Falcon Robotics in DC day 1 & 2

Summary of the first two days in Washing DC for the USA Science & Engineering Festival


The Falcon Robotics team was invited by Lockheed Martin and the Conrad Foundation to show their EVROV, Extra Vehicular Remotely Operated Vehicle, at the festival. The Whole festival will be in several locations with a majority of it being on the mall between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial. For info http://www.usasciencefestival.org/



So the trip begins at a bleary eyed 5am at Sky Harbor where we all meet and check in our luggage. We then wander over to security and make our way to the gate. We have about a half an hour before we board the plane so we grab coffee and such to try to get more alert. The plane trip was pretty uneventful except for the fact that there seemed to be a large group of elderly women all wearing princess crowns. They look like there were going to some convention or something and they were loud! It was hard to catch any sleep on the plane due to their exuberance, and their laughter was too much! They were definitely having a good time.



Once we arrive at the Baltimore Washington International Airport, or Thurgood Marshall Airport, we gathered up our luggage and started to determine the best method of travel to get to the hotel. We decided on a bus that would take us to a drop off point where we could then call the hotel shuttle to come pick us up.



At the Hotel we finally met up with Norma who is attending school at Smith College,(Norma, John and David have already graduated and are accompanying Eddie and Bianca courtesy of the Conrad Foundation) and took the Amtrack to meet up with us. We unloaded our baggage and started to search for a place to get a meal. We located a Chinese place within walking distance and made our way there. It was good! We were ready to make our way back to the hotel and plan our attack for the next day. The problem was that there is a three hour time difference and we are on Arizona time. So bed time for us, 10 pm is really 1am DC time.......



The next morning we we all met in the lobby to take the hotel shuttle to the Metro so we can take the train into the heart of the DC area. We arrived at the Metro station and had no clue from the myriad of options on the machines and what payment fee we had to make. After fumbling around for about 10 minutes and not getting much help from anybody we finally figured out what the heck we were supposed to do. You would think we really looked out of place and someone would help but...... maybe they all just liked looking at how “not from here” we looked and were snickering behind our backs.



After making to the exit we decided would get us to the Mall we started to get our bearings with Bianca’s maps and John’s Cell phone with GPS! We found the mall but no sign of any Science & Engineering Festival stuff. We did find were we are to do the presentation on Sunday after taking an unintetional tour of the Mall area and found it was right where we got of the Metro train. That will be very easy for us on Sunday! At this time we got a call from Nancy Conrad, the person in charge of our being here and head of the Conrad Foundation. She mentioned that she was going to be on a panel for a presentation on Competition in Education and would like it if we could find our way there. With John’s trust GPS phone we located the Hyatt and found the conference room that she would be talking in. We were an hour early so we decided to head out to the Spy Museum. On the way out we bumped into Bruce Lintin, Vice President of Planning and Field Operations for FIRST. We found out that he was going to be on the same panel as Nancy and were thrilled we saw FIRSTer there. Once we were outside we ran into an electric car exhibit. Siemans had an electric charging station that they were showing off. It is now the standard system adopted by the U.S.. There was also a SMART car there that was converted to electric and utilized the same batteries that are found a Tesla Roadster. http://www.teslamotors.com/ This is the same setup that we read about in Josh Davis’s article in Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/ff_tesla/ We thought it was cool that we could actually call up the author of the story in Wired and tell him that e are looking at what he wrote about!



When the hour was up we went to the panel discussion and were mentioned by both Nancy and Bruce and the talk was very positive and reflective of what the state of education is and where it should be going. All in all it was great! John spoke up, as well as Eddie, about what they gained from being involved in STEM competitions. We took pictures with Nancy and Bruce as they were leaving the presentation.



The team decided it was time to eat a burger for we GPSed a Fudruckers had a late lunch. Eddie and Bianca tried the buffalo burger, Mrs. Palmares had a salad, John, Norma and David had regular burgers and I tried the wild bore burger. Ostrich was out of season.....



After our late lunch we started heading back to the train and found a farmer’s market, where everything was fresh and natural, no artificial anything. The kids bought some fruit and we then made our way back to the train and missed a transfer, so we had to wait until the train came back to the transfer point and switched the the right train for the remainder of the journey back to the hotel.



Tomorrow brings a day of sightseeing, we have it on our agenda to see the Capitol, the Air and Space Museum and the Lincoln Memorial . It will be neat to see if we can actually pull it off.