How far do you Travel to Mentor?

[Ginger Power]

As I'm finishing the 3 hour drive from Becker High School to North Dakota State University (it was 5 hours in a blizzard this time), I'm wondering how crazy I am. I drive 3 hours every single weekend during the build and competition seasons to mentor my team.

My question is, how far do you travel to mentor your team, and by extension how insane am I? The fact that I'm posting at 5 AM kind of answers the second part...

[Koko Ed]

I travel hundreds of miles to volunteer but our robotics site is only 13 miles from my home.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I travel hundreds of miles to volunteer but our robotics site is only 13 miles from my home.

First, I'd like to call BS on that line. You've been everywhere, so I think that it should be "I travel tens of hundreds of miles" or "many, many hundreds of miles" or "well over 1000 miles." Or there are some Koko Ed clones out there using your name.

I'm lucky, the three teams I'm working with are all within 5 miles of my house. On Wednesday I need to do two places, so that's a little longer. So all in all my weekly commute is less that three hours total.

As far as it goes with Ginger Power, how's the school work? What are you missing out as far as campus activities? Interaction with friends? I'm all for former team members coming back as mentors, but not at the expense of their University education and experience.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by Foster

As far as it goes with Ginger Power, how's the school work? What are you missing out as far as campus activities? Interaction with friends? I'm all for former team members coming back as mentors, but not at the expense of their University education and experience.

- School is easy. Robots are hard but seriously my schedule right now is nothing to worry about. 15 credits and I'll end up with a good grade in all of my classes.

- I'd like to think I'm getting my fair share of campus activities. I founded Bison Robotics at NDSU which now has around 100 members. Managing that takes up a significant amount of time, and the people I've met through the team are incredible.

- Friends are pretty much covered by Bison Robotics. It's great not being the only FRC-crazy person in Fargo. There are plenty of awesome people here.

Sorry to make this post about myself! I just wanted to clarify that deciding to volunteer 3 hours away was a calculated decision, and one that I believe is reflecting on my life in a positive way. I may indeed be crazy, but there is a method to the madness!

Thanks for the responses on this thread. Very interesting to hear the habits of some of the best mentors in FIRST!

[Christopher149]

It's a little over 2 miles to my team (857). For the rookie team no one else is available to mentor (5989), it's 62 miles (1hr 10 minutes) one-way. I've gone twice this build season.

*Edit: By "no one else", I mean no one from one of the 3 veteran teams nearby. 5989 meeting during school hours makes helping them interesting.

[Roger]

3.3 miles. Google, who is now stalking me on my phone, says it's 9 minutes home, always with a 1 minute delay because of "light traffic on Washington Street", no matter what time day or night. I can trim 2/10ths of a mile going instead via Polley Lane, but that has more turns and the car doesn't know that way as well.

Oddly, I used to take one of the student/mentors home which was a mile from the school, and further away from my house, but leaving his house it was only 2.8 miles to my house. Walpole has a temporal space anomaly.

[Jon Stratis]

22 miles each way, 5 times a week. so about 200 miles total per week right now!

[Lil' Lavery]

~20 minutes from home
~45 minutes from work in typical afternoon traffic

[Steven Smith]

Google has started recognizing the school as home instead of my house... so I travel 0 miles to mentor, but about 5 minutes home to sleep.

[Kevin Selavko]

About 45 minutes (traffic permitting) each way, every other day.

[Basel A]

Only 3.2 miles, but the commute takes about 25 minutes taking a city bus. Not so bad, really.

[Knufire]

3 minutes to the shop by car. Before I moved after 2014, it was about half that.

I guess my travel time to our regional in 2014 would be zero as the venue parking lot is where I parked anyway?

[David Brinza]

Our build site is 15 miles out of my way for my work commute and 18 miles from my home. I drive roughly 100 miles a week for robotics during build season.

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

2.5 miles from home,
2 miles from school
4 miles from work

7 times a week

[GeeTwo]

2 miles home to shop. There's a hardware store on the way, on the right side of the road. I think I put in more mileage going to and from Home Depot and Lowes than from the house to and from the workshop. The rookie teams we mentor are about 45 minutes away; so far, most of the travel has been them coming to us. Fountainbleu FLL tournament is about 30 minutes away, and the state FLL tournament is about 45 minutes away; the team provides the core of the referee, traffic control, and field reset for both. Bayou Regional is about an hour away from anywhere in Slidell. St Louis last year was about the only 100+ mile trip I've taken so far to mentor or volunteer.

Edit: Perry regularly walked home from school last year in decent weather, even though there was a bus.