Last year, for the first time ever, Buggy had 3 divisions and 3 winning drivers from separate teams! Julia "Juju" Nieto, Cynthia Xu, and Lead Restad all won a first place trophy for PiKA, Spirit, and Apex. In the final episode of the season, we go back to Raceday 2023 and hear directly from the phemonomal drivers. We hope everyone enjoys reminising about last year as we gear up for Raceday 2024 in a matter of days!
For the first time on the podcast, two competing teams - both a Greek and an Independent - come together to chat about Buggy 'back in the day'. Ian McCullough, Raj Virani, Carl Nott, and Abby Sullivan take a fun trip down memory lane and tell us about their respective teams, college schenanigans, and the landscape of Buggy in the late 90s.
This episode is dedicated to Paul Spudich, the driver of LSH's 'Bathtub Buggy' who passed away in 2019. Paul is mentioned often in this episode, and we wanted to take a moment to honor his memory. Every buggy lover has probably seen pictures of the bathtub buggy. Ron Benton, Paul Wittman, and Dale Huffman join us on this episode to detail the incredible build and roll of this iconic buggy, as well as share a slice of life about attending Carnegie Mellon in the early 70's. The BAA is also thrilled to announce the public debut of the 1971 short film referenced in this episode. After 55 years, the film is available online in it's entirely for the first time. Thank you to Ron, Paul, and Dale for sharing this incredible piece of Buggy history with the BAA archives. Click here or go to https://youtu.be/CxjlDnwGYNg
Stacie Gardner is the Assistant Director of SLICE. She is also the Sweepstakes Advisor, the role formerly occupied by Kaycee Palko. Stacie joins us on this episode to introduce herself to the Buggy Community, share what it was like to tag-team Raceday advising last year, and how she's brought her own background to the role for the 23-24 academic year. Stacie is already well-known to the students and the BAA, and we are delighted for the broader community to get to know her too. We hope everyone will join us in offering a warm welcome to Stacie!
On this episode, we learn about the first live Raceday broadcasts, the early 2000s technology, and how it grew to be the professional level coverage we enjoy each April. Charlie Butcosk, Matt Theisz, Greg Battaglia, and Fred Hopke were integrat to the founding of CMUTV and the inital Buggy Broadcast crew.