Since I don't get enough robot opportunities in Denver, I decided to hop on a plane and go to St Louis to referee their robotics tournament at MICDS. Same game as Denver (it's an international competition), so I didn't have to learn any new rules, though we tended to follow them a little more closely in St Louis than we did in Denver.
It was great seeing all my old ref'ing friends... "old" being the operative descriptor. I'm not sure how much longer we'll all keep showing up. This year we used Kindles to do electronic scoring rather than paper worksheets. I'll have to admit that it was much nicer to just tap a few buttons and have the software tally up the score. Our long-term scorekeeper (also an older guy) is becoming obsolete, since the software also posts all the scores to the internet. All he had to do this year was continually press the "refresh" button to display the scores on the overhead screen.
While I was in St Louis, I visited a few friends. Joyce and I met for lunch and, of course, made a stop at Ted Drewes. Even though it was only about 40 degrees, we weren't the only ones eating ice cream outside.
I also went to St Charles with Sharon. We did a little antique shopping and had lunch at a riverside restaurant. I tried to get a picture with the Missouri River in the background, but our heads are in the way. The rivers in Missouri are way down right now - strange since they had flash floods just 3 months ago.
As I was walking around St Louis, I passed a fountain with a waterfall in Brentwood. I've been trying for ages to get this hike checked off our 52-Hike List. So now I've only got 2 hikes left. I really don't like going to the gym, but I'll probably make myself go up there to do the treadmill hike. After all, it's only a mile. I was going to do the bucket list hike before I went to St Louis, but too many things got in the way. Hopefully I can make it up to Golden Gate Canyon State Park before it gets totally covered in snow. Otherwise, I may just have to count the walking trail that runs past our house.
One thing I saw (and heard) in St Louis that I do NOT miss in Denver were the mountains of leaves piled up along the curbs by leaf blowers. I guess that's one good thing about living on the prairie.
