Jeff Rice
For The New Era
In April of this year, the robotics team I’m involved with won an award called the Chairman’s Award. The Chairman’s Award is an honor presented to teams who exemplify the values of first such as good sportsmanship and community outreach. One of these awards was given out at each of the 23 regionals, and a national chairman’s award is given out at the championships. Our team won the Pacific Northwest regional.
A few months later an E-mail invitation was sent to our team and each of the 22 other winners, along with all the teams that had ever won the national Chairman’s Award to send two adults and two team members to Manchester, New Hampshire. I was invited to be one of the student representatives that would be allowed to attend the event.
My older brother Robert is currently serving as an adult team mentor for the West Albany High School Robotics Team and was given the opportunity to chaperone on the trip. This is a narrative from our trip.
More static than music emanated from both alarm clocks as I tried to first ignore them, and then I tried to turn mine off and continue my slumber. The blinking light said it was 3:45 a.m. The relentless screech and static continued until we finally both gave up and proceeded with our morning routine. It was still dark outside when we grabbed suitcases and backpacks and pulled out of the driveway at 4:00 a.m. Robert and I arrived at Portland International Airport and got through security without much difficulty, as the airport was not all that busy yet because of the early morning hour.
The first leg of our flight took us from Portland to Washington, D.C., and from there we flew to Manchester, NH. United Airlines’ budget problems were evident by the “meals” we were served. I was really glad we took reinforcement sustenance.
We took the shuttle from the airport in Manchester to the hotel and arrived at about 8:30 p.m. eastern time. The next day, we went to museum where we gathered with the other teams to help the FIRST staff work out solutions to problems such as making the chairman’s award easier to understand. This session lasted a couple hours, and afterwards we toured DEKA, Dean Kamen’s research company. DEKA is housed in an old textile mill, just like almost all the buildings in the area. We got to see the inner mechanisms of a Segway, a water purification mechanism, and a demonstration of an Ibot, a wheelchair that can climb stairs and balance on two wheels.
Afterwards, we were taken by bus to Dean Kamen’s house. It is huge, at around 32,000 square feet, complete with everything from hidden passages, a giant steam engine, multiple technological antiques, to a giant hanger for his choppers. It was in the latter that we were served dinner while Dean Kamen and several other people from FIRST and its sponsors talked about the future of FIRST and how we would play a role in it.
The majority of what was said pertained more to the direction of FIRST. He wanted us to help maintain a sustainable growth, and focus on quality, not quantity. Of course, he also said a variant on this quote: “You have teenagers thinking they’re going to make millions as NBA stars when that’s not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is,” and tied that in with his “quality, not quantity” speech. But it wasn’t his speech that impressed me. It was how approachable he was. No matter who you were or what you had to say, he would listen, and he would answer.
Afterwards we were set loose to explore the house, with no guidelines except common sense and not touching stuff that said “do not touch”, and those signs were few and far between.
One of the highlights of the trip was being allowed to ride the Segway and yes, we both managed to ride them without falling over, crashing, or running into something!
All too soon, the visit came to an end, and we all returned to the hotel to rest. My brother and I arranged for a wake up call at 3:15 a.m., and at 4 a.m. we left for the airport on a shuttle. From Manchester we flew to Chicago, from Chicago to Portland. We arrived back in Sweet Home about 3 p.m. exhausted, but still very excited about our grand adventure and with lots of new ideas and plans for future projects.