I applied for my volunteering events this morning.
WEEK ONE: Palmetto
WEEK TWO: New York Tech Valley
WEEK THREE: FLR
WEEK FOUR: Greater Pittsburgh
WEEK FIVE Hawaii
WEEK SIX: FIRST in Texas District Championships
WEEK SEVEN: MSC
WEEK EIGHT: Houston Championships (not available to apply for yet but I’ll be there)
WEEK NINE: Detroit Championships (also not available to apply for yet but I’ll be there too)
So what is your 2019 Deep Space tour?
For me everything is tentative since I’m just getting into a new job and I’m not sure quite how FIRST will play yet but:
WEEK ONE: thebluealliance.com
WEEK TWO: Lake Superior/Northern Lights
WEEK THREE: Great Northern Regional
WEEK FOUR: Iowa/CIR via TBA
WEEK FIVE 10K (MFR?)/North Star/Wisconsin (really depends on the random number generator
WEEK SIX: 7 Rivers Regional via TBA
WEEK SEVEN: MSC via TBA
WEEK EIGHT: Houston Championship via TBA
WEEK NINE: Detroit Championships (if we qualify… because I’m not quite as crazy as you Koko Ed 
)
I did have a brief moment of thinking “Maybe I could do something every week”, but then my sanity returned. Back-to-back weekends are tough, though I’ll take off from work the week between weeks 6 and 7 so that I get to see my family occasionally.
Week 2: Waterbury
Week 4: Western NE
Week 6: Hartford
Week 7: NEDCMP at WPI
Week 1: Israel District #1
Week 2: Israel District #2
Week 2.5: Israel District #3
Week 3: Israel District #4
Week 4: Israel DCMP
…
Week 9: Detroit Half-Champ
Unfortunately, everything else is a bit too far away.
Ditto
Then Detroit.
Orange County
Duluth
Grand Forks
Peoria
Minneapolis
La Crosse
Houston
Detroit
Though I didn’t actually apply to Houston or Detroit yet since they’re not in the system.
Planning on OCR, one of the two L.A. events, Ventura. Trying to spread out me being away from work a bit.
Week 1: The Blue Alliance
Week 2: Lakeview District
Week 3: Gull Lake District (Setup)
Week 4: TBD
Week 5: TBD (Hopefully East Kentwood District)
Week 6: TBD (Probably scouting on TBA)
Week 7: MSC
Week 8: Rest
Week 9: Hopefully Detroit CMP
How much vacation time do you get from your employer or are you independently wealthy?
As Peter Cooper stated, back to back weekends can be tough. I had to take extra vacation time when my flight out of Toronto was delayed by bad weather.
I have 30 days of vacation time. I’ve been working at Xerox for over 30 years.
So you just made a copy of yourself to be at all these events?
30 days of work days off. Weekends don’t count. I usually use a couple of days of vacation per event and use the full five days for an event and both championships. Also during the season I use the floating Good Friday holiday as a “get out of jail free card” and get another day off for free during an event.
I’ll have four days of vacation left to use for going to IRI, Robots @ CNE and driving to R2OC.
Envy. Envy. Envy…
I’ve moved around too many times to have that much vacation time :o
With the quality of the work Ed does, the event organizers might do this once he arrives at the event venue 
If that was the case I would have one of me at most, if not all, the events.
Does that mean you can become the “Agent Smith” of volunteers (but without the violence)?
Ummmmm… well… I get 5 days of PTO. Super great, I know. As for being independently wealthy: HA! I just started my job 3 and a half weeks ago and I’m not taking a salary from my own company yet. I’m just crazy and I enjoy FRC events. My engineering job is also an hourly position, and they advertised flexible scheduling as a benefit during my interview. We’ll see exactly how far I can push that (especially in my first year) but my hope is to work hard early in the week so as to minimize the amount of PTO I use up.
The tour has changed quite a bit:
I applied for my volunteering events this morning.
WEEK ONE: Del Mar
WEEK TWO: San Diego
WEEK THREE: FLR
WEEK FOUR: Greater Pittsburgh
WEEK FIVE Wisconsin
WEEK SIX: FIRST in Texas District Championships
WEEK SEVEN: MSC
WEEK EIGHT: Houston Championships (not available to apply for yet but I’ll be there)
WEEK NINE: Detroit Championships (also not available to apply for yet but I’ll be there too)
I have since been assigned seven of nine of the events. Still waiting to hear from San Diego and Wisconsin.
Be prepared down in Week 1 and 2. That venue takes a breeze on a calm day, and SoCal is already cold by our standards (which… well… You’ll be nice and warm, being from NY and all 
)
Have fun down there!
New Job and minimal built up PTO to cover the weekdays
So volunteering at Orange County week 1 while my team competes at Del Mar week 1
Thanks for volunteering! 2656 will see you at Greater Pittsburgh in Week Four.