Ok. Our team’s taking a bus from Redford, MI to Atlanta. That’s a pretty long drive. Beats driving from NYC to LA (now that was beyond boring:mad: ). How are you getting to Atlanta? How are you making your ride fun?
Now our bus is an outdated luxo bus. It has TV’s but about 2/8 of them work. And we have to watch what movies we view because we have guests. 
Alright, our team is going by bus from Holland, Michigan to Atlanta by Bus as well…
Our bus driver said he was gonna try to get us a bigger bus to go down to Atlanta with, but the other one is perfectly fine.
We’ve got movies to watch, handheld games to play, card games galore, our own music… Tons of stuff for us to do.
There’s also the ever useful thing known as sleep XD;;; get your sleep on the way there, cause you’re not gonna get it until the competition is done.
On the way back, since we leave directly after nationals, we’re usually back by 10 the next morning since we drive through the night (and spend the time sleeping).
We’ve had members of our team decide to sleep in the aisles though cause they can’t find a comfy position in the seats XD
Why aren’t books on the list? I love to read books all the time!
When MOE made the trip to ATL in a bus in 2005, reading, movies on laptops and personal DVD players, sleeping and music kept us sane, well mostly, and there was always being a pain in the butt kept things interesting at some points.
I don’t know yet about this year since the TechnoKats are very creative with ways to pass the time, but last year was hilarious! We brought a couple of those mini Nerf foot balls that has a tail fin thingy on the back and we would throw it at random people and hit them. It was fun until it hit the bus driver so he confiscated it.:mad:
Some of the mentors and leaders that I have spoken to require home work lists and have been know to provide the students with test to take that they will be missing while gone.
Ditto! Especially on an airplane!
eheheh… I forgot about that one. Yeah…we have homework and tests too.
They may not necessarily be the most EXCITING things to do, but we do them.
Besides…I can’t figure out why I forgot the only way to even get on the bus.
Last year the only thing that kept 973 sane on the really long layovers was a deck of cards. In fact, thats what we do in the hotel to. Anyone who sees us playing is welcome to join in, as some Team 100 and 1359 people know. 
Team 65 takes the 14 hour bus drive down to Atlanta to kill time we watch movies listen to music play card games dominos handheld video games and most importantly sleep some people do there homework or take test our mentors are math science and history instructors so there is help on the bus however i dont think there will be to much work being done on the bus simply because the championship is during spring break i think the bus ride is great its a great way to bond with your team
Not all buses have 12v power sockets & inverters so I’m curious as to how you powered the electronic devices for so long - other then using spare 12v batteries from the robot. =)
Granted, it was a much shorter ride, but on the bus trip back from the Chesapeake regional, we played Apples to Apples the entire way home. If you haven’t played that game with a bus full of people, you are missing out. We never stopped laughing and went through the entire set of cards. A game including the entire team makes a good bonding experience.
Talking is a good way to pass time… on the bus ride to VCU, another chaperone and I talked the entire time and on the way home from VCU, we were joined by 3 or 4 students and we spent the entire ride home talking, sometimes about serious things, other times telling funny stories and jokes… (still smiling about the vampire bat joke…) as fun as the Regional was, the bonding done on the bus ride home is one of my fondest memories from this year.
Now, Atlanta is quite a bit longer of a bus ride than VCU, so talking the whole way may not be plausible (not that I can’t do it), however, maybe I’ll get a joke contest going or something. Other than that, it will be the usual, homework, movies, games, a book or two…
Heidi
I also find the floor to be comfy.
One year we had a bunch of bored kids who starting dancing in the aisle. It started with cds players playing the smae song and then moved onto the bus pda system. I must say its much harder to dance on a moving bus, more fun.
When I was younger, my family would took quite a few long road trips down to Florida, and to pass the time I would listen to music and watch the scenery pass by. Seeing how I have a partial photographic memory, I remember many of those scenes extremely well from the industrial complexes, power plants, and railroad yards of northern New Jersey to the flat and endless rows of farmland and South of the Border signs in North Carolina.
2/8’s eh?? Not 1/4? Strange… 
Just kidding.
Anyways, on long bus trips with my team… usually it’s the craziest discussions that pass the time… Like… we’ll take one subject… (For example: books, and semi-philosophical subjects such as semi-perfect worlds… and run with it).
I remember one crazy conversation we had for about 2 hours that was based on a book someone read about a perfect society… and if that would actually be feasible, or if human nature would take over and a chaos theory would ensue… Told you it was random. But it gets people thinking… excercising the mind on the way to a competition.
And… then there are the random stuff that happens on the bus… such as pranks, and what not… (Everything we do can be easily cleaned up, and usually causes no distraction to the front of the bus (re: Driver).
Distracting the driver is a bad thing on a bus ride.
Scouting happens as well to keep in the spirit of the reason we are on the bus, and on bus trips on the way down to competitions… everyone is given the details of the robot… (A lot of members don’t touch the robot at all (being on Public Relations, or Marketing, or other non-technical fabrication teams, but we need everyone to know about the robot in case they have to talk about it to a Judge or whoever asks for that matter.)
Some PSP networks are set up as well, and I finally got to use one for about a half hour or more on the ride down to NJ this year. Oh, and then one person brought one of them wrought iron puzzle games and I had that for about an hour…
I still need to solve that one, it’s based on Ladder Logic… and very reptitive… but I can’t figure out the first (and pretty much only) step in it… It annoyed me… lol
I love bus trips where I don’t have to drive… cause it’s a time to basically do whatever you want. Chill, relax, and have fun before or after the stressful competition starts or a time to relax after a long weekend.
(Same with airplane flights as well - Just less ear popping happens on a bus usually…) 
Well one of my ideas of beating boredom was joking around with my friends but i just recieved the tragic news that 3 of them can’t go due to grade issues. That sux… but I’ll live.