I finished Hooloovoo 3 days before leaving for LTRC, and finished Kris just 3 hours before leaving. I had just enough time Friday night to test Kris out on my porch while a small audience of local kids and parents watched. After that, me and my dad packed up the car and left at 7:31 PM.

We decided to stop by at the club first when we got there, but unfortunately, we were a few hours early.

Instead, we went to the Conley Inn and checked into our room. 

I got about two hours of sleep, and at 7:00 or so,  we ate breakfast and headed off to the club.

The place was already bustling with builders, and I found my pit table and safetied both bots without a hitch. Hooloovoo weighed in at 2.8lbs, and Kris vs at 10.8. Rather than ballast them or do something productive, I set them down on my table and decided to walk around the pits and take pictures of random bots.

-This bot sure looks familiar...

-Belladonna, now weighing 18lbs, still looking as awesome as ever.

-Jackal (I think), a really cool 12lb'er

-'It's Great!', nice looking bot.. but didn't compete for some reason

-Andrew Lindsey's Control Freak, a really solid lifter

-Forkbot with a few upgrades since HoN

-Brutis (the 12lb'er) and Mach 1(the AW)

-Tammy Dump Truck.. an awesome 12lb pneumatic flipper

-Starbot and Squarebot, both built by Jon Gowa

-Deadly Donkey minus 'The Square'

-Mr Coco, love the armor.

-Antweight Microclysm

-an upside-down Scrambler

-All the Awards on display

-Lenins Tomb

Eventually the fight schedules were put up, and Hooloovoo was my first bot to fight.

Hooloovoo's original driver, Andrew, couldn't make it to LTRC, so I drove it for this event. My first was against TBA built by Ian Matthews. TBA was a 4-wheel lexan brick, but it didn't look like it had a lot of traction, so I was fairly confident I could beat it. 

It was very soon revealed that I was completely wrong, and TBA had far superior traction, and was pushing Hooloovoo all over the box. I might have gotten around to his side a few times, but I obviously needed more practice driving with a mixer. The fight ended, and TBA won the well deserved judges decision. 

I charged my batteries and ate lunch at the grille, waiting for my next fight. Kris got a bye, so about 2 hours later, I was scheduled to fight Cat Scratch. This was a well built bot with a ~6" horzontal saw blade spinning super fast. It's only downfall was it was driven by servos. I had watched it's previous fights, and was sure I would be able to push it around easily, since it didn't appear to be very mobile.

The fight started, and I drove over to Cat Scratch and easily drove around him and pushed him around from behind, then backed up and pushed him again, and again, and again... I soon got tired of this and decided to come at him from the front, knowing his saw blade wouldn't harm me, but would make some pretty white sparks. It was just as I expected, and I heard some "oooh's", "aaah's", and "is that Titanium?!'s" from the crowd. Unfortunately, as I turned to come at him again, my right wheel fell off since the pin had come loose. I could still move in circles with my remaining wheel, though, and Cat Scratch was inside my turning radius, so I kept reversing then driving my plow into his saw, then reversing again, and running into him again to get some agression points. During the whole fight, Cat Scratch moved a total of about 3 inches, so it wasn't hard to keep backing up and slamming him even while only being able to drive in a circle. 

When the fight ended, I was confident that I had won, since I had shown all the agression and strategy, and Cat Scratch hadn't done anything other than polish my Aluminum and Ti for me. Unfortunately, the judges saw it differently and gave the win to Cat Scratch. Oh well..

After that, I decided to sit and watch some fights. Kris ended up getting yet another bye, but eventually I was scheduled to fight Chrobbot. Chrobbot's an all-lexan bot with a vertical saw blade on the front. I wasn't looking forward to this fight, since I knew that Chrobbot's blade stuck out enough that it would hit me in a head on collision before Kris's blade hit him, and there wasn't much chance of me getting around him because of Kris's wide stance that madeit turn rather slowly.

(Chrobbot's the one on top)

Well, the fight started, and I spun up Kris's blade and headed on over to Chrobbot. Just as I thought, my blade didn't reach under his sawblade, so he got a few hits on me, and eventually flipped me on my back after a solid hit where his sawblade dug into the lexan on the front of Kris. Not being able to self right, I was counted out.

This fight was a little disappointing since I wasn't able to get a good hit on him, but at least I still had at least one more fight to use the blade. I found out later that Chrobbot's driver didn't even realize I had a blade until he flipped be on my back, and it stopped, making it visible. A post-fight inspection showed that somehow both of my weapon bearings had fallen out of their holes. That was a problem, but I was fairly confident I could fix it.

After borrowing a drill and drill bits from Tony (Thanks!) to drill out the rivets in the frame, and removing the blade, I eventually got both bearings back in the right places, and was ready for my next fight.