The End of the Road

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and in the end
the long you take
is equal to the love
you make.

With the end of the Championships in Atlanta comes the end of the "official" FIRST season. And the end of FIRSTs run in Atlanta as they pick up and take their toys to St. Louis for the next three years.
Some thoughts:

My feelings on this year's game Breakaway.This may be the best game FIRST has come up with since Aim High in 2006. The game is challenging and exciting and easy to follow and understand especially in the eliminations. Unfortunately FIRST always has to do something to mess things up and came up with this inane ranking system that made teams do stupid things to seed better and I am truly hoping to see it go away for the off seasons.

Where does Lunacy rate compared to others years?
The list.
2004 (the robots were so athletic and amazing. Most Ohhhh/ahhh moments a FIRST game had.The game was so diverse)
2006(best game to watch. Exciting and easy to follow)
2010 (Would have ranking second if it wasn't for the retarded seeding system)
2008(I thought it was a rather fun game to watch really. Especially when it's played well)
2003(this game was better than it got credit for it's only sin was giving way to many points for the top platform)
2007(not a bad game really but brutality at the championship showed it's flaws and the endgame was frustrating and trumped all the hard work good teams did and they could do nothing to stop it)
2009( great at strategy but boring to watch)
2005(very vanilla to be honest)
2002(bleh. The game changed completely in the eliminations and became a boring pointless tug of war)

This is my FIRST year taking the lead at volunteering at a couple of events and it was both nerve wracking and exciting. I will definitely give it a try again next year!

THIS YEAR'S BEST AND WORSTS:

BEST TIME HAD: FLR. Sure running queing is hard work but the event itself is always a great time to be had every time.

MOST COMPETITIVE REGIONAL: FLR. This is more an indictment on the weakness of the event after FLR than the strength of the event.

BEST RUN REGIONAL : GTR. Once again the Regional was nearly flawless in it's execution.

MOST FUN REGIONAL: Florida. Combine the sun, the attractions and the fun teams and this regional is just gonna be hard to unseat from it's perch.

BEST ROBOT. Team 1114. Team 469 got alot of hype and what it did was a really good trick but they need good partners to assure they'll be able to execute their strategy well while 1114 can simply dominate all by itself if it so chooses.

BEST MATCH: The Einstein Finals. What huge upsets! No one would have foreseen 67, 177 (who broke into six pieces earlier in the weekend and 294 taking down 1114, 469 and 2041 after watching them crush all others in their path leading up to the final matches. A truly epic sendoff from Atlanta!(Match 1 : www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/… Match 2: www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/… )

WORST MOMENT: Getting into a screaming match with a mentor for doing my job at the Midwest regional. I had never been so angry at a person before at an event and I was prepared to wade deep into unpleasant territory if she came at me again. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed.


MOST HILARIOUS MOMENT: The Rolling Thunder scouting meeting was pure comedy gold at the championship.  

BEST FOOD. Florida. It's debatable if food poisoning actually occurred and sickened many of the volunteers but before then the preparation and variety were top notch! A special shout out the the city of Chicago which had some seriously good eats while I stayed there in particular Yolk which is over in Grant Park.

BEST HOTEL. The Park Inn in Ectobicoke, Ontario. A surprisingly elegant hotel that was a steal at $69 a night!

SADDEST MOMENT: Witnessing the downfall of team 108 struggle all weekend in Florida. This proud team is the oldest team in Florida and has provided some of the best services that FIRST teams have sworn by from SOAP and SOAPcast now both long gone due to losing their Motorola sponsorship.

MOST INSPIRING MOMENT: Watching Exploding Bacon finally break through and win a long deserved Chairman's award and watching my good friends Rolling Thunder dominate the Boston Regional on and off the field.

BEST FORM OF TRAVEL REDEEMED: Took a train to Chicago from Rochester and did the smart thing and got a roomette. I slept most of the way there and was nice and relaxed by the time I got to Chicago. I highly recommend getting a roomette if you are going Amtrak.

Not as much traveling this year as last one because there was one less week of competition and two because I tried to lessen my driving with my truck having issues.
Final thoughts on Atlanta. It got alot of beef from the FIRST teams for it's crime and it's vagrants (what cities don't ahve them but it's only real crime was that it wasn't Disney World. Orlando is not that nice a city. Atlanta worked very hard to make FIRST feel welcome there and did a damned good job all thing considered. St Louis is going to have it's work cut out for it to match Atlanta's dedication.

Time for a well earned break...
...then...
Battlecry this weekend!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

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OmenWolf's avatar
i like the 5th one!! thank you so much!!