[Jim Zondag]

Andrew,
No problem...our efforts last year were just an extreme example of what we never stop doing: CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT. We made a 39.8 lb replacement part for the Championship. This took considerable time and effort, but it was something we felt that we needed to last year.
I personally have never truly understood FIRST's motivation to restrict our access to the machines. I know that many believe that it is to make things more fair, but in realility all it really does is widen the gap between the teams with a lot of resources and the teams with less. There is no other machine sport on earth that I know of where they take your machine away from you.
Shipping/bagging is a vestige of a time in which most teams went to a single event. The now that we are playing a SEASON it no longer makes sense.
To me the most tragic thing about shipping/bagging is the fact that it prevents teams from self-promoting effectively precisely when we have the best opportunity to do so. You build hype BEFORE the big game, not AFTER. We are Robotics teams, and showing people our robots is the single best way to fulfill Dean's homework assignement and get outsiders to our events.
Teams are their own best advocates, by taking away the robots, FIRST takes away our best promotional tool. If Dean wants us to complete his homework, then he should eliminate these obsolete rules to allow us to do this effectively.