Robogames competition warehouse
Catherine was off on vacation, David had a graduation to attend to in the morning, so that left Raymond, Eric and I to take the blimp and all of our stuff to San Francisco. We woke up super early — about 6:30am — and made it there around 8am (we got a little lost). The warehouse Robogames was hosted in was on a huge dock on the Bay. We were puzzled when we got there. No one was around and all the doors were locked. A couple of other people were standing outside so we asked them what was going on. Turns out we had arrived about an hour early….
Raymond, Eric and I decided to take this time to explore the surrounding area. We walked along the beach and came to a pier overlooking the bay. We were pretty surprised to see people actually swimming in the bay so early in the morning. Just as we were leaving, a group of five or six people wearing swimsuits showed up and informed us they were going to dive off the pier into the ocean. That’s right. You read that correctly.
Eric and Raymond immediately took this as a photo shoot moment and began snapping pictures like mad. I admit I was a little skeptical about these people diving off such a high pier into the middle of the bay at such an early hour with such low temperatures. But they did.
Since it was about time for the doors to open, we decided to head back. We were glad to see that the ceilings were pretty high, meaning that Eric and I would have plenty of flying space. We immediately registered and claimed one of the empty tables. Then Eric and Raymond got started on setting up the airship, making sure the electronics were functioning and filling the blimps with helium. I set up the laptop and ran the presentation on it explaining who we are and what we do, and also put out the fliers that also had information about us.
In less than two hours, we were set to fly. By the time the blimp had reached the ceiling there was a crowd gathered around us. Eric and I circled it around the warehouse a couple of times, even trying to maneuver around the rafters (which was a bad idea, we almost got stuck). Then, we decided to see how long it would take us to fly the perimeter of the warehouse with Raymond timing us. It took us less than three minutes.
Our blimp flying around in Robogames. Photo credits to Bob Burbach
Thrilled, we decided to clean up our work area and to turn it into sort of a display. We balanced the lightweight airship on a tripod and stacked our tackle boxes full of supplies underneath it. On the other edge of the table we positioned our promotional materials. Then we cleaned off any stray trash and put away the rest of our supplies under the table.
Then began the waiting.
Best-in-show wasn’t to be judged until later in the afternoon. Raymond and I had other things to take care of back in Fremont, so we took off first. Eric stayed at the warehouse, where David accompanied him later.
At about 2pm, we were judged. Raymond and I called in to check what had happened. We won second place!
By about 5pm, all of the stuff was out of the warehouse and back at Eric’s house. David has the medallion, which has LED lights so that it looks pretty. Eric still has my laptop.
All in all, not bad for a day’s work. Not bad at all.
