News Discussion - Buggy Books of History

[swiftsam]

Check out the second in our series of record-breaking buggy books if you didn't notice it.

[chris0605]

It should also be noted that the CIA driver in 1981 was the first female driver ever to win in the "Mens" competition.

Charlotte (Chari) Heim

[janethd]

I drove buggy for Beta in 1981/1982-for the green buggy (I think it was echo). I crashed into the hay stacks in 1982-but fortunately I was unhurt. Driving buggy was probably was one of the best experiences I had while at CMU.

Janet Lowenstein Deutschmeister

[fif]

Going into 1981, no independent had ever won buggy, but everyone knew that CIA looked fast. Not only was their buggy one of the fastest in freerolls, but they had several track team members pushing the buggy as well.

It rained both Friday & Saturday of carnival weekend, postponing the race until the following weekend (Sunday, I think). Not only was the race a week later than usual, but the race was held in the afternoon, which made for a warm (and fast) road surface. You just had a feeling something out of the ordinary was about to happen. Sigma Nu's ESP rolled out almost until the end of Hill 3 (9-10 windows I think) and finished in 2:14 (faster than the previous course record of 2:15). But CIA shattered that with a 2:10 - everything really came together for them.

I'll always remember the CIA push team running a warm-up lap around the full length of the course prior to the race in their black outfits and thin red sunglasses. Even as a competitor, you had to admit that it was pretty cool.

[Carl Nott]

FYI, '86 was Spirit's 2nd year. The 3-year plan was race, place, win.

[aileen]

I'll always remember the CIA push team running a warm-up lap around the full length of the course prior to the race in their black outfits and thin red sunglasses. Even as a competitor, you had to admit that it was pretty cool.

This reminded me of some of the photos in the CIA database, so I dug up this: http://ciabuggy.org/Pictures/Gallery.html?CIAbyID=1782

Wrong year, but I think that's the gist of it.

As a more recent CIA chair, I can only say that I wish I could say my year was responsible for half so much coolness. I'm really psyched by these old buggy books, it's interesting to see how the personalities of the teams change over the years.

[chris0605]

1981 - CIA

Don't remember the red glasses that the CIA push team wore on race day, but those guys (Avi, Joe, John ....) knew how to have fun. I was probably already strapped into Black Magic. We had to put duct tape on my legs to protect me from the heated wheels. (Why we thought that was a good idea, I don't know !) I had sprained my ankle earlier that day and it was starting to swell up by race time.

Anyway, at the beginning of free roll there was some guy standing in right my lane. I just headed toward him and hoped that he would move. Fortunately he did.

After the race, it hurt to push the foot pedal for the break test, but I could feel no pain after hearing the time results.

Good memories.

[swiftsam]

FYI, '86 was Spirit's 2nd year. The 3-year plan was race, place, win.

Damn, I knew that was wrong, but I didn't trust myself. I'm gonna have to call out the historian on this one. I was going off of the History of Buggy slides and the summary of 1986 calls it Spirit's first year. It's corrected now.

[Carl Nott]

I think Spirit's first year may be more debatable than what was always presented to me by alumni. The party line was 'CMU made Spirit start doing more activities, including buggy, and Bowie put forth this 3-year plan to race, place, and win. First year they got last place men's but the women's team did pretty good so that set the stage for winning women's next year, etc.'. In retrospect I find it hard to believe that Spirit got last place men's with a buggy that (while horrible) was able to do alright with the women's team, and I've heard strange rumors where our men's might have been DQ'ed or something but honestly I never really questioned the happy story. We had an '85 t-shirt and we did have folks on the hills but we may have been DQ'ed or who knows what so maybe did not 'officially' roll in '85.

One of the great things about the buggy alumni association is getting all these stories out there and getting clarification (or not, hehe). I mean, I had never seen a picture of Pegasus (first Spirit buggy) until a few months ago.

[the cook]

Spirit's 1985 first year men's time was either 3:11 or 3:12

I remeber seeing the buggy crawl through the transition and chute and stop just after the turn; the pusher had to come get it and push the longest hill 3 I've ever seen.

No doubt there was a mechanical issue but as far as I know, no DQ and the time counted.

The '87 Spirit win was interesting in that so much weird stuff happened with spins and the snow and rain coming on Day 2 and circumstances conspiring to work in their favor. '88 however left little doubt.