Day 1 of competition – Part Deux

Phew! What an afternoon! To go from 9^th in the morning, to 25^th at 2:30 to 15^th at 3:30 was a wild ride! To quote Charlie Frank, "I guess the other teams figured out that they needed to do some defense on us."

Match 3 was not a success – the auton mode did not work well, and we were blocked by other robots. We went down in that one. Likewise in Match 4, the auton mode did not work well at all, and we weren't able to hurdle as well as we had earlier. Both losses were close.

So we went into Match 5 with lower spirits – but lo and behold, our auton mode worked flawlessly and the drive team was amazing, scooting around other bots, hurdling with ease. It was a big win for the team, and spirits are soaring again. We still have the high score to beat from this morning.

We'll go into the second day of competition 3 – 2, and have 3 matches tomorrow (at 9:36, 10:30 and 11:18 – approximately). How we do tomorrow will decide whether or not we end up in the finals. If we end up in the top 8 - we're definitely in. Anything below that, we'll have to wait to see if one of the top 8 picks us as an alliance partner. Keep your fingers crossed that we are not done at noon.

Look for an update from me shortly after noon tomorrow. I've already checked to see if the Starbucks here has wireless, since I won't be able to use the hotel's wireless.

Stay tuned for pictures in about 1/2 hour.