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The robot exploded. JKAPRILFOOLSLOLOL. Yeah no...

Posted by Anna on April 1, 2010

Day one of the Minnesota North Star Regional is now over, and the Green Machine is in pretty good shape!

We started out a little confused by the fact that our pit, unlike all the others, was not the typical 10x10 (or is it 8x8? I can never remember...) foot pit. Rather, because of spacing issues, we got lucky and got stuck with a 5x20 pit, so it's super long and skinny. It was a very odd adjustment, but of course we managed. The banners were a bit confusing since they're designed for a normal sized pit so now they don't fit right, but thankfully we're good at improvising.

Since today was merely a practice day the matches weren't exactly exciting. Actually I can't completely validate this statement because I only watched about three matches and spent the rest of the day in the pits working on the robot. There were actually quite a few good robots out there, but the large majority of them (including us) stayed in the pits the whole day, so we won't know for sure until tomorrow which robots to look out for.

As for us, I'm very excited to say that Zazu WORKS! It drives smoothly, the new roller we installed this morning excellently keeps the ball in place, and the kicker kicks. Tomorrow before our matches we're going to lower the kicker a few notches so that we can get a bit more loft (right now we can only hit people in the shins) so we can maybe get close to scoring from places other than the nearest section of the field. Woohooo we'll be able to do more than defense this competition!
I know this is completely irrelevent, but I must say that the stairs in this arena are freakishly steep. Within the first hour of the competition I already saw four people trip up the stairs. It makes it feel like I'm walking up some ancient Mayan temple or something, and I'm always afraid I'm going to miss a step and tumble down hundreds of stairs... Eep!

Expect much more excitement tomorrow!

Anna