Today was Kangaroo Valley. We spent the morning sightseeing on the way to Kangaroo Valley. There was a beautiful lookout (Sublime Point) near Wollongong and waterfalls in the national parks.
On the way into Kangaroo Valley, we had a group of Kangaroos jump across the road in front of us. The next thing we saw was an Echidna! It was just on the side of the road.
Our guide made us a great barbecue dinner including Kangaroo Burgers.
Then we wandered around with many wombats and kangaroos in the park.
Personal Highlights of the day
Max- Seeing the kangaroos. I like how they hop around
Garrett- Seeing the cliffs and waterfalls on the way to Kangaroo Valley. The views were stunning.
Food/beverage Highlights of the day
Max- The kangaroo burger. It was surprisingly good
Garrett- My beef, bacon, and cheese pie for lunch. It was very savory and delicious.
Today we went to see the Jenolan Caves. Our day started with a train to the Blue Mountains (Katoomba Station) and then a bus ride up to the caves. Our tour went through the Diamond and Imperial Caves. After the caves, we were able to stop out one of the Blue Mountain lookouts.
Team member highlights for the day
Amren: The blue mountains national park stop on the way back from the caves was super cool and reminded me of paradise falls from the movie “Up”.
Bryce: In the Jenolan Caves we saw helictites, which are limestone formations that defy gravity! It was a mystery for a long time how they formed. If you look careful at the photo, you can see what looks like little white stalactites that grow sideways.
Max: Seeing the Wallaby (it was very cute). I’d only heard about them before, and it was not what I was expecting.
Garrett: The rock formations that look like curtains, drapes or shawls. There was even one that looked like strip of bacon.
Traveling with a group of teenagers means that there are food/beverage highlights too!
Food/beverage highlights
Max: Donut (very yummy and very gluten free)
Garrett: Ridiculously good flat white coffee from a small cafe in Katoomba.
Amren: For lunch at the caves, the hamburger burger had beets in it?!?!?!?
Getting Leia ready for her first flight proved to be more of a challenge than expected. Fortunately, a Times Colonist reporter was there to take pictures.
Our team is excited about heading to Australia, both for the competition and to see different types of flora and fauna.
Leia’s journey started with a trip on BC Ferries to Vancouver then a flight to Fiji, and finally arriving in Sydney Australia. The whole journey was tracked using an Apple AirTag.
Leia seems to have arrived fine, but the team was looking a bit tired…
FIX IT is fundraising for the Asia-Pacific competition in Sydney Australia in July 2023. We need your empty bottles. In collaboration with Spectrum Thunderbots, FIX IT is doing a bottle drive!
Bring your bottles to Spectrum and help us get to Australia!!
Who?
FIX IT APOC Travel Team and Spectrum Thunderbots. And hopefully, YOU!
What?
Bottle drive!! Bring your empty drink containers.
When?
May 27th from 9am-2:30 pm.
Where?
Spectrum Community School, 957 Burnside Rd W, Saanich, BC.
Why?
Because FIX IT is raising money for a robotics competition in Australia! For more information about APOC, check out our post about APOC!
So bring your bottles on May 27th, and help support a Victoria robotics team!! Or contact us by Friday May 26 if you have bottles that you’d like us to pick up.
Help us get to Australia either by Sponsoring our team or through our GoFundMe. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In 2021, we were invited to participate in a robotics competition – Asia Pacific Open Championships (or APOC) – which is held at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia. Unfortunately, the competition was virtual due to COVID. We lost the opportunity to experience flying internationally, and competing / working alongside other robotics teams that share the same passion.
As mentioned in the BC Championships post, we were once again invited to APOC! But due to our funding, we had to choose between World Championships in Houston, Texas, or Asia Pacific Open Championship in Sydney, Australia. Having gone to Worlds last year (and APOC being a more exclusive and rare event), our choice was Australia.
This trip will teach us about innovation around the globe, and allow us to demonstrate all the skills we have learned through robotics. We’ll get to compete with 48 great international teams.
The competition dates are July 13-16th, and FIX IT needs to raise about $40,000 before then to participate.
You can donate to FIX IT by writing a cheque to “Victoria Robotics Club” or donate directly under “Sponsor Us!” in the top right corner. Your contributions would be greatly appreciated!
After Victoria Qualifiers, we were able to go to Vancouver for the FTC BC Championships! The event was a lot bigger, and we met some old and new friends!
Setting up our pit (not struggling at all)
The first day of the 2-day event was practice matches. We did really well, but this day it didn’t matter because it was all practice.
FIX IT and PARABELLUM! BC’s 2 World’s teams reunited.
After the practice matches came the team social event, where there was some intense ping-pong, Mario Kart, and Indian food eating. This was super fun and also a good de-stress before the actual competition the next day.
Amren about to get smoked by Jackson in Connect 4Bryce thinks he’s the GOAT (he is)
Competition!!
The following day we had our qualification and elimination matches. For some reason, we did a LOT better during our practice matches than we did in the qualifications. We did not finish with a very high placement, but we were still selected to be on the 1st place alliance.
FIX IT and Reynolds against the 4th Alliance in Semifinal Match 1!
Our alliance was unfortunately eliminated in this semifinal. So that was the end of the road for us, but then the award ceremony happened…
INSPIRE?!?!?!
FIX IT won Inspire!! Upon winning 1st place Inspire at BC Championships, we received an invite to World Championships ion Houston, Texas (again). But we declined this opportunity, and it was passed to Forces Unknown.
We declined World Championships because we were one of the 48 teams across the world that received an invite to the Asia Pacific Open Championships! APOC takes place in Sydney, Australia. It takes a lot of time and money to get ready for this competition, and we have already been to World Championships. So we wanted to dedicate our time to getting ready for Australia. We wish Reynolds and Forces Unknown the best of luck with their fundraising and we hope they have fun in Houston!
As for everyone else in the competition, you all did amazing and should all be very proud of yourselves, because we are all proud of you! We look forward to seeing you all next season!
This is what happens when Christine leaves for 0.001 seconds
Competition time!! After gathering inspiration from some insane robots and ideas at the Washington Interleague, we came back and made major improvements to our robot, strategy, and programming. This was all preparation for this event.
FIX IT chilling with a member of Reynold’s Reybots after trying to figure out why driver stations don’t treat us nicely.
It was a huge jump from our last Victoria competition (the scrimmage in November) to this. All the teams had new things up their sleeves, and it was amazing to see how far everyone has come. New strategies, new mechanisms, and so much more swept the competition. We taught other teams, and learned a lot too.
FIX IT was the 3rd place alliance captain!
Shoutout to team 20025 Esquimalt Atom Smashers, who were our alliance partners for semi-finals against teams 16195 Guild of Builders, and 22557 Mount Douglas. While the journey ended there for us, the competition was a thrill to be a part of, and a great opportunity to show and test our robot.
There were some shenanigans happening while waiting for awards…
Great jobs to all teams, coaches, judges, and volunteers!! None of it would be possible without everybody’s contributions. We’ll be seeing many of the teams at BC Championships on February 28th and 29th in Vancouver!!
We may not have been able to compete in Washington this year, but we still wanted to go check out what the Washington robotics teams are doing. We took a ferry and drove for many hours to watch some amazing matches, talk to some awesome teams, and eat some Subway.
FIX IT on the ferry and barely awake…
It was great to meet some of the Washington teams that we haven’t seen since World Championships, or that we haven’t seen since we last competed in Washington. Everyone had amazing robots and performed great in the competition!
FIX IT talking to Sushi Squad (collab of the century?!?!?)Bryce giving Kai the FIX IT blessing (this is very prestigious according to nobody)
Unfortunately we had to leave just after watching the semi finals, but we watched a huge chunk of matches and learned a lot from the visit. We took our fresh knowledge back to Victoria and we will use it to improve our robot! Huge thanks again to all the Washington teams for making the journey worth it!
Also, you will NEVER GUESS who we ran into on the way back!!!!
The Victoria Scrimmage was held at St. Margaret’s on Nov. 28, 2022. It was very exciting to see all of the teams in person and to check out their robots before the matches started.
FIX IT at the Scrimmage
It felt like we were queueing constantly. It felt like there was a lot we were bringing to the queueing table (beacon, sleeve, robot, driver station) which was stressful but the matches were very fun and overall it was great to see some of the rookie/underdog teams absolutely dominate with all of the experience and skill they had obtained. It goes to show that you can always compete no matter how long you’ve been involved with FIRST.
FIX IT Team with the robot at the Victoria Scrimmage
In September we went to visit both Amazon and Microsoft Headquarters in Seattle.
The Amazon Campus is located in the middle of downtown Seattle. It was sometimes a challenge to know what was or was not Amazon, but almost everything was!
“The amazon spheres were amazing. They looked very futuristic and filled with plants. There were lots of meeting rooms and creative spaces inside. It was like an environment simulation”
Next up was Microsoft. The Redmond campus was giving us some serious college campus vibes. There was a soccer field, restaurants, and well, people. It was quite high tech, with wireless chargers at every bench and seating area. It seemed like Microsoft was trying to centralize their employees’ lives, with restaurants, bike shops, and many other facilities on-site. They let us play a round of Apex Legends.
