Quote:
Originally Posted by rjmah
I wonder if they really thought about having both Canadian Regionals as Bag and Tag. I think US teams would still need to ship their robot to those events. I don't think border officials would let any sealed bag cross the border, no matter what kind of paperwork accompanied it.
|
Well having crossed the border in the OTHER direction for the past several years, I wouldn't be too worried about going to a Bag and Tag event in the states. First of all, I would have no problem unbagging the robot for the border agents to inspect and then bagging it up afterwards. That is allowed... just log it. It will take some extra time, especially if you run into a particularly picky border guard, but there are lots of mechanical competitions where machines cross the border to compete every weekend... drag races, rowing events, VEX tournaments.... if you allow some time, have your papers in order and speak nicely to the border guards there is rarely a big issue. In fact they haven't asked to open our tool boxes once, going either way!
Of course if we were planning to go to Toronto this year, instead of Seattle, we wouldn't be "bringing the robot with us" unless we could either make special luggage allowances with our airline. What we would do is crate up the robot and ship it to one of the very friendly and helpful Ontario teams who would hold on to it for us until we arrived. That isn't so far from what we used to do, as the FedEx donation was useless for shipping within Canada, so we had to organize our own shipping on the Vancouver - Toronto leg anyway.
Finally, as much as I like having more matches, I really did like having lots of practice time on Thursday (especially once we could "bump" into lines when other teams didn't show) as it let me give lots of students a chance to be involved with a drive team and for some of the juniors to get a taste of being on the field. (Our limiting factor on practice matches in Seattle last year was that our motors were overheating...)
What really concerns me about starting matches on Thursday isn't the preparedness of the teams, but the ability of the inspectors to get robots through tech by noon... even if the machines are ALL ready to go at 8:00am Thursday the inspectors will be very rushed.... and the time for the field volunteers and systems to settle in to a routine.
But you know... if we'd been doing things this way for years and someone told us they were getting RID of bagging and requiring FedEx shipping, or cutting down our matches from 10 to 7 so there could be more practice time... well, we'd be just as concerned.
This will all work out in the end.
Jason