Please note that the opinions listed below are that of the Nevada Concrete Canoe Team and do not reflect the opinions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the University of Nevada, BASF Admixtures, or any NCCC sponsors or affiliates.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Thirteen members from the Nevada Concrete Canoe Team decided to drive to Alabama to cut travel costs to this year's competition.  They rented a 15-passenger van and a Dodge truck to make the 2,346 mile cross-country trip.  On Monday night, the students loaded up the 2009 canoe, Fusion, and departed Reno around 11:00 pm.  The tradition of the dashboard bobble heads lived on as the team mounted Pat Sajak, Captain Jack Sparrow, "The King" from Burger King, an ASCE construction worker, and several other ornaments to the dashboard in the van.

The trip to Alabama was fairly uneventful and there was a lot of sleeping, watching movies, and singing to the top 200 hits of the 90s.  The highlight of the trip was when the team encoutered torrential rains in the middle of Nebraska, forcing them to pull off the road until visibility increased. After driving 36 straight hours through nine different states, the team finally arrived in Tuscaloosa on the morning of Wednesday, June 10, 2009.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Six team members and canoe alumni were unable to drive with the rest of the team, so they decided to fly to Birmingham on Wednesday afternoon.  The flight was scheduled to transfer in Denver and land in Birmingham around midnight.  The problems began when the plane leaving Reno was delayed about four hours.  Meanwhile, thunderstorms surrounded the Denver airport and all flights in and out of the city were suspended. Eventually,  the weather cleared, but  the late arrival into Denver caused the team to miss their connecting flight, and the only other way to Birmingham was via a late night flight to Chicago followed by an early morning flight to Alabama. Of course, this meant everyone would have to spend the night in the O'Hare airport.  This didn't affect those who carried on their luggage (especially Justin, who brought a pillow and sleeping bag for the competition), but those who checked their luggage were missing their toothbrushes, clothes, and all other overnight essentials.  Still, everyone made the best of the situation and found a seating area with no arm rests so they could sleep somewhat comfortably.  However, the airport janitor did not realize that vacuuming within five feet of this chosen sleeping location would be disturbing, so he continued cleaning (which included repeatedly running his vaccuum cleaner into the benches).

Around 6:00 am (Chicago time), the plane took off and the team was happy to be in final leg of travel. But upon arrival to Birmingham, the checked luggage was no where to be found.  In fact, the airline (who we shall call "You Knighted Airlines") conveniently left everyone's bags in Denver, even after we specifically asked if our baggage would be placed on the plane to Chicago.  In addition, they would not refund the $15 that each person was charged to check the luggage under the plane.  Now that's customer service!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The competition officially began on Thursday morning on the Quad at the University of Alabama campus. At that time, the people who flew were still in the Birmingham airport, filing lost luggage paperwork.  Unfortunately, these people did not arrive in time for any of the morning affairs. For the rest of the team, the day began with the typical display day events: canoe weigh in, the dunk test, and a team photo.  We were skepitcal that the canoe would be near the predicted weight of 140 lb because it would be the lightest canoe at the competition.  But the official weight was within 1 lb of our predicted value and the team was pleasently surprised.  The next event was the moment of truth for our team: the float test.  Since Fusion did not float at the regional competition (for details, read our Mid-Pac page), everyone was ready to take the 25 point deduction.  However, the canoe surfaced immediately and the team celebrated the accomplishment.  Finally, the official team photo was taken while the remaining team members drove from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa.

The rest of he morning consisted of a large group photo and a welcoming ceremony.  The rest of the Nevada team arrived just in time for these events and for lunch.  It was a muggy day in Alabama, and everyone sought shade and relief from the heat.  Despite the weather, everyone seemed to enjoy looking at all of the canoes and display tables.  Some of the noteworthy canoes were Cal Poly SLO (with a shiny finish and intricate stain job), ETS (with an extremely creative theme and display table), Cal Berkeley (with outstanding concrete artwork), and the University of Florida (with fantastic inlays and bright colors).  Other honorable mentions include UW Platteville (with their American flag theme) and New Mexico State (with a flawless shape and imaginative outlays).  Another memorable team was the University of Texas at Tyler, who had a Mardis Gras theme with a brightly pigmented canoe. Not to mention, they handed out leis and cake throughout the day!

That night, UA hosted a fish fry dinner, complete with all of the southern regulars: fried fish, chicken wings, coleslaw, baked beans, and sweet tea.  All of the teams mingled outside by the pool during dinner and into the night.  As the night progressed, a handful of students organized a wine tasting celebration to recognize the accomplishments of everyone that made it to the competition.  We socialized with several teams and and we sucessfully documented many people discussing travel on water by the action of wind on a large seagoing vessel.

Friday, June 12, 2008

The next day was set aside for all of the team presentations.  The venue was the Morgan Auditorium on the UA campus.  This facility was constructed in 1911 and rennovated in the late 1990s.  It was a beautiful location for the presentations, but everyone was disappointed when we weren't allowed to take any photos or video footage at all.  This may have been one of our biggest gripes about the competition.

 

Since our team was not scheduled until the afternoon, the presenters were allowed to sleep in and have a lazy morning to clam their nerves.  They arrived at the venue after lunch and practiced their presentation a few times before going on stage.  This year, we had laptop problems yet again, and the team was worried that the power point would not work well and the animations would not run smoothly.  To our relief, the computer had no problems during the presentation, and our team did relatively well.  One thing to note is that the judges were very harsh this year (which we actually liked); if you did not know your concrete mix design or basic strength of materials, you were in trouble.

That night, most of the team members went to dinner together.  Since there were so many restaurant choices (and 12 people who could not agree on any one location), we created a tournament bracket of available restaurants and determined the winner by a series of coin tosses.  Ruby Tuesday prevailed and there were no complaints.  Everyone had a great time at dinner, asking the waiter about catfish noodling and listening to Jorge substitute fries for a "healthy amount of brown rice."

Saturday, June 13, 2008

This year, race day was rainy, muggy, and on the verge of being cancelled.  The venue was Lake Nicol, which was about a 30 minute drive from the university.  Since there was no parking at the lake, everyone had to park at a church and take a shuttle to the site. Once we arrived, we noticed that all of the slalom buoys were not set.  Thunderstorms had inhibited the complete buoy set up the day before the races, so the morning schedule was delayed. 

The race facility was slightly akward compared to the olympic facility used in 2008.  The canoes were located on a beach that was some distance away from the sprint course.  Spectators were allowed to stand on a small peninsula near the end of the course, and no one was allowed to stand in line with the finish line.  The judges were located at the finish line and the loundspeakers could only be heard from the water.  Despite all of that, everyone had a fantastic time cheering for their teams, listening to the bagpipes, and socializing with other schools.  

Everything got underway around 9:30 am and the first few women's slalom team paddled in a complete downpour (you can actually see them in the distance in the picture above).  I admire those ladies because they did very well, despite that fact that their canoes were filling with water and they were constantly pelted with rain.  Nevada placed first in the ladies endurance and third in the men's endurance.  One interesting change to this year's slalom course was that the teams completed the race backwards; they began with the endurance portion and ended with the slalom.  Everyone seemed to take this in stride and there were some very fast times through the endurance races.

Towards the end of the men's endurance race, the lightnening and thunder began.  Everyone got out of the water, and we waited several hours for the thunder to stop.  The rule was that we had to wait 15 minutes after hearing thunder to get back in the water.  It seemed like thunder rolled across the sky every 13 minutes, and the count would restart each time.

After the races were over, the rain started yet again.  At that time, most of the teams packed up their canoes and boarded the shuttle back to the dorms.  Some people stuck around to paddle the canoes around the lake, but everyone seemed pretty anxious to warm up, take showers, and change into dry clothes.

The banquet was held at Bryant Denny Stadium, which was a beautiful facility that overlooked the  university's football field.  When the awards were announced, it was pretty clear that the top contenders at this year's competition were Cal Berkeley, ETS, and Cal Poly SLO.  Nevada did not place in the top five in any category except paddling, so we did not expect to receive an award for overall placement.  But when the committee announced that Nevada placed fifth overall, our team was so surprised that most of us synchronously responded, "What?!"

This was a tough year for the Nevada Concrete Canoe Team.  Several of the team members that restarted the program in 2005 finally left the team and let other younger members step into leadership roles.  At times, morale dropped, quality control suffered, and overall interest in the project dwindled.  Despite all of the obstacles and several product deductions, the team did exceptionally well and still placed top five in the nation.  In addition, the paddling team surpassed all previous expectations by placing first overall in the races category.  We hope that Nevada builds from this experience and continues to do well at the national level in years to come.  We would like to congratulate all of the teams that participated this year and we would like to thank Cal Berkeley for pushing us to do so well. Our team would also like to thank the CNCCC, ASCE, Master Builders Inc., Baker Construction, and all of the other sponsors for continuing to support this competition.  We are firm believers that this experience imparts invaluable knowledge and skills that can’t be learned in the classroom. 

The exciting journey home began Sunday morning when half of the team drove to the airport in Birmingham while the other half began retracing their steps across the country.  Those who flew missed their connecting flight in Denver (again).  This time, the plane left Birmingham on time but could not land in Denver due to thunderstorms.  As the plane circled the airport, the passengers were told that they may be redirected to Colorado Springs because the plane was running out of fuel.  Luckilly, the thunderstorms cleared and the plane landed in Denver, but all of the remaining flights to Reno were booked and everyone had to fly standby.  All but two made the standby flight, and the remaining team members finally made it home on Monday morning. 

Meanwhile, the other half of the team drove back to Nevada.  One highlight to the drive was observing a white trash fight at a gas station outside of St. Louis. Two women got into a fist figh, and a direct quote from the confrontation was, "You are a whore! H-O-R!"  The next memorable event happened just outside Salt Lake City when one of the bearings on the wheel of the trailer began smoking.  The team pulled over and suffered a six hour delay while they repaired the damage.  While the team sat stranded, Blaine Leonard, current ASCE President, got wind of the situation and brought everyone pizza (since they happened to be in his hometown).  Despite the delay, the team was able to safely make it home early Tuesday morning.  Despite all of the travel delays, everyone had a fantastic time in Alabama for the 2009 NCCC.  We are certainly looking forward to a short drive to California if we qualify for the national competition next year!