[Wayne TenBrink]

Our alliance was on the receiving end of that last second super-cell from 2767. He let go of it just before time ran out and it seemed to hang in the air for 5 minutes before landing in the trailer - ARGH!! What a shot to win the match!

It was cool that the Governor came to see the event and walk the pits. I didn't notice her lack of safety glasses. After we posed for pictures and she signed our robot, everything went south for us. About 15 minutes later, a camera tripod fell and hit our driver's mother in the head, sending her to the emergency room for a batch of staples (special thanks to the first aid crew!). She was back asap to see her son in action. In our next match, our robot sat motionless thanks to a faulty battery cell. Shortly thereafter, the fire alarm went off and the grandmother of one of our payload specialists wrenched her knee climbing down the bleachers (she was able to make it back to catch the rest of the action, too). Fortunately, things settled down after that.

Speaking of the bad battery cell (a 2009 battery), has anybody else had problems with batteries? I haven't heard anything from other teams, but I was discussing this with a motorcycle mechanic, and he mentioned that they have had a lot of problems with Vietnamese batteries. Unfortunately for us, we originally thought the problem was a bad connection. We tightened them down, "charged" it (or so we thought - according to the light on the charger) and used the same battery in a semi-finals match, where we sat motionless once again - a fatal error. Before going to the West Michigan District, we will have all our batteries load tested.