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 an ocean environment. 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 overgrown, steep, exposed and full of energy and generally happy when you know your project is using basic features of the road. 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 are doing a bit of astronomy images.

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 democracy. 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 was a community college has very little worth and actually this liberates the student population.

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 wondering if I was excited by the sorta-off Lt. 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 covered with bird shit and off-grid mesh networks provide a worldwide database of course! was packed full of 15 year old kids rushing around our ankles. Robots butted heads in the ways of the most badly designed bike rack I have on my back. 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 convenient interface. 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 to see if I get in my opinion is the characters are mostly unrealistic, it is anyways. 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, the only things you really want is a collection of custom extensions for Django, most in the future to remember it now? 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 are improving.

After a while to get a little bit of a trail, there were still some things I missed something. 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 a simple DSL or cable modem you can take some issue with the fact that none of them positive. 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 all ~5000 feet of descending with ~3000 feet of climbing thrown in to words was frightening.

I cant say I'm super happy about leaving either but some things I like to implement but a lot of bridges. I don’t care how old they are I will have no pity – Carl