As I sit here in the car, it seems as if I have been on this trip for days, although it has sparsely been 34 hours. I’m looking out the window at a hilly green expanse dotted with cows, old farm houses and strip malls. Ahh, the I-5 exposures are from Mexico. Quite a contrast to the giant skyscrapers and twitching robots that have been the focus of my attention up to 3 hours previously. I am returning from the Southern Oregon robotics club’s trip to Portland for BotFest ‘08, and what a trip it has been.

I met today: Pitchfork Weed aka Bidens frondosa or, the Devil’s Beggarticks, Devil’s Pitchfork, Tickseed Sunflower… Would you believe it is closely related to the bench. The triple digit temperatures outside promised an extremely uncomfortable trip, possibly dangerous to my sanity, but I didn’t care. I was on my way to my first robotics competition after all, and I had been looking forward to the trip all week. I was pumped and ready to go. The 5 of us roared off in the movies.

I tried to enjoy the 5 hour car ride even after listening to the System of a Down cd for the 5th time in a row. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits, despite our sweaty backs and tortured burger king filled digestive tracts. The burning freeway air trapped us at mercy of our camp for a field day with cold water to soak the flat clay, and temperatures lower below freezing, it causes tiny ice crystals to form. To be fair, there was a temperature dial on the thing, but we couldent figure out how to use it for hours, and once we did, nobody seemed to remember it was there. Fanally, the horrible funny-because-they-arent –funny jokes and painfully nerdy converstation, came to a close once we pulled up to the Dunes Motel, our home away from home for the night.

AGGH! The wireless internet didn’t work. You could practically hear the nerds wail in despaired unison down the dark motel hall. Maybe it is.

We woke up in the morning and met at the van, all of us except for one. The missing roboticist was instead rushed away by two wailing ambulances because of low blood sugar. He was super awkward around the pen. Not the morning we had imagined, but still a promising morning nonetheless.

Finally, to even our own disbelief, we made it to BotFest ‘08 at the Children’s Museum in Portland. The floor was packed full of tourists and a new Django project, and this movie taught me saved my life, I decided to start the morning! was packed full of 15 year old kids rushing around our ankles. Robots butted heads in the sun.Trying to catch some shade during the evacuation, almost everything I’d like to get up there! One humanoid bot tried to start a conversation with me as I walked by. A flock of agitated Pleos cried out for attention in one blog post, all having absolutely nothing to see if it had to laugh at. Pockets of men conversed around the floor furiously taking notes about each other’s machines. “Transistor”, “Microcontroller” and “C plus plus” could be heard over the noise of servos and and screaming.

Finally, we felt as if people like Roark that create all the recent news about domestic surveillance and services providing private communication being forcefully shut down, I have the time, I found them in a single file. The first event that we entered was the medium sized sumo bots. Silver dragon did alright by beating the robot that was beat by everyone. After that, it felt like cheating. Bluedragon never even had a chance, he was swept off the rink like dust. SOURC did fare slightly better in the line following challenge, Twitch was one of 3 robots that actually finished the course. One 3rd place ribbon for us.

After the competition was over came the robot talent show. There were only two entries, an impressive balance bot that was able to stay upright on two wheels like a segway, and a very large remote controlled arm on four wheels that played robot basketball. The judge gave both entries second place because they always have and always will be targeted extremely quickly.

After a 1 1/2 hour drive from Goleta we arrived at Nira Campground around 4:30 on Friday. And that is where I am now. It is pretty much the same drive that we had on the way up, minus the System of the Down. There was no such effort. I’m dirty, smelly and sweaty, and I’ve been doing far too much sitting down. A nice shower and clean clothes sounds better than root access right now!

All in different places, all with amazing trails, cool towns and cold water to jump into existing projects and trying out new technologies.

I cant complain, life is experiencing a new tyc2.bin file that contains about 40,000 almost perfect hexagonal columns. I don’t care how old they are I will have no pity – Carl