It is impossible... ...until there is no other way...

[Joe Johnson]

This is sort of a general life lesson thread. So... take a break from the discussions of this or that rule or which refs missed what call, put up your feet and think of an example from your own life.

One of the most important lessons that FIRST keeps teaching me over and over is that in so many parts of our lives, we KNOW something is impossible so we just don't really give a solution our full concentration.

For example, this past weekend our robot needed a bit more torque in high gear. We had enough in low, but high gear was a bit dicey turning with our grippy wheels. But... I had decided to go direct drive to one of our wheels with an (excellent I might add) AndyMark Super Shifter. So... ...there was nothing to be done...

Skip to the first practice match of our most recent regional. I asked our driver to try going over the bump at a 45 degree angle rather than taking it on straight on. The robot really went over nicely but when we got back to the pits, I saw that we'd bent the output axle of the AndyMark (the robot designers fault, not the Super Shifter -- hitting the ground at an oblique angle on one wheel kind of put a hit to our drive wheel that I hadn't fully thought out). But... ...there was nothing to be done...

Skip to the first match of the finals. We had a great run in the seeding matches and by a combination of skill and good fortune we were #4 Seed. As we got ready for the first Qtr Final match, and we went through our preflight check, the right gearbox was not working well in low gear -- pulling way too much current. Bad luck but at least we still had high gear and besides... ...there was nothing to be done...

We got slaughtered in our first match because of our toxic combination of poor turning in high and our inability to go into low (well that plus the other team played well). I was certain we were going to get slaughtered again if we didn't do SOMETHING.

Then it hit me. The stress on the gearbox probably just skewed the gearbox shafts just enough to cause a bind in one of the gear pairs. There was no reason to think that they wouldn't re-align if I loosened a few bolts wacked the case and tightened them again. A hectic bit of wrench work later and we were ready to roll.

We lost a close 2nd Qtr Final match and exited the tourney. But at least we went out swinging.

It was on the way home from the competition that it REALLY hit me.

I was thinking about "after glow" competitions and our teams chances of doing well at them. The horror of not having enough torque in high gear and the possibility that my poor design choices could cause us to freeze up at random moments in a match hit me full force. Now I HAD to fix those darn gearbox problems.

And suddenly, I thought of a simple fix that I could have implemented at the regional had I not KNOWN that a fix was impossible. With an hour of work once we have our robot back, we'll have our chassis running better than ever and immune to these two scourges.

This story got a bit longer than I wanted, but I think that it is a typical story not just in FIRST circles but many many parts of our lives.

I can think of 10's of examples from FIRST alone where things were IMPOSSIBLE until I just HAD to figure out a way to make them possible.

How many of you have had similar lessons taught to you by FIRST?

Do tell.

Joe J.