This was one of the most fun regional experiences I've ever had. The crowd was great, the competition was awesome, and it was just an incredible time all around. My couple of comments -
- in the
last finals match, we had a score of 124, which is [in addition to being our personal highest score] the same as the score of the very
first match of the competition. Those of you who say our drive team is too superstitious... I rest my case
- 27 has sealed themselves as one of my favorite teams. All the members I talked to were very outgoing and friendly, and their "Ask me about.." pins were fun. Their bot is easily one of the coolest I've seen, and I was hoping all day Friday that they would get it working. The unbelievable pit work on Saturday (repairing drive shafts and grabbers and whatever else in record time) left me in awe. I cannot WAIT for Great Lakes.
- the eliminations on Saturday were some of the most intense and dramatic that I have witnessed since Atlanta last year. I watched the semifinals between 1025/1528/815 and 27/47/453 with anxious anticipation, as they were both scarily impressive alliances. The finals between us and 27/47/453 were some of the most amazing matches I've ever driven in. Like Paul said, just look at the Semis/Finals on TBA - the match scores are crazily high and crazily close.
- I've never had more fun being a driver than here. The drive teams were all unbelievably GP and I had a great time meeting drivers from all sorts of different teams. Three instances in particular come to mind. In our last qualifiers match, it was 217 and two rabbits vs three impressive hurdlers. It ended up being one of the most intense matches ever, and afterwards Fox (27's driver) and I waited at the field for the scores to be posted, and agreed that regardless of the outcome, it was an
awesome match. A similar instance happened in the finals, when we passed each other on the field to get our robots after the second match before the scores were shown.
- I'm putting the third instance in a separate bullet because it's also a segue to the next point. I love team 1, the Juggernauts. Your hybrid mode was unbelievably impressive in St Louis, and it's too bad you started having problems at Detroit. Your EI award was 100% deserved. However, even more impressive is your skill and graciousness in driving. After the first finals match, we quickly joked about when you stopped to let us go around, but it really was an awesome courteous move that ultimately helped us both. I hope you noticed when we did the same in the next match
- the
Thunderillas lived on in Detroit
little more needs to be said here. Anybody who knows us knows how close we are as teams, and the opportunity to be complete once again was awesome (I'm using that word too much, aren't I). RoboReunion 3.0 will have even more to celebrate, eh?
- congrats to 440. Like Paul said, sitting in the stands watching all the top alliances pass them up was akin to someone finding an old winning lottery ticket under their bed. Having such a good racer (and friend team) to complete our alliance was just so cool.
Now I have to back to washing hair glue out of my hair and nursing some severely damaged vocal cords...