Carnival

This past weekend was Carnegie Mellon's annual "Carnival," one of the greatest university traditions that I have ever witnessed.  Student involvement is incredible, and the events are really unique and memorable.  If you ever have a chance to check it out, I highly recommend it.   It's an event that draws students, alumni, and community members alike, and is really well orchestrated. 

I'm going to briefly highlight two of the main attractions that are part of Carnival - Buggy and Booth.

Buggy

Allow me to over-simplify what "buggy" is - basically, a team of runners pushes a bullet shaped cart occupied by small Asian women to a finish line.

That's right - there's a human in that black thing

There's also some free rolling involved, in which the woman - who is laying on her stomach, face first - drives around curves and tries to avoid other buggies.

We weren't near the free roll area, but you can sort of see a buggy all by itself on that screen

And finally, here's a video of the end of a race - you can get a sense for how fast these guys are really running.


Here's the link, just in case the embedded video doesn't work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VWR237iuxg

Booth

Booth is the other major piece of Carnival.  Student organization - mostly fraternities and sororities - build large, house-like structures out of wood and decorate them around a theme.  Most are 2 stories high, although some are definitely more structurally sound than others.  Considering that most of the design occurs in less than a week, I am always amazed at how great the booths are. 

Here are just a few of the many.

You could actually "type" with the keys

This one had a functioning waterfall although you can see where much of the paper mache "rock" was destroyed during Friday's thunderstorm

See those animals up there?

A cute little display in the "Ice Age" themed booth (I didn't get a picture of the outside)

Dave and I were glad to be able to take his Dad and step mom (who were visiting us) to this.  Although it was bitter cold out the entire day, it was definitely a great way to spend a day.

And simply because this was just to ridiculous to not post, I give you this:

 Yep - those people, including one of their children, were walking around Carnival in stilts.  We later saw them walking them down Forbes Ave.  Only at CMU....