2010 Competition Season

Day Two – This is IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Have you ever had a situation where you struggled and just felt like giving up? Well that was the feeling for a few members of the Thunder today. We had to get up at about 5:30-6am, get breakfast and run out the door to line up at the Georgia dome in order to get seats with “runners”, however really, they are just speed walkers Practice matches started right at 9am and 1511 secondary drivers got to do some practice rounds in order to be prepared for filling in on Friday when the Chairman's students will present.

Many got breakfast from the hotel shop, MORRSELS which featured breakfast sandwiches, croissants, cereal, coffees, juices and sodas. The dome venue offered anything from regular basic concession foods to fresh fruit smoothies, quesidillas to dots ice cream and candy apples/cotton candy.

It was strange to have practice matches and qualifications matches all in the same day as traditionally in the past, there was an entire day dedicated to practicing.

The arena – the arena, or Georgia Dome is the huge home of the Atlanta football player, and to think that rabid teenagers have taken it over! Held within the arena there are FOUR FRC Breakaway fields called: Curie, Newton, Archimedes and Galileo. Between our Curie field and the Galileo field is the Einstein FRC field where the Champions of each division will face off. It isn't just FRC all on that floor though! The FLL and FTC competitions are also going on all within that dome!

With all the FIRST Teams, participants and fans, together, our force fills about half the entire arena! We anticipate that there will be many more, as several have pledged to bring more people into science and technology which can relate to FIRST.

Not to surprise those of you at home, but if you didn't know – the competition site and the pit set ups are in two different buildings parted by a 10-15 minute walk depending o people traffic and your slowness. When routing from the arena, you go through the West Point open grassy outdoors and proceed into another building where conferences are held and the Chairman's hall of fame.

Many of our students attended open conference sessions topical to anything from press releases to pneumatics, or presentation skills.

The Chairman's hall of fame features past international Chairman's award winners such as the local X-Cats (FRC 191), and Miracle Workerz aka MOE (365). 

The pit area is not like any you might have seen at a regional. It's about quadruple the size as it is accommodated to suit over 300 teams from all over the world. Robots were being carted here and there, left and right all over the place and all you can hear is the constant grinding sound of teams using power tools and shouting for tools. It's flooded with students, mentors and visitors that tour all over. Sometimes event FLL students and FTC students. What some rookie or young teams may not have known though, was that judges had been walking around in-cognito!

While many of the odds were against us today, we only won one of our matches because of several robot break downs. As if that would stop the Thunder though! The astounding pit-crew jumped right on the problem and worked to resolve it as soon as possible.

The one match we won was extremely successful which concluded with THREE robot hangs on our alliance. It was the first time ever reported that three robots on one alliance have hung successfully.

Cynette’s note:  After the matches were done for the day, Crystal and Parentor Lee went to the conference center and gave a 45 minute presentation on writing press releases that will attract the media and make them want to cover a robotics team.  Then Crystal caught up to the other students that were headed to the Robo-Prom, a “semi-formal” dance for team members! Hopefully I’ll get reports on those events and on the rest of the weekend!

Day One – Fly, Fly away!
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

The dedicated Thunder hit the Rochester airport at about 5:45 am and got through checkpoint securities surprisingly quick! Everyone grabbed some coffee and breakfast and the plane boarding was right after. Our flight took off on time – 7:30am SHARP! It was a pleasant fly down with refreshments and snacks.  We hit Atlanta at about 9:30am ad headed off to the train. As all of 1511 loaded up and the train doors closed. Funny story, we saw Kim and Eric (Mentors from Afar) getting ready to board the next train... unfortunately, they could not hear or see us. Following that we board MARTA which was a new experience for many kids.

Today was the tour day for many as we've visited the Atlanta Aquarium, CNN tower, and even Coke Factory. Upon arriving at the Omni Hotel, aka home, we all stored our luggage in a secured room because our rooms were not ready yet!

A little bit about about the Omni and CNN – they are joined together, and conveniently enough the CNN center has a giant food court with various vendors such as Moe's, Arby's, Chick-fil-A and much more in HUGE quantities! When you entered the foodcourt, what you would see are multiple cubicle windows! It was like a building inside a building! Not only that, but you will see a giant flight of an escalator for the tour, and a large world globe!

Lunch at the CNN foodcourt was just the beginning of the day! The sun shined a good 80 degrees or so for us all day...how pleasant! Many of us took advantage of the open pool this year since it was open.

A thank you is in order to all that helped to unpack and set-up the pits! (And pushed Thunderfoot through inspection!) And a huge HUGE thank you to team 1126 – Webster Thomas SparX who transported a good portion of the FRC teams robots, tools and various other things!

After a day of touring, the pool was a pleasant refresher for not just our team, but others that had also homed at the Omni. Not too far off is a wonderful hot tub that just melted our muscles and helped us ease up from a day of travel.

Because this is all I have for the day...goodnight! I am enthusiastically and graciously accepting sleep!

Crystal.

The student team members have arrived in Atlanta with the school advisors and chaperones! I don't have much of an update yet, but it is good to know they have arrived safely!  The rest of the team leaves Rochester just a little before 6 pm.  Our group will be close to 50 strong! 

The counter on the FIRST site says the competition starts in just over 19 hours, but our unpacking crew gets to uncrate Thunderfoot, and to do as much as they can in three hours tonight to get the robot inspected.

Be sure to check out the action using the web casts or on NASA TV starting tomorrow when the qualification rounds begin at 1 pm (Atlanta time).  Here is the link! http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics/

This past weekend was the final time to get everything all set for the trip to Championships in Atlanta!  I hope we make it look easy from the outside, but it is amazing to see the amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes.

FIRST Conference Presentations.  Crystal, Parentor Lee spend lots of time putting the final touches on their presentation on "How to Write a Press Release."  And Mentor-from-afar Kim has two presentations to give - one on holding an off-season event and one on presentation skills.

All Rookie Meet and Greet and the 2010 Meet the Rookies Book.  Parent Peter and Parentor Lee spent hours and hours working on the data collection for the rookie book, assisted at various time by other students and adults.  The final preparation for the ARMAG included printing the invitations and buying some cool prizes.  I'm hoping I'll find a giant soccer ball waiting at my doorstep when I get home today!

Spare parts for the Robot!  The mechanical team was busy fabricating a second winch mechanism, and other spare parts for Thunderfoot.

Chairman's Presentation - The presenters were struggling to find a time to meet and practice, but I know they will work hard to make the best possible presentation in Atlanta - while the rest of us keep our fingers crossed!

Button Making - Supermom Sharon was busy making more team buttons for Atlanta.  We have almost totally depleted our supply of button making parts, and we gave away way too many buttons in Boston, so our Atlanta supply won't be nearly enough!

Scouting! The scouters and strategy subteam was busy getting the scouting laptops back in tip-top shape.  They were also spending time watching videos of some of the robots in action at regional competitions.  We are ready for scouting the 80+ teams in the CURIE division. The Curie Division looks like it has lots of tough robot competition. 

The excitement is building as The Thunder Just Keeps Getting Louder!

One of the best qualities of Rolling Thunder is that we are family.  And as a family we are learning that some of our greatest challenges have nothing to do with the robot or with the competition.  It has to do with life.

In and through our week before Boston and and continuing through this week, our team has had an underlying story, one that makes me especially proud of the mentors and adult leaders. We operated the last week before the regional without our team leader, Larry. His dad became gravely ill and Larry was called home (Connecticut). His fiancée, Leann, who does our Chairman’s prep was our only contact with him, stayed here in NY. We made a call to keep it very low key for the students since the expend so much energy to prepare for competition and to get ahead on school work, that we knew we didn't need to add to that burden. The final preparation meetings and the mandatory travel meeting were held, the final packing and trip prep and all that stuff was done without Larry. Mentors and teachers just kept taking pieces of the work to be done and making it sure it was done. I’m sure most of the team members didn’t even notice a real difference as great care was taken to not make it a big deal. 

Larry stayed with his family until the Wednesday before Boston. Leann picked Larry up on Wednesday evening as the caravan passed close by the exit to his hometown. The adults continued to encourage and do things to take the load from Larry, but made sure he had full reign as team leader (which has been an important part of ensuring the successful transition from Kim to Larry). The kids just loved him and accepted his leadership which has also been the whole hallmark of this season for us. (If you want to know how to adapt to change, watch a teenager – we as adults learned much from their ability to adapt.)

Saturday, after all of the celebrations, Larry returned to his family. His parent’s wedding anniversary was Sunday, and Larry’s dad died late that night. So this past week, instead of having a chance to celebrate with the team at our meeting, Larry was making those final preparations. He has shown great strength of character and I am very much impressed with him. We can’t wait to get him back to let him know once again how much he means to the team.

From TCExtra.com

Obituaries
Lawrence Paul Lewis

04/01

KENT — Lawrence Paul Lewis, 63, of Kent, died March 28, 2010, at New Milford Hospital, surrounded by his family. He was the husband of Virginia (Mills) Lewis.

Born Oct. 23, 1946, and raised in Wilton, he was the son of the late Lurina (Nickless) and Norman Lewis.

As a youngster, he developed a love for fishing. He always enjoyed being with family and friends, and making new friends.  He was known for his gift of being able to hold a conversation with anyone he met.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1966 and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was a life member of the VFW.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Lawrence Paul Lewis Jr. and his fiancée, Leann Bartomioli of Rochester, N.Y.; a sister and brother-in-law, Charlene and Roger Genest of Kimberling, Mo.; a brother-in-law, Gary Lorentson of Brookfield, Conn.; four nieces, Tammy Ricchezza and her husband, Mike, of Waterbury, Jammie Genest of Naugatuck, Alyssa Lorentson of Brooklyn, Conn., and Polly Fife and her husband, Kevin, of Northfield, N.H.; a nephew, Clifton Mills III and his wife, Beth, of Fort Drum, N.Y.; a brother-in-law, Clifton Mills of Northfield; and several great-nieces and great-nephews.

He was predeceased by a sister, Melissa Lorentson.

Services will be held at Lillis Funeral Home in New Milford on Monday, April 5.  Calling hours will be from 5 to 7 p.m. The service will begin at 7 p.m. Burial will be in Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield.  

In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to a charity of your choice.

The family welcomes on-line condolences, which may be posted at obituariestoday.com.
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