First impression of Georgia: fewer teams + more rookies = greater overall chance of making it to Nationals! On practice day, we got reacquainted with the Velvet Fog & added a new feature to our robot. Remember the stacker that we had to remove because it weighed too much? Well, we decided to do something with the sad nub that was still there. We put PVC pipes with flags on it! When down, they can be used to herd bins. Up, they can be used to increase visibility.

First day of competition: Things look good. We've got a good chance of making it to the top 8, but only time will tell.

Day Number 2: Oh, yeah. Who made it to the top 8? We did. We get to be alliance captain which is another first for our team. Yay for us. During alliance selections, we picked team 507 & team 1077.

Everything went smoothly during the eliminations until semi-final 2.1. We broke a key to our wedge. A quick fix but still a major problem. Here's the dilemma: If we fix the key so we'll have a working wedge, we're going to have to sit out the next match. We decided we wanted the wedge.

Semi-final 2.2: Things are close but we can sill make it. But as luck would have it, team 507's drive chain snapped rendering them immobile. Once again, team 356 was thwarted. We won't be going on to Nationals.

While packing up, we learned that team 1077 left their shipping tags in Florida & wouldn't be able to go to Nationals. Our team captain, Kate, tried to convince the people at the shipping desk to transfer our tags to team 1077 but to no avail. So, instead, she grabbed a bucket & started asking for donations. Eventually the story got around & one of the higher-ups got our shipping tags transfered to team 1077. So off they went with borrowed tags & a bucket o' donated money. Now that's the stuff Chairman's Awards are made of.

Competition may be over, but there was still fun to be had. We went back to the hotel & played a game of Guesstures with a few members from team 1077 who happened to be staying at the same hotel. You haven't lived until you've seen your mentor try to fake riding a horse or our driver's creative interpretation of "float." Our game of Guesstures eventually died out into a late night game of Mao which lasted until there was no one conscious enough to shuffle the cards.

What a great time! We laughed, we cried, we made it to semi-finals. Competition was over for us. Nothing to do but try to guess who'll win Nationals.