The stupid Noodles...

[MrForbes]

We have them at a variety of stores here in Arizona in January.

Our local Ace Hardware gave the team $250 of merchandise! Thanks Ace

[popo308]

We seem to always have some around from last year... or parents are willing to give up there noodles and just buy new ones in the summer when stores stock them again...

[Alex_Miller]

This is obviously too late to matter by now, but we were able to find some at valley pool and spa... I think that's where we got them. Or you can just buy them online.

[Dan Petrovic]

We bought some for real cheap back in October or around then.

Planning ahead is important for us northern teams.

[DarkFlame145]

We stock up in the summer

[purplecatnip]

being in california it wasn't exactly a problem
though the pool noodles were great for solving the problem of boredom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvZhThV69hw

[dsmoker]

We lucked out and had bought about 15 noodles over the summer at, of all places, the dollar store (we live on the beach, so we always have a full stock). We just whipped some out of basement storage and were ready to go. You can bet that we'll be buying more at the dollar store this summer!

[Manoel]

Absolutely no problems buying them in the South Hemisphere

[Racer26]

Yeah, you northern US folk think its hard in the winter... up here in Canada they stop selling them in September, October at the latest... They're next to impossible to find.

[BanksKid]

well im gonna be honest with you mcmaster doesnt have them........ but wallmart Does stock them year round at least they do here in the southeast

btw does anyone else have chunks missing in thier noodles from playing luke skywalker

[purduephotog]

Purchase them from Leslie's pool supply - 1.99 each, free shipping.

I learned my lesson this year- many stores had them in stock, but 2 weeks ago a local robotics team went around and bought all the stores out. The one store knew it was for robotics and had heard the team saying they had already cleaned out the other stores....

We borrowed 8 from another team and will return 8 when we get our shipment in. Lesson learned: Buy in the summer.....

[Leav]

Originally Posted by purduephotog

Purchase them from Leslie's pool supply - 1.99 each, free shipping.

I learned my lesson this year- many stores had them in stock, but 2 weeks ago a local robotics team went around and bought all the stores out. The one store knew it was for robotics and had heard the team saying they had already cleaned out the other stores....

We borrowed 8 from another team and will return 8 when we get our shipment in. Lesson learned: Buy in the summer.....

why would a team do that? not very GP.....

[tdlrali]

why would a team do that? not very GP.....

They obviously didn't do it to sabotage the other teams. Most likely the stores only had a few noodles each, and it takes somewhere between 6-10 noodles per robot. If they built a practice robot, they probably needed around 20 noodles.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Leav

why would a team do that? not very GP.....

Why would teams buy out the entire stock of Poof balls in New Hampshire and Massachusetts?

[purduephotog]

Originally Posted by EricH

Why would teams buy out the entire stock of Poof balls in New Hampshire and Massachusetts?

Ya know, that post sums up exactly one of my greater annoyances with the FIRST program of keeping everything under wraps. How much fuel, energy, and time was wasted there. Assume an engineer billing within a company is 150$ an hour. The exercise is left to the reader.

Give me an OPTION to pre-buy game pieces. We had ruptured our ball before anyone even knew where to order replacements. Poofs had to be tracked down- bad for the environment. Etc etc. Pool noodles- yes, I knew about them but not knowing they were going to be required effectively made me not order them.

It's times like this that I wish there was an option for a super secret committee vote that would call me at 3am in the morning and say "Jason- you have the option of committing an additional 85$ towards the KOP to pre-purchase field equipment. Do you accept this offer?".