The NASA Great Moonbuggy Race

This past weekend was the culmination of my senior design project--the NASA Great Moonbuggy Race. I've been working on this since fall semester started at the end of August, so I'm pretty excited to have it done and over. But no worries, I haven't blocked it all out just yet. Here's a little bit about our trip.

On Thursday we jumped on a plane in SLC heading for Huntsville, Alabama via a connection in Atlanta, Georgia. Our first flight seemed to go off without a hitch, until we had to fly in circles for an hour (the pilot assured us we had enough fuel, he had quite the sense of humor) waiting our turn to land at Atlanta. This should have been the first indication that the Atlanta airport and I were not going to get along very well. Our flight to Huntsville was then postponed, due to rain. To the Utah crew on this plane that seemed like a pretty lousy excuse, but whatever. The departure time for our flight then became:

1. 4:25 pm
2. 6:22 pm
   
3. 6:44 pm
4. 6:57 pm
5. 5:07 pm--Yeah, two hours earlier...good thing we were close by...wait...we didn't go anyway!
6. 5:16 pm--This one we got on, but it was 'over fueled'. Right.
7. 6:30 pm--Also got on, but the proximity sensors were acting up so we didn't take that one either.
8. 8:10 pm
9. 8:30 pm
10. 8:40 pm
11. 9:00 pm--Woo hoo! We actually get to leave! Third plane is the charm!

We took this while waiting in Atlanta...pretty ironic, don't you think? Plus, we're pretty sure that picture is from Utah.

So our arrival wasn't that graceful. But everyone on our flight was pretty cool about it. We finally stumbled into our hotel at 11:00 pm, effectively making sure that there was no way we would get to work on our buggy that night. So we got up bright and early the next morning (especially considering we were on Utah time) to bust open a crate and see how our buggy handled the trip to Alabama. We got everything tuned up and ready to go, but we had to race so early that we kinda forgot to pump up the tires...so we got a flat and didn't get to finish that run.

Ok, fine. So we ran to a bike store, which had seen many Moonbuggy students that day, and got our tires all fixed up.

Friday night we braved the hotel pool, which was full of junior high space campers who seemed to be testing the max capacity of the sauna. We really enjoyed the girls who came to the pool wearing enough jewelry and makeup for the prom, intent on just getting their toes wet and smiling at the idiots in the sauna. Yup, time for bed.

Saturday there wasn't much of an order for racing so we had to wait in line for a while before it was our turn. But our buggy made it all the way through quick enough to place 4th out of 40-ish college teams! The rest of the day we spent watching other teams race, many of them having some pretty spectacular crashes going on.

Coming home Sunday was easier than the trip out, with only an hour delay through Cincinnati this time. I was so excited to get home, especially considering that it was sunny finally. B did an awesome job at home while I was gone--he did all the laundry, cleaned the apartment and even painted another wall! I now have my cap and gown, graduation announcements are on the way and the weather forecast only includes rain this week so it must be spring! We're getting pretty excited for our summer and all the fun things coming our way.