What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?

[Anton Abaya]

I started a team!!!! ahhhhhh! My worst mistake, even though its one of my greatest accomplishments.

[Anton Abaya]

then there was that time when i bent the robot arm....


shhh, nobody knows it was me.

[JVN]

i got to know anton, and became an honorary rambot.... scary stuff....

[EddieMcD]

I call this story "The Fallen Superman".

The year is 2000. The place is our HQ at an undisclosed location on the Newport RI Navy Base. More specifically, the field we built. Anyhow, my common way of getting from one side of the field to the other was leaping Superman-esk, extending myself, and swinging off the bar (actually, I was also able to walk under without hitting my head, but that's not the point). So one time, in front of a group of girls, I did my leap, and extened myself. Unfortunately, the swinging off the bar never happened. I missed and, fully extended, hit the ramp front-first.

Well, the girls got a good laugh, and I did as well after I caught my breath. Now if that's not making myself look idiotic, I don't know what is.

[Matt Ryan]

There was that time when the 2000 robot (the one with the 9 foot long arm) fell on my head...

[Carolyn Duncan]

I was haning out with another team, which shall remin numberless, in the hotel at regionals last year and there was some rather odd stuff going on... We all had fun and have laughs from then. The stupid part was letting my school sponsor find out only part of the details...
Then of course there was that prank on Dave Lavery at nationals last year... but that was also a prank on us... I guess that was really the stupid thing.

[Wayne C.]

Our 98 robot "Navarone" had a spring loaded vertical "gun" made of two nested PVC sections with a trigger mechanism. It was designed to go under the "ladder logic" field and pop up under the other team's balls sending them flying so they couldn't score. The section which popped up went about 4 feet over the height of the bot. It was a lethal projectile restrained only by the metal frame of the machine.

While building the machine we were trying different tensions on the spring mechanism and had the robot on top of a shop bench in our woodshop. We set it off.

The shop fluorescent fixtures are about 6 feet over the benches-

Nuff said..

WC

[Sean_330]

Last year we forgot that the lights in our workshop were only 1 foot higher than the goal. Well.... One day we decided to test out our robot balancing on the ramp and well....yeah.... there was glass everywhere.

[Jgreenwd1]

Last year at the nationals the last day, and I was sitting in the bleachers waiting for the finals, when I notice some of my team members were saying they wanted to go and get me wet. And I didn’t want to so I started to run down the stairs and went to fast and started to loss my balance and I ran into a couple of chairs and broke them then I spun around and cut the top of my knee right off. It hurt a lot. they had to call the Ambulance and it took for ever for them to show up, and when they did they went to the wrong place.

[Sean_330]

Gotta love an efficient EMS system......



Sean
(who wonders why he said that considering he is an EMT)

[dlavery]

Originally posted by Carolyn Duncan
Then of course there was that prank on Dave Lavery at nationals last year... but that was also a prank on us... I guess that was really the stupid thing.

Gee, Carolyn, I didn't know that you remembered...

-dave (still feeling VERY guilty that you got sucked in as a relatively innocent bystander - after all, it was targeted at Alisha and Joanne!)

[Elgin Clock]

Ummm... There was a little incident with a Disney monorail that I started on the Sunday after the Nationals last year....

Jess....Do you want to tell this story for me??? I don't want to tell it for fear of reprocusions from possibly affected FIRST teams!

"I don't care if they're late for their planes; we're not going to be late and that's all that counts"!!!!

[Matt Ryan]

There was that small little incident involving duck tape and a door...

Then the Geo hubcap incident...

And a few others.

[Ashes]

Ya I had a good one...welll all the things I do end up stupid and well the team calls me Blondie becuase I'm so stupid, But last year (2001) I was on that ramp bridge and well I was jumping on that metal part at the end and it busted...all the guys on the team got a really good laugh but we had to quickly fix it for our leader was on her way to test to robot on it! It was reather funny! but there are many more becuase I'm a brunet but act like a blonde!

[David Kelly]

i didn't do this but a kid on our team jumped off the dragon that goes over the pool at Port Orleans in disney. Lets just say that the owners were not very happy and we almost got kicked out