I've gone to another world and come back!
Listen to me!

With my attendance of Ramp Riot last weekend in Phili and the Ruckus Lessons Learned meeting last night the first season has officially wrapped up and we bid goodbye to Lunacy.
Some thoughts:

The more I saw Lunacy the less I like it. It truly came across as Snails Jousting or Robots Waltzing or whatever you wanted to call it. Basically it wasn't spectator friendly. I blame the Regolith.

When I was heading down to Phili last Friday there was a big Nor'easter off the coast that was going to swamp New Jersey where my hotel was (when you do a search for hotels on hotels.com they give you the general area which is apparently the East Coast of the United States. Where my friends Rolling Thunder were staying was a rather pricey Hilton Garden Inn that I actually stayed at two years ago but down the street was a Best Western that I bet was under a hundred dollars. I could have handled that). The weather was actually rather tame which was good because I had to navigate the insane and inane roads of New Jersey. I drove around the neighborhood for a half and hour and I could see the hotel from the road but I couldn't find an entrance to it. Ws it some mystical portal that could only be activated by some special amulate that reveals the entrance from moonilight from a virgin full moon or something? Actually this is New Jersey, it's too bleh for magic to exist. I had to cut through a car dealership and enter through the back end of the property which would pass for the delivery entrance for most hotels but for this one this is how they greet customers with their giant sized pot holes that look like they were caused by dinosaur killing meteors.
The hotel itself was fine though I wasn't so keen on having to pay extra for the internet that winked in and out constantly and waaaaasss sssssssssssssssooooooooooo sssssssssssssssllllllllllllllllllooooooo ooooowwwww.

Going to Ramp Riot on Saturday I had to go straight through Philadelphia and when you don't know where you are going you can do some very stupid and dangerous things like go down the wrong side of a a major road. The first sign that I was in trouble was I noticed the traffic lights were backwards. "HOLY SHIT!" I exclaimed. Fortunately the oncoming traffic was held up by a traffic light before they could race over to play Kill the Tourist and I got to the other side of the road before I got into real trouble.

Ramp Riot itself was rather discombobulated. The off season was hurt by having to make do with impromptu programming to make the field run and many events struggled. The event had trouble with the clock and with scoring accuracy. They also could not provide me with a list to find the teams for the alliances for the eliminations so basically me and my assistant Katie had to wing it. One team disappeared completely at lunch time to go eat lunch at Wawa and their partners were looking for them to talk strategy and thus had to replace them for their first match. That actually caused a bit of controversy as the team had to be completely replaced according to FIRST rules. While that is true considering that they let slide the scoring inconsistencies and the clock issue that effected matches then shouldn't it be ok to let this slide. The team that was booted does not get to participate in the elims very often if at all and it was their fault for missing their match but to do this to them bothered me. I saw those poor girls leaving and they were broken hearted. It would not surprise me if that team did not return to the event.If you're gonna be inconstant be consitant in your inconstancy.

After the event I went to dinner with Rolling Thunder at some Italian Restaurant that GPS could not locate. It was a mile and a half beyond where it said it was and I had to order the most expensive item on the menu ( Veal Parmigiana) which was so huge I didn't even eat the pasta that came with it( I ate that when I got home). I did find room for my desert though which I can't pronounce (Tiramisu) but I ate it up pretty quick.

Later in the week I ditched the X-Cats pre season meeting to attend the Rah Cha Cha Ruckus planning committee lesson learned meeting so we can properly plan for next season's Ruckus which went pretty well except for the injuries. One really great piece of news was we made a significant profit and we may even consider lowering the price to attract more teams.
After the meeting we went to dinner at Moe's (even though I ate dinner earlier) and had a massive Homewrecker burrito which added 10 pounds to me easily (I heard those things have up to 2000 calories. YIKES!).

Now to start planning for the new season which starts in January with the usual changes FIRST unleashes on us every year with alarming frequency. Now I'm facing the possibility of not having my "specialty" to participate in anymore and having to find something else to do. Either designing the Hall of Fame or doing CAD I suppose.
We'll just have to wait n see.

From the point of conception
To the moment of Truth
At the point of surrender
To the burden of proof
From the point of ignition
To the final drive
The point of the journey
Is not to arrive
anything can happen