In recent years Team 5826 has been a "one event" team. It has mostly been a question of money, the transportation, lodging, registration costs of that second event have been just out of reach. But most teams, programs really, that enjoy success do two events. A few over achievers do three. There are some things you only learn by doing and only learn well by doing repeatedly.
So for this season we've drawn down our reserves to Ramen Noodle levels and decided to do two events.
Our first tournament was a considerable success. With a few more breaks, or to be honest with about 5% more focus during build season, we'd be heading to Worlds. Playing again a month later will be a different experience. Our robot will be better. But so also will everyone else's.
My status as Robot Overlord generally gives me a fairly good glimpse of the future. I can usually tell you what a given group of students with a specific project and a known amount of resources can accomplish. But when I got back from my most atypical Florida vacation - having missed a number of working sessions - they were doing new things. Weird things. "When did you program the robot to track down and grab that game piece autonomously?" "Oh, we've been working on that a while." They insist that several clever ideas were things they mentioned in passing several weeks ago.
I dunno, maybe they did. We were in serious crisis rebuild mode about ten days before our first event and I might have missed a few ridiculous sounding pie in the sky concepts....
So we'll be packing up and heading off early tomorrow. Everything seems to be ready. And how will we do?
I'm like a Mariner in ancient times, realizing that he's sailed off the edge of the map entirely. I don't know what happens next.
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