So here is a story to remember (stickshift+moderator=...)

[Frank(Aflak)]

So my highschool, where we build our bot, is withing a few hundred yards of Gateway Technical High School, another team that has a field that they let all of us other Saint Louis teams come practice on.

Today, we had some time down there, last minute stuffs, whatnot (some stuff works great (drivetrain) other stuff works OK (arm), other stuff doesn't (fold out wings) and other stuff should work with some early competition additions (claw)). But all that is beside the point of this story. So we needed a way to take our robot on a five minute drive (unfortunatly, there isn't a very direct route.)

So, Our moderator (Highschool valedictorian, MIT grad (chemistry), Wash U. med school student, all around smart guy) persuades some guys who work at our high school to lend us the school's compact pickup. Which is a stickshift. Which noone on the team knows how to drive. Our moderator knows the theory, and decides to go for it, seeing as its a very short drive. After he burns out of his parking spot (let the clutch out before 4000 RPM's, next time) and then stalls (don't hold the brakes and leave the clutch engaged), we finally get ready to go. I'm in the car following them (with our robot in the back, inside the bottom half of the crate, but all the interesting parts are showing). On the road, we average 5-10 mph, frequent stalls, lots of jerking, plenty of honking (its rushhour, and we are on a major road). Eventually we get there, laugh at him, test it out, pack it up. I get a ride back to school. As we pull into the lot, we get a phone call, from the student who was riding passenger with our moderator. They stalled, again, but this time its not starting. The are in a left turn lane at a stoplight, the road they are on is 6 lanes wide. Its in the city, rush hour conditions. Fun. After we laugh at them over the phone, we drag some tools back to our cave and walk out there to see what we can do.

The pickup is completely dead. The engine doens't turn over at all. Now that we have 8 guys standing around a dead truck with our robot in the back in the middle of a 6 lane street at rushhour, we decide that we have got to move it. We can't very well merge left 3 lanes and get to a side street (we are also about 15 feet from a major intersection, at which you go left to get back to school.)

So we decide to push it all the way to school. We put the lightest guy inside to steer, the rest of us to push. We track the traffic lights pattern so we can get a jump on our left turn arrow. When the light before us goes yellow, we go crazy, pushing as hard as possible. We make the turn (but many behind us did not)and get it going down the correct street. We make it to a parking lot, coast it into a handicapped spot, and then take a breather.

Finally, the matainance guy shows up, starts the truck, laughs at us, and drives it to its real parking spot.

All in all, a good time. Never thought I could go running in the middle of King's Highway at 6:00PM