Welcome to my summary of my experiences at Battlebots San Francisco 2001

Well, it's taken me a little time to get this summary put together, and it probably isn't done yet but at least you have a chance to see some pictures and hear some behind the scenes info.

First of all OMG what a lot of robots there were! All very cool bots in their own right. There a lot of bots that were similar, lots of wedges, spinners, lifters and pushers. Then there were some new bots that were in a whole new catagory, sometimes merging catagories, and sometimes defying catagories.

It was with surprise that I met my pit neighbors. Don Lavarie, who was a part of the team that I went up against at Robotica. It was good to see him again, but I thought is was quite ironic that we were pitted next to each other. Don had brought is Heavy Mjollner, and new beautifully built Middle Garm. Garm is a vary powerful vertical spinner in the backlash/nightmare vein. Very nicely done.

I met up with some friends I'd met on the Battlebots technical forum. Jon Autry of Robot-Village, Jerome Miles of Sublime fame were two people I enjoyed seeing face to face, and so many others really that I couldn't list them all here.

I met up with some old friends, Jim Smentowski, Steven Felk, Don Hudson, and Derek Young were just a few that I got to see and talk bots with again.

But in reality this competition was so large, with so many bots, and so many people involved that it was a real challenge to spend any time talking at all, everyone was trying to talk to everyone else, and work on their bots, and watch as many fights as they could. It was truly a robotic zoo. A fun zoo, the coolest zoo on the planet really, but a zoo none-the-less.

That's enough of my waxing melancholy, go look at the pictures. Then get back to work! I will be. I hope to be taking two bots to the next event, whenever and wherever that is, Malvolio, possibly renamed, and a new lightweight.

Thanks for visiting, Ray Ebert