Happy Thanksgiving to everyone from the Mahr’s Metal Beavers’ Den! We are all busy working on the Bunny Bot and were thankful for the school break to work on it! Hope you all had a great and fun Thanksgiving too!
We have so much to be thankful for! Just think about it. Llast year we didn’t know if we would ever get our stuff or our money or if we were going to get to exist any longer.
Thank you Ivanhoe Lodge for giving us a home.
Then the Knights stepped us and let us move into their basement and the SE Portland Rotary stepped up and became our Fiscal Sponsor and we were back in business.
WE COMPETED LAST YEAR!!! Against all odds we made it to the competition! We were able to mentor a rookie team, host the team from Mexico – Go Team Buluk! and then we had a really busy post season to top all that off!
Who would have thought that we would go from being on the street to being on TV, discussed at JPL (Jet Propulsion and Laboratories) and Goddard Space center, causing an international uproar, and then presented to the
Senator Rosenbaum learning about driving the robot at the Capital February 2011. (Lft) Cathy, Gabe, Sen. Rosenbaum, Hadrian, Mr.LohKamp, Chase, (back to) Kobel
Oregon House of Representatives!(Thank you Senator Rosenbaum!) It was a great introduction of FIRST to the Oregon Legislature and made it possible for FIRST to do a big presentation a few weeks later in the Rotunda about all of the different FIRST progrmas.
(Left to right) Thomas, Chase, Cathy, Hadrian, Kobel, Tommy, Roman; (front) Gabe, Senator Rosenbaum,
After the Oregon Regional we did school visitations and garnered interest in having us back in the fall to demonstrate for the math and science classes – but that is yet to be scheduled. We visited 4 middle schools last spring and got several kids to join FIRST even if it wasn’t on our team!
We presented FIRST at the Multnomah County Fair . Over 2,000 people came by, drove the robot and learned about FIRST!
There was a lot of interest in Lego League and several of them sounded committed to starting teams. We also had 5 Miss America contestants stop by and do a photo op with us and the robot. We were pleased that there was no skunk sharing our spot this year.
After the Multnomah County fair in June we did the
Father and son exploring the possibilities with Lego Robots- Marion County Fair July 2011
Marion County Fair in July in Salem. Many thanks to the teams from down South that helped us out as it was a 4 day stretch with a 50 mile drive, one way, each day. Many thanks to Bethany Carlson for coordinating the different teams and their students.
The Marion County Dairy Princess with (L-R) Hadrian, Chase, and Ryan Marion County Fair July 2011
There was a lot of interest from both children and adults in the robots of all sizes. We brought Lego robots as a demonstration as we could not find an FLL team able to join us for the fair.
The boys on the team scored pretty well as we had the 5 Miss America contestants stop by at the Multnomah County Fair and at the Marion county Fair the Dairy Princess came by to say “Hi” We had more than 10,000 people see the robot and probably 2,000 drivers at the Marion County Fair. It was quite an experience! There were several people that wanted to start teams at all levels of FIRST. We passed out about a thousand brochures and gave out a lot of information.
Then there was the education senate hearing with Senator Merkly July 15 at Gilbert elementary. Senator Merkley apparently attended Gilbert when he was a kid.
Thomas and Senator Merkley at the education senate hearing July15, 2011.
There were a lot of people from different education groups in the state and several different FIRST teams from all levels of the program.
Senator Merkley driving a robot at the senate hearing. July15, 2011
While there we had the opportunity to speak with the superintendent of schools for Umatila. We convinced her to start a team at their high school and that we would be happy to mentor them if they wanted us. We will be hosting them for the Kick off and mentoring them long distance.
We also had the opportunity to speak with the superintendent of the Salem-Keizer schools and she was on her way immediately following the hearing with Senator Merkley to a meeting with one of the high school principles of one of the high schools that we had a teacher ask us about how to start a team while at the Marion County fair and she stated she would definitely encourage the principle to allow a team to be started at their school. We had a lot of interest from both teachers and parents in Salem and Keizer it was good to be able to get the superintendent on their side!
We thought we had been busy in June and July but when August hit things really started moving. Our first event was one of our service projects. There was a disabled lady who needed to move out of her house and she contacted the Boy Scouts to see if there was anyone that could help her.
Mr.LohKamp on left of picture, Thomas inside the truck..
(left) Mr.LohKamp, (wheelchair)Mr.Peters, (center) Hadrian, Thomas, Chase
Many of you might not know this but we are a Boy Scout Explorer Post as well as a FIRST Robotics team. Explorer Post 89, the first robotics explorer post in the Cascade Pacific Council.
It took all day but we moved the whole house.
Two days later we were at the Boeing Fair! We had to have background checks before we could go! It was really awesome. They have a cart that one person can drive with one hand that will carry 2400 pounds! Wish I had their schematics! We couldn’t take cameras, cell phones, or computers. It was really neat! They have guard towers, command posts, and their own fire department!
Our booth, left Mrs.Hubel, right Mrs.LohKamp, we had banners from almost all of our sponsors.
After the Boeing Fair was the Lents Founders Day celebration! Boy was it HOT!!! At one point the motors got so hot we had to shut down the robot. There must have been a couple of thousand people there.
the little ones really liked the Lego robots
The little kids really liked the Lego robots and we were lucky that our newest member, at the time, Ryan was conversant in Legos. He was sure busy between the fairs and Founder’s Day. We picked Ryan up at one of our school visitations last spring and he has been a real help on the team. Ryan is co captaining the programming team – not bad for a Freshman! He and Thomas took the Labview classes and Cathy, Hadrian and Chase took the Autodesk classes.
But before we could catch our breaths we had the all union Labor Day picnic at Oaks Park to do. There were 10,000 people at this event.
setting up - our thanks to the Boeing machinists union for procuring us a site especially one with shade!
Hadrian hanging one of our posters about FIRST on the building frame - Labor Day 2011
The Boeing machinists union were really nice to us and gave us script to get hot dogs and drinks. It was almost wall to wall people there. Senator Merkley came by to say “Hi” but our camera flash didn’t work, wouldn’t you know it!
Senator Merkley shaking hands with Thomas, Mrs Hubel in back and Chase in front, the flash didn't work - Labor Day picnic 2011
All in all we figured by the end of Labor day 14,000 people had seen or driven the robot. It had over 90 hours of drive time not counting competition or practice. It was feeling as tired as we were.
We were sure ready for school to start, if just to catch our breaths!
After school started we did another of our service projects, collecting food for a soup kitchen. 75% of Reedwood Friends church have become unemployed or under employed and the soup kitchen they ran for the neighborhood has had to expand since the economy down turn. We collect about 400 pounds of bread every week for them. Every Wednesday night they put on a big dinner for anyone who is in need and this is what we do to help them. For many years they would let us hold our spaghetti feeds in their church, and practice driving our robot in their basement and never charged us a dime. The least we could do now that they are having hard times is get some bread and pastries for them. 
If you haven’t been to the Panera Bakery at 41st and Halsey you should go. They ask for donations and people pay what they can and if they can’t pay they can work for a meal. They get all the day old product from the other Panera Bakeries in town for their store and what they don’t sell they donate to non profits for feeding the needy. They are great folks and if you can afford to pay full price they would love to have your business to help cover those that can not afford to pay. Our thanks to Panera for all that they do for so many and for letting us be a part of it.
left to right Hadrian, Ryan, and Chase setting up the robot display at Webelos Woods, Camp Collins, Camas, Wa. 2011
We didn’t have long to breath though till we were on to our next
The young man in the gray joined our team right after Webelos Woods. Welcome Ethan! (Ethan was there as a senior scout putting on the event for the Webelos)
adventure – WeBeLos Woods (stands for WE Be Loyal Scouts and is a camping event for 4th and 5th graders). Webelos woods was held at Camp Collins in Camas, Wa. There were about 200 Scouts there.
We talked to them about FIRST, robotics, and the Boy Scout Robotics Merit Badge that we will be teaching starting in December. They also got to drive it which caused some challenges as the soil is VERY sandy there and evertytime the wheels went off the carpet they would kick up sand everywhere!
This was considered really low key easy camping for the Scouts as there 
were three sided buildings that were called Adirondacks to sleep in and fire pits to build your fires in.
Young scouts driving - Webelos Woods 2011
Only one of our group, other than the mentors, had ever gone camping before though so it was all new to us! We cooked over a wood fire the whole weekend!
Everybody had a great time especially the Webelos!
we also showed them the candy cannon we made last fall when we weren't sure where our program was going to be.
We also demonstrated the candy cannon that we made last fall when we weren’t sure where our program was going to be.
We not only got Ethan to join the team from doing Webelos Woods but we planted the seed in others so boys from all over Multnomah county are considering joining a robotics team even if it isn’t our’s.
We have so very much to be grateful for we can’t begin to thank our sponsors: Boeing, PPM Technologies, PTC, Troy Simplified Technologies, Knights of Pythias Ivanhoe Lodge No. 1, S.E. Portland Rotary, Hankin’s True Value Hardware, McGuire Bearing, and our supporters Troy Resetich, Sheila Rogers, Ejvan Berry, Tim Barber, and all of the many people who made small donations to keep us going. Our thanks also go out to Channel 6 News Ken Boddie for the report he did about us that let the world know what we were up against. If it weren’t for Ken Boddie, Adam Savage, and Grant Imahara who knows what would have happened but thanks to them we were discussed literally around the world and in some very impressive venues. The point is we here today because people stood up and were willing to be counted on our side so thanks to you all.
