A Weekend Full of Silly Hopes and Frisbees

Hello! I was going to do this post yesterday, but I felt that it would be a little inappropriate with what happened in Boston :/
So as you know, this past weekend I was at Eastern Michigan University for the robotics competition. Robotics has the stereotype of "nerd, nerd, nerd" but in all honesty, you have to be really smart and it takes a lot of patience. Well, I guess I'm trying to say that's it not all nerds :P
When I went to my first robotics competition (of my brother's, I'm not in it yet), I was a bit confused but it didn't take me long to catch on. I thought it would be boring, but it was SWEET!

Let me explain something. I like robotics because you work with other teams who you've never worked with before and try to team up and beat another team by getting the most points. It's very competitive but you can tell that everybody is having fun too! Between matches, they play the songs with dances with them and people line up and do the dances. It's really funny to watch :) The video below is from the world championship last year I think. I just found it on Youtube :)

This year's challenge was called "Ultimate Ascent" and you should watch it here because it explains everything really well..... If you have any questions, just ask :) I can answer them!

So we left on Friday after my dad got home from work and when we got to our hotel, we found out that it was booked completely full! Thankfully, my mom got us a reservation a few weeks beforehand. We got into our room though, and there was only one bed instead of two..... And they didn't even have a pullout couch. My mom and I stayed up until 12:00 AM watching October Baby, which was amazing by the way, and then we all crammed into the bed. I couldn't get to sleep till about 12:30 because my dad was snoring super loudly and I had to sleep with earplugs because it was so loud.

In the morning, I woke up at 6:30 AM so I only got about six hours of sleep and I couldn't get back to sleep :(

We got to EMU and sat by our team at about 8:30. My brother's team's robot had mechanical problems so they didn't do very good on Thursday and Friday (we weren't there for those) but on Saturday, the fixed the problems and absolutely KILLED IT! 

About halfway through the qualifying rounds on Saturday, they stopped the competition and announced that there was a special guest that needed recognition.... I was like confused and sorta like "get on with it" but it turned out to be the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder! It was very interesting to see him and I didn't talk to him, but when I was down in the pits, he was on a VIP tour and was two feet away from me.... I could have poked him if I wanted, but that would've been weird, lol!

Click HERE to see an actual video of state. I'm in this video by the way, you just can't tell it's me :P This was the first match of Saturday, and it was on of the best of the day! The red alliance only won by two points..... It was pretty intense. 

After the qualifying rounds, the top 8 ranked teams get to pick two other teams to make their alliance and we didn't have much hope to get picked, but one of the teams there called Hot wanted us, but their alliance partner didn't. We didn't get picked. 

We're not going to Worlds in St. Louis. Oh well, maybe next year! 

And please consider joining robotics cause I'm going to and maybe I'll see you at worlds next year! :) If you're going to worlds and I'm going to worlds, then I will let you meet me.... Lol.

~July