Robotics and Geocaching

Nikolai is a member of CL-B team #3275 – the boys’ robotics team. His official role for the tournament in Duluth was as Media/PR specialist. Here he is standing outside of the team’s pit (workroom).

By Allan Olson

After several years of wanting to attend a competitive robotics event, this was finally the year. Of course it helped that the CL-B teams decided to participate in Duluth this year instead of in an event in the big metro area to the south. Another added benefit of this competition was we could stay with my cousin to keep expenses down.

We watched the competition qualification matches all day on Friday. Never would I have imagined robotics would be that exciting. We watched round after round of matches, checking out all the other robots performing their tasks while waiting for a round in which one of our teams would participate.

The kids enjoyed watching the competitions, too, but started to get rather fidgety by the end of the day. Every round we watched offered various levels of excitement, and we watched our rankings go up and down as the day progressed, which added to the excitement.

After a long day on Friday, we wound things down in the evening with music, comedy, good food and some adult beverages before finally crashing for the night.

On Saturday morning, I woke up early and headed to the hotel where the kids were staying to grab Nikolai’s things so we didn’t need to worry about getting them off the bus at the end of the day. My cousin and his wife graciously agreed to let us leave the kids at their home to play with their kids, and my wife and I headed off to the event once more. The morning was spent watching more qualification rounds and cheering on the CL-B team’s success.

That afternoon, my cousin took my daughter and his out for a geocaching adventure before returning home to wait for me to go out on another. Once the CL-B team was eliminated from the playoffs, we waited for the team to pack up, and then we headed out.

My plan for the couple hours that were left of the afternoon was to go geocaching in the city by the big lake. The problem with Duluth caching is that a lot of the caches are either really urban or sited in some crazy park that involves climbing rocks and winding trails that seem to lead to nowhere.

Joining us for the afternoon adventure was Marcus, Alivia and my cousin’s son. We chose a trail system up a hill, and with the snowfall they had received earlier in the week, the trails were a sloppy mess. Thankfully, the snow wasn’t so deep that we had to trudge through it.

Our plans were to tackle a multi-cache (a geocache with more than one stage) but by the time we even got close to it, we had already spent an hour wandering around the trail system, our daylight was fading fast, and the boys were getting cold from all the times they either “fell” or “accidentally” pushed each other into the snow. We decided to abandon that one for the time being, and headed back to the vehicles via a different route in search of a couple more geocaches.

The first we found was covered in snow, but using a previous finder’s coordinates and the basic process of elimination, we were able to make the discovery. The second in the trail system was a little trickier to locate. I was able to ascertain some clues about the type of container and likely where it was hidden (i.e., it was on a wall of rock). I shared my theory with my cousin, and we did some searching. After about 10 minutes we weren’t having any luck, and the kids were ready to go. We weren’t willing to give up quite that easily, though. He continued searching in an area I had already examined, but thankfully he did a better job of it and came up with the find.

We grabbed a couple more on the way home, and once there we had supper, poured some drinks, and played a few games of Sequence to end the evening.

We slept in on Sunday morning – I made it until 8, others until 9:30; it was clearly something we all needed. After breakfast, Abigail and I went to visit my aunt, and then my wife and I headed out to get a few things from the stores while the kids stayed behind. For those who remember shopping with children, you know how it can complicate things. Either they are hungry, or bored, or some other excuse to make your shopping experience miserable. Even without them, this shopping experience was not what I would describe as enjoyable. We were tired, the stores were busy and every store seemed hot. All in all, a bad day to be shopping.

We finally departed Duluth at about 3 p.m. and aside from someone not paying attention to their driving and nearly hitting us just a few miles from home, it was an uneventful trip.

Overall, it was a great weekend. I would never have imagined that watching a bunch of teams running their robots all over the field would be as enjoyable as it was. I’m already looking forward to next year – and possibly some off-season events, too, if things work out.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.