The 2008 Beantown Blitz (Hosted by team #125)

[Ken Streeter]

I'd like to say a big THANKS to all those that worked at the 2008 Beantown Blitz! The organizers did a great job with the pre-event preparations; the "drive-in/drive-out" pit unloading/loading was awesome; the drink and pizza lunch in the pit areas was convenient and not horribly overpriced; the field reset crews, announcers, and scorers all did their jobs quickly and effectively, being a help to teams, rather than an impediment; the judges were very encouraging to all the teams they interviewed, taking a genuine interest in the designs of the teams, and the referees did a great job of not only making the right calls, but also explaining their reasons and rationale to teams that were penalized. In all, I thought that everyone I encountered who was involved with running the tournament sought to make the event an enjoyable one for the participants.

We were very thankful for the opportunity to run both of our robot configurations as two separate teams and were honored to receive a robot design award for each of the two robots.

We'd also like to thank our alliance partners: #1-seeded Team 181 for choosing Speed Racer as the first pick and Team 2593 for giving us a well-rounded alliance -- we enjoyed the run to the semifinals and are sorry that we had to e-stop Speed Racer just over half-way through the deciding match. We're also grateful to Team 1350 for choosing our "big bot" as their first choice and 1027 for their contribution, too. Having our #7 seeded alliance go out in the quarterfinals to the BTB Champion Alliance of 348, 121, 69 was a very respectable showing!

I'd also like to thank some of our opposition: Team 88 for their gracious professionalism in calling their timeout on Speed Racer's behalf in the semifinals; Teams 121, 177, 195, and 2079 for their gracious words regarding our robots, and Team 663 for politely shedding Speed Racer from their robot after we spent what seemed like half of one match (including completion of a half-lap of the field) while being "high-sided" sideways on the un-bumpered side of their robot. There are probably many other teams that deserve our thanks that I didn't witness personally.

We're looking forward to Beantown Blitz again in 2009!

PS: Video of Speed Racer's round with 7-lines in autonomous and 13-lap teleop is now on our team web pages at http://www.mechanicalmayhem.org/teamvideos.asp