Carpet Solutions

[Hallry]

How big is your garage? Is there anyway you could practice in there instead? It must be a pain having to use the parking lot with weather and all.

We're in a similar situation to you, but not as bad. We use our schools' cafeteria, and each day have to move/roll out our carpets (two quarter-size fields) and move/reassemble our field elements (which are each stored in adjacent rooms, about 15 yards away for the carpet and 50 yards away for the field elements), and then disassemble and restore them afterwards. When we get to use the gym, which we had to more often this year due to it's higher ceiling, the carpet is stored about 200 yards away (and up some stairs), and the field elements about 150 yards away. Luckily, on weekends, we can leave the field set up in cafeteria overnight, since our school is not in season for the week of ship date, we can leave it set up in the gym then. But here's the secret: CARTS. Obvious and simply answer, but having wheels makes it so much easier and quicker to move, with less carrying involved. I completely get what you mean about the hassle of putting it away in the end, there is ALWAYS less hand available since people leave, making it much harder to do. We have started requiring for people to stay later to help clean up everything now, so it's not the same 5 people stuck doing it everyday.

We find using two quarter-sized carpets satisfies all the practice we require. We usually build between a quarter to a half of the total field elements, and vary the positions of two carpets to create either the full length of the field (which was good for Rebound Rumble for traversing the barrier and bridge and for collecting balls), or the full width of the field (which was good for Logomotion to fit the full rack for tubes).