pic: Ahh the good ole days when Einstein was outside in the HOT Florida sun. Who remembers?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by logank013

Just out of curiosity, when did they stop doing Einstein outdoors? Before I was born possibly (June 1999)?

Nope, that's 2002's game in the picture. I was at the 2000 National competition in the same location.

That's the last time Einstein was outdoors, BTW. (The other fields were in tents off to the left-back of frame, they can't be seen. Pits were in tents back there as well.)

Einstein (once they started calling it that) moved indoors when Nationals stopped being Nationals--the infamous 2003 Championship in Houston.* (Infamous because of the nice steep Astrodome ramps that every. single. robot. had to go up for every. single. match., and the security checks on everybody entering the Reliant, robot and all. It was a LONG walk.)


*Real old-timers will quibble on it moving indoors, because the first few Nationals events were actually indoors--in Manchester, NH, in a gym. That was before the move to Disney World in the mid-1990s--but they didn't start having multiple fields before the move, I don't think.