on Wednesday (the day before practice in Pittsburgh!).

So... I spend 1/2 of our drive on the phone with MCS, Yellow Freight (the Drayage site), and FedEx on Wednesday, trying to line up a next day ship directly to the arena. We thought that would work, but due to a mechanical failure on a FedEx plane, the crate did not get in the Pittsburgh area until Friday morning.

So... if you are playing in back to back regionals (or in the last regional to the Championships), I strongly suggest coordinating your speedy shipping needs with the local Midwest Conference Service reps at your competition and to not use FedEx. This is actually printed in the FIRST manual under shipping... we just needed to READ THE MANUAL.

This is our team's fault (me and another guy are taking the heat). We do not blame FedEx or MCS. We should read the manual.

Please learn from our mistake.

Andy B.

ps... any of you who read this and are going to back to back competitions - please send this note to your team leaders. You do not want them to make the same mistake we did.

pss... I suppose what comes around goes around... who would've thought that my "Tom the FedEx guy" prank in 2002 would come back to haunt us.