cmu spring carnival

This weekend is CMU's Spring Carnival. On Thursday I walked over to campus to check out the buggy design competition. It always amazes me that a.) students build these things every year and b.) students fit into these things every year. Buggies are aerodynamic vehicles powered only by gravity and human pushers, able to reach speeds up to 35 miles per hour. One person gets in the buggy to steer and another person pushes the buggy during the Sweepstakes races held at Carnival. It's been a tradition at CMU since 1920.

Booth is another Carnival tradition. Student organizations build multi-story, interactive structures for competition. This year's theme was Epic Adventures. Booth themes included Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jack and the Beanstalk, Where the Wild Things Are, and my favorite, The Goonies. They were all pretty cool. It was too dark to take pictures, unfortunately, but here are some from the midway.

After checking out the booths, trying to get Dave to ride a ride (he said no), and eating bad carnival food, we headed over to the campus lawn to see The New Pornographers. We met up with Mel, a good friend I met at my very first job out of school. It was great to see her! We had a great view from the side--this is the band clapping to their last song, a rendition of ELO's Don't Bring Me Down.

Carnival continues through today, the 18th, so check it out if you can.