Super fun day. I had arranged to bring 12 supporters of FIRST Robotics down to the FIRST District Regional Championship in Springfield Mass. We were just making a quick down and back trip in a day. FIRSTinVT graciously offered to pay for a nice van and nice driver to take us down… which gave us all a great time to talk on each of the 3 hour drives. We had folks from industry, prospective team coaches, one robotic team member and one team coach and even a UVM Dean. It was soooo fun.. The Vermont teams met our van and brought us inside to show us their robot and show us how it worked. Then we got to go in and watch some competition. It is amazing what these kids have learned and making these robots. They’re so sophisticated. Not only did they learn, hardware, software, mechanical design… But they learn, teamwork, ethics, finance, communications… It’s really a great steam package.
It was really fun to see my friends from hackclub down there talking about our onboard program. They had lots of cool handouts and Blinky circuit boards.
we had a ton to talk about on the way back.. Everyone was excited about getting more students to build more robots !
One strange and amazing coincidence happened on the drive back . We were having a fun conversation about burning man… And I was talking about the technology there. My new friend Dave from Linden, Vermont picked up his phone looked through his pictures and then showed me a picture of a piece. I knew well. It’s the fear beast. It was designed by Max and Becky’s good friend Tigre and a large group of makers including Max and Becky. I actually helped with it one day on the Play in 2022.
Sadly, Tigre decided to hand their own life shortly after burning man. There was an incredible shock to many of us. Last December we visited the place where Tigre and all his friends built the Fear Beast .. I wrote about it here.
I couldn’t believe that of all the pictures David would have a picture of that piece. It turns out that Dave’s sister was Tigre’s partner for many years. . It turns out that Tigre’s mom Linda was going up to Vermont for the Eclipse.. and we were able to reconnect with her by txt.
It was all a really crazy coincidence that brought back both happy and sad memories
Crazy day ! … and tomorrow is the eclipse !
nite all, nite sam
-me