So It Goes: Carnival

Happy Carnival!

Most countries celebrate Carnival (a.k.a. Mardi Gras or Karneval) around February. CMU celebrates its traditional Carnival, which has nothing to do with the aforementioned Carnival, in April with three full days of events and a 4-day weekend to boot.

First up for Carnival was booths. About a quarter of the Morewood parking lot is taken up by student-built booths, some of which are practically houses. There are different categories for building, including competition and blitz. The teams (mostly fraternities and sororities in competition) have to stop building at one o'clock on Thursday. Midway opens at three to a loud fanfare of bagpipes followed by the Kiltie Band's annual Spring Carnival concert.

"Extra Extra Read All About It"

A bench so awesome you won't want to sit on it.

Friday and Saturday morning were Sweepstakes, more lovingly referred to as Buggy. Teams race their buggies against each other, four to five people pushing over the buggy up the hills and one person in the buggy driving down them. The race takes place around Flagstaff Hill: It starts in front of Margaret Morrison, races in front of Phipps (a long, steep downhill stretch referred to as the Chute), and ends with the buggies being pushed up Frew Street, which is behind campus.

A close race to the finish line.

At this point buggies are moving up to 35 mph.

Friday afternoon was the Mobot race. If you have been to CMU and have walked around campus, you have probably seen the white curves and dots in front of Wean. That is the Mobot track, which tests robot builders' and their robots' skills in unpredictable weather, their ability to move down steep hills and across deepening sidewalk cracks, not to mention through the final "decision point" where the track diverges and the robots must choose which path to take. (Photos from CMU's School of Computer Science).