I know I am a bit late on getting this final post to my roadtrip done but here goes.
Monday 5th April 2010
I left Colorado and kept driving east. My most memorable moment of the day was when I was driving painfully slow at about 20 to 25MPH in a really long construction area thru Hickville, Somewhere. I had a really good laugh when I ended up getting passed by a tumbleweed that was going faster then me.
I arrived in Wichita, KS around 3pm which gave me time to check into the hotel, cleanup, and get my camera gear ready before my friend David picked me up for dinner at his place.
It was great to finally meet his family in person. Having a sitdown dinner with all the fixins was a real treat and was thoroughly enjoyed by all.
After that it was off to robotics night. David has been heavily involved with a local group of home schooled kids that compete in robotics competitions.
Every year it is a different so called game play. A detailed manual is given out to those teams that wish to compete. It outlines what task the robot has to complete. All the raw materials are provided for free and you can only use what has been provided. The is absolutey no charge for any of the teams to enter the competition.
The kids did have to raise funds in order to purchase the materials to make a replica of the game play area, presentation supplies, etc.
David's son was on this years team and was involved in the CAD portion of the design phase. There were about 30 kids involved in the design, build, test, presentation, and competition phases of the robot. The youngest was 13 and the oldest was 18. All the kids had to be home schooled at least 51% of the time (this allowed some of the kids to take some early university/college courses).
These kids are the master of building robots as they have been doing it for years. It was pretty amazing to see the results of them being able to split pvc pipe down, flatten it, and then reshape it for their own needs let alone the programming in C language for the brain and remote controllers, etc.
I sat through their formal and booth presentations. It was pretty amazing to see the hard work these kids did. They treated the whole project by forming a company with various departments and everything complete with employee badges.
The team gets together four nights a week and all day saturdays. The furtherest people come from about 70 miles away. Thats the dedication that won themthe right to compete in the upcoming Nationals in Dallas, TX
Their team name is "Wichita Homeschool Warriors" and their website is http://www.whwrbest.com/
Tuesday 6th April 2010
Spent the day driving to Chicago, IL area where I had my last free hotel room at the Four Points hotel from one of my points card. It was even across the road from the Midway Coscto so I go another one off my list. I ended up going for a long walk followed by dinner at a really good Mexican place.
Wednesday 7th April 2010
Spent the day driving back my house. Picked up a couple of bottles at the duty free and sailed through customs like nothing. Had dinner in Barrie with my friend Mark at Jack Astors as I was not cooking anything that night.
Thursday 8th April 2010
The plan was to actually go into the office and work but I kind of didn't make it. I had this really bizzare dream where I dreamnt I was sleeping in my own bed. I woke up to see that I was not in my tent and went back to sleep only to realize that it was not a dream but reality.
I ended up working from home both thursday and friday playing catchup on emails and other stuff.
That concludes the end of my trip. I ended up driving 13013 KM or 8085 miles in 28 days.
I still need to figure out how much it cost me but I am pretty sure I did it for under 2000 bucks!
