Racing Away

So, what do you do On a Friday when you have lots of Uni work to do and A whole day to do it in?
Well, you don't do much work, that's for sure.

To be fair, it wasn't a intentional outcome; I had organised to go around Ross Frazer's house in order to sort out some stuff to do with the course and get ahead of ourselves in terms of the group project, and we actually did manage to do that for a little while - but then of course, we got distracted.

I mean, it wasn't at least slightly distracting to walk into somebody's house and be overcome with several cardboard boxes that they had accumulated from work which, if you wanted, you could probably use as half-decent accommodation for a while.

Anyway, it turns out that Ross didn't just like accumulating large numbers of boxes for the fun of it - He had recently had an idea of creating a side-show money-raiser for a firework and fair event that was being held at Hallowtree by the scouts (of which Ross is one of them; it wasn't that random). His idea was to create a racetrack for a small Remote-controlled car he had and get people to pay a small fee to get the fastest lap - Simple enough.

(Car In A Can)

The idea was that I was there to help (If I wanted of course), because "I was good at that kind of stuff".
Of course I firstly decided to take that as a compliment... and then said yes - After all, It reminded me too much of when I was small and did exactly the same kind of thing on a regular basis.

His idea was simple; tape two corners and two straight pieces to a large flat bed of cardboard to create a oval racetrack. Simple? Too simple!

My original idea was to have some form of huge sky racetrack suspended in mid air - we eventually came to a compromise of  building something between the two. I originally only planned to stay for a few hours, but I think I actually ended up staying from about 10 till 5.

We have worked together before, and also both done design & technology; and although he probably wouldn't admit it, Ross also enjoys doing things like this too. What actually surprised me was our ability to be so organised and systematic about everything we did - We had multiple-assembly-line-type-things going on; We got some ideas, Improvised, Ross cut the tape into pieces and arranged it about the furniture for later use (after me showing him that slashing it with a sharp knife was much less time consuming than with a blunt one or malfunctioning scissors) we then arranged the pieces we both cut out of cardboard and I taped them down like mad.

This went on for a few hours, along with fixing the problems we inevitably came across, and of course testing what we had (couldn't help but get a little tied up in doing that part). After lunch (which was postponed which is always a good sign of getting stuck into something) we decided to push the boat out and create a covered area under the elevated piece we made by cutting into the supports.

Below are some pictures of the end result.

         

        

(Click Images To See Larger)

Unfortunately the track never got used for it's original purpose due to lack of space at the event and other such reasons, but I'm sure it will come in very useful at some point in the future (Like... when Ross gets bored).

What I'm proud of is the stability of the final product, you can literally pick it up and move it around with ease without the sound of tape ripping off or cardboard ripping or sagging. (poor Mr. Frazer probbaly hasn't got much tape left). Also another remarkable thing is the amount of cardboard we didn't use - we used about 1 and a half of the 3 or so boxes there were due to recycling cut-off's and planning.

And last of all, the look - I think it was better than we all imagined despite tape being plastered all over it!