First of all we would like to thank all of our donors who backed us on Kickstarter. Without you, going to the FRC world championships would not have been possible!
The world championships was a wonderful experience for us. Arriving a few days before the tournament, we had a little bit of time to go sightseeing. We had a blast at the Gateway Arch, riding the trams all the way up to the top. The ride up was a bit creaky and scary, but it was amazing to see the city from 600 feet high!
Then we ate some delicious burgers for lunch and went to the DaVinci exhibition where we saw lots of great inventions, innovative designs, and fascinating complex mechanisms. What an educational experience!
The next day, we went to the baseball game with the St. Louis Cardinals playing against the Pirates. Unfortunately it was super cold and raining. We were freezing up in the stands- good thing we each had a bag of vitamin C to keep us from getting sick! But it was still a great experience.
The tournament was three full days of pure hard work. We were in the Archimedes division. Team members in the pit were working nonstop on maintaining the robot, and the drive team walked back and fourth pulling the robot across the very long and tiring distance from the pit to the arena. Everyone was exhausted at the end of each day, but it was great exercise!
We did not win anything at the tournament, but we still enjoyed the awesome experience meeting so many different teams and making new friends. We hope that we qualify for the world championships again this coming season.
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As for what we are doing currently, our VEX team hard at work improving their robot for the next Toss Up tournament at Nanakuli High School on October 19. After not doing as well as we wanted to at the last two tournaments, we've learned a lot from our mistakes and our new robot will be our best yet. We even spray painted the polycarb platform for the intake and drew a falcon on it for school spirit. :)
Many thanks to Dylan, Jackie, Masa, Ken, and Paul for an awesome VEX team. Thank you also to the Wagners, Mrs. Marion, Mr. Hagiwara, Mrs. Mitsui, and Mr. and Mrs. Bell for supervision in the garage and providing us with assistance!
We will keep you posted about how we do at the tournament.
