This Past Weekend

For a few weeks now I have been a part of a design team to build a Moonbuggy.

"A what?" is what you just thought/said.

A Moonbuggy is a man powered cart that can traverse the simulated surface of the Moon. (Simulated as in piles of gravel, sand, while going up and down hills.)

The first night there 2 guys and I went out to find some local bars and get a beer. Turned out there where no bars still open at 1am in this part of town only gentleman's clubs.

After we got back from drinking I played some video games and then fell asleep.

Before I had gone out it was decided that we would leave at 9am for the competition. My roommates had decided to set there alarms for 7:00am, 7:00am, 7:00 Freaking AM!!!! Needless to say I was not thrilled to discover this at SEVEN &@$#ING AM in the morning.

I got up and ready at 8:30am and was fully ready to go by 8:50am (breakfast and everything).

We got to the competition and started to test/fix/finish the buggy. Every time we fixed something, another vital part would break. We finally got our problems down to a chain slipping off our differenctial and tranny. We managed to "fix" this while we where getting out safety check and assembly times. During the assembly process, a piece fell off the buggy. That's right FEEL OFF!!! We have folded and un folded this thing 10 times in the past hour and a piece FALLS OFF when we are being timed. Our driver had to get out of his seat and pick it up before the timer stopped. This brought our amazing 10 second assembly time to a 38 second time.

As we brought it up to the start line the chain slipped again. It was obvious we could not fix it in less than 5 min so we had to take a "Did not complete" for our first run. We got the buggy back to the pit and found our problem was the differential got jostled out of place on the drive down. We quickly fixed that and started to successfully run it when our female driver complained that her ends shocks where getting weaker. We discovered that the afro mentioned piece that FEEL OFF was the piece that held the rear shocks to the frame... Yah not good. We mange to fix this relatively quickly and began test's again.

We finally had finished this buggy before lunch even.

A couple of us who had fished the shock problem went to lunch and spent the rest of the time before our run watching other teams, mainly the female driver from Purdue University...

Our time came and I our buggy flew through the first few obstacles. We got to about obstacle 5 (6?) and the buggy got stuck. They tried powering over it but that caused one of our rear axles to break. We are still cheering them on and they had to get out and push for nearly every obstacle after that. Accept the sand pit, despite it being mud from the previous nights rain, despite only having one powered driver, we where one of the only teams to make it over with NO penalties. We finished the race with a time around 20 min (11 min race 8min in penalties). The first place winner had a time just under 4 min.

We left feeling pretty good because it ran and we had the coolest looking buggy.

We went to O'Chalies for dinner that night and then hung out at the pool for the rest of the night. The next day (same alarm clock problems -.- ) we went to the Space museum and road the rides that where there, and then we went to lunch at Sonic.

At Sonic I met the girl of my dreams. I was wearing my yellow FLCL t-shirt. I had finished my burger and decided I wanted a frozen something. The waitress that brings it out to me hands me back my change and says "I like your t-shirt." I was literally speechless. My eyes went wide and she rolled out of my life. I didn't know what to do, here I am in Alabama on my way back to SIU and I meet the chick of my dreams. When I had bought this t-shirt I had told my little bro that I would marry the girl that said "I like your t-shirt." I wanted to stay at this point but the driver and the rest of the van wouldn't let me. She is now and forever will be known as Sonic girl to me.

I'm f%&king stupid for not at least asking her name...

We moved on down the road and we stop at a rest stop to do our business. On our way back out to the van we run into the "Red Bull Crew" handing out cans of (guess). As one of the guys is handing me a can he starts to read the katakana on the t-shirt aloud. He was freaking awesome for knowing katakana. We hung out for a few minutes and then it was time to get back on the road. We got back without anything else of interest happening to us.


WHY DIDN'T I ASK FOR HER NAME!?!?!! WHY!?!??!?!