[Alexander McGee]

Well, we had a few injuries this year. I have to say, one of them was me.

To start with my injury, I would like to thank the transmissions that we used. Well, i was assembelling one of them, and i hooked it up to a battery pack we have (basically a bosch drill housing with wires out the end, that we use to provide power for testing purposes). And, i was running one of the motors to see if i had it assemblled correctlly. I was also holding it in my hand while i did this. This would be the mistake. One of the gears slipped out, and caused a chain to swing freely. Well, my thumb got caught in that, and i lost the top of my thumb. Everything grew back by the time that i needed to use it. Took about a month.

A more serious injury happened to a guy named Mac. While we were testing our arms at Arizona, he was supporting them. One of our advisors was driving the robot. Anyways, Mac got his fingers caught between stages one and two of our arms. If you haven't seen out robot, theyres not a lot of clearance between those stages, an theyres a lot of power driving them. Mac got his hand crushed pretty bad. His fingers were black and blue for quite a while.

The other serious on that i can think of was this guy on our team named Joe. Everyone remember that really huge loading ramp at nats? And, if you've ever walked through our pits, you've seen our 1/2 ton snapon toolbox. Well, joe procedded to push this up that ramp. Needless to say, he threw out his back, and nearly killed himself and others when he lost controll. He spent the night in the Arizona State Hospital, and was released later the next day.

We all need to remember to be careful at these competitions. Danger lies in the most unexpected (and comical) places.

I've got a picutre of it here. Good Job Joe.