Summer Recap
Hello all,
It’s been a while, so here is a recap of our summer fun!
Live Long and Prosper Thank You Event
Our annual thank you event was a blast! There was a custom cake from Pheobe’s bakery specialty stands, student and mentor speakers, parents, sponsors, and volunteers. Throughout the evening signed poster boards for our sponsors’ spoke about the year, then enjoyed the delicious fiddles.
Nova Discoveries Camp
This summer, NOVA middle school held its annual discoveries camp where 4th and 5th graders can enroll in camps that can teach skills anywhere from board game design to geology. One of our team members helped mentor a robotics course. We taught the Amazon Girls Initiative camp and supplied them with a field. We plan on continuing to teach young people STEM skills to create a better future.
Lakefair
Every year, we run a crepe booth at Lakefair, Olympia’s annual festival. Our booth is often very popular, typically selling over 500 crepes. This year, though, we struggled to sell as many as we usually do. We managed to keep it going through adversity and help from the greater community.
Refrigerator problems
Due to difficult transportation, our refrigerator broke, meaning all of our ingredients were at room temperature. Our booth was briefly shut down for health code violations, but luckily none of this food was sold. Thankfully, a team alumnus was able to pull some strings at Lowe’s and loaned us a working fridge for the rest of the week. This allowed us to continue work at our booth.
2. Life outside of robotics
People have lives outside of ORF, and sometimes the schedules don’t line up. We run the booth for 13 hours five days a week, and we need at least 4 people at the booth at all times. We only have 20 people on the team, most of whom have job responsibilities and vacation plans during Lakefair. When it came down to it, we just didn’t have enough people available to run our booth. Team 4925 Alternating Current agreed to send some of their team members over to help run the booth during the week for a portion of the profits.
3. Mother Nature
In mid-July, even Washington gets hot. We had highs of 95 degrees Fahrenheit and hot griddles running all day in a stuffy tent. When it’s almost 100 degrees out very few people want food, much less hot food. We had very few people come mid-day to the fair this year on the weekend, most people opting to stay in air-conditioned or shadowy places. But, thanks to a stroke of genius by a team parent we were able to capitalize on the heat. Using strawberry juice from the process of making our strawberry mix and adding a little lemon-lime soda, the Summer Strawberry Sparkler was born. It proved to be a huge success.
Harbor Days
Harbor days this year ran on a skeleton crew, but thanks to our mentors, alumni parents, and team members we were able to man the booth all weekend. The event saw major technical difficulties with the robot, but even without the robot running for nearly two full days, we were still able to reach out to many in our community, and from all across the northwest as people from outside the state on visits came down to the pier. Special thanks to Larrissa for letting us use her work office to store the robot and other expensive equipment during the night, and all of the people on the team who gave up their weekend and Friday to man the booth.
That sums up our summer. Stay tuned for more regular updates, new blogs, and a fresh Captain’s Blog next week!
Live Long and Prosper,
Llewyn Merrill