Pittsburgh, wrap up and frustrations

Heh, if you were at Pittsburgh you probably heard our story.

Wednesday afternoon, Andy B calls Fedex to check on our crate. It was still in St Louis. Yikes! After several hours of phone calls, he got it overnighted to Pittsburgh for a hefty charge. It was supposed to be there at 10:30 AM Thursday. So at that time Thursday, we called. Well the plane it was supposed to be on had mechanical failure and was grounded. They tried to get it to another plane, but they missed the connection in Memphis. So we didnt get our bot till Friday morning.

Thats not all.

We planned on spending all day Thursday refitting the machine and fixing gearboxes, redoing some wiring and tweak auton mode. We agreed to miss all matches on Friday until that was done and just send a HP to be there. We got working Friday afternoon and we came out and won our first match off the bat. 2nd match we were in, we broke a weld on a shaft in our secondary gearbox. We missed our last match of the day repairing that. Friday we made it to the first match, and broke another one! Ahh we almost decided to give up and decline any pickings. But thanks to the wonderful pit crew, we got back up and running just minutes before alliance selections. Team 448 and 1114 selected us as their third partner and we ran the whole match we participated in without breaking anything. Finally we still have a bit of work to do in Chicago, but nothing major. This regional was probably the most exciting one I have been to.

I would personally like to thank all the teams, officials, and volunteers for supporting us all through the weekend. The wild applause and cheering for us when we were announced as the winners of the J&J Sportsmanship award really made me and the rest of the team feel good about ourselves that we have all of your support.

Special Thanks to team 448 and 1114 for selecting us in their finals alliance. You guys took a big risk by selecting us, but we hope we met your expectations and I would really like to work with you guys again.

Thanks to team 217, The Thunderchickens. Those guys were their offering support the whole weekend. You guys are awesome!

Finally, thanks to team 128 for cheering for us and keeping our morale level high. You guys were our saviors and kept us going