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Unread 11-04-2003, 22:25
IMDWalrus's Avatar
IMDWalrus IMDWalrus is offline
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AKA: Paul
FRC #0818 (Genesis '02)
Team Role: Alumni
 
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More free time today, seeing as I didn't want to go to Six Flags (more on that later). It's time for...

Day Three: Eliminated Already?

The day began similar to yesterday - I woke up, got dressed, and went to get food. The shuttle was on time, and we made it to the stadium in one piece. We grabbed seats for our team, and then the fun began.

The opening ceremonies began with a videotaped message from George Bush Sr. The only problem with that was that the audio was coming from the speakers over the Einstein field, and no where else. 818 was in front of the Curie field, and we weren't able to understand anything that was being said. After the Bush video clip was done, Woody Flowers came out onto the Einstein field. He began to speak, and it became apparent that the speaker issue had been resolved. Woody gave a very nice speech about FIRST and encouraged us to act like gracious professionals. The judges were introduced. Since there were maybe 50 judges, it took a little while. Oddly enough, I didn't see any judges for the rest of the day, even though I was in both the pit and the stands. The national anthems were next. The Brazillian anthem sounded great, but since I haven't heard it before, I don't have any other performances to compare it to. The performance of "O Canada" was great, and the performance of "The Star Spangled Banner," a trumpet with no vocals, was even better. Then, the matches began.

The matches were interesting, to say the least. 818 didn't do very well - we had six matches, and won once. Ending the day with a rank that's somewhere around 60th out of 72 teams isn't exactly a job well done, but we tried. Teams that I had seen do well before faltered and collapsed today. 188, a team that I have friends on and a team that was on the winning alliance in WestMI, ended up ranked 66th out of the 72 teams in Curie. 71, who was our partner in two matches and made the finals at WestMI, hovered around 30. Most of the teams that I had seen at GLR or WestMI didn't do very well. That probably says something, but I'm not entirely sure what. Matches were, for the most part, interesting but not overwhelmingly exciting. Robots got flipped and DQed, but it happened less often than it did at WestMI. The crowd, though, was best described as anemic. The MC and announcer tried their best to get some reaction (they sang along to the songs that were played and got some people to dance), but applause was scarce and interest seemed low.

The most interesting part of the day for me was my turn as our mascot. 818's mascot is the Steel Armadillo, which looks cool but doesn't look like any living creature known to mankind. The costume was too big for me, but it didn't matter - I wasn't able to get anyone else to wear it, and we needed a mascot. I spent about an hour wandering around, watching matches, and handing out pins. It wasn't too terrible, but I kept on getting comments like "What kind of Pokemon is he supposed to be?" and "Is that a Digimon?" No, it's not. It might look like it (which isn't too much of a stretch), but it's not. The costume is ready to fall apart, so my mascot duty is hopefully over.

I don't know why, but I didn't feel like going to Six Flags today. I went in, got food, and left an hour and a half after I arrived without riding any of the rides. I just didn't want to. The water park wasn't open, which was somewhat irritating - that was the one part of the park that I wanted to go to the most, and it wasn't ready yet. It didn't matter - I had forgotten my bathing suit - but it was still an annoyance.

I wish I could tell you how various teams are doing, but I haven't seen any matches in Archimedes, Newton, or Galileo, and I haven't seen enough Curie matches to give a useful opinion.

We did manage to find two great ways to get attention. We ordered beach balls, inflated them, and began throwing them around the stands. The balls spent hours bouncing around, oftentimes off of the heads of unsuspecting innocents (if that happened to you, I apologize on behalf of 818. We didn't mean to do it.). By the end of the day, our beach balls were everywhere. They were probably one of the most popular giveaways. The other way to get attention? One of the girls on our team dyed her hair blue and wore a skirt made of duct tape. She attracted a lot of attention, needless to say. If I can get any pictures of her (and her permission), I'll post them here.

That's today's entry. I don't know if I'll have time tomorrow to post (I plan on bringing my bathing suit and actually using rides in Six Flags tomorrow), but I will if I get a chance. Good luck to everyone - 818 is probably out of the running. We'd still love to get picked, and we'd make a great alliance partner. Since we probably won't be chosen, we'll spend tomorrow cheering everyone else on. Again, good luck. Most importantly, though, have fun. You deserve it.
 


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