Special Edition: Baja SAE Williamsport Race Recap

00:00:00 Carlos Ramos: Welcome to a special summer edition of Tomorrowmakers, Penn College Podcast, where we explore how we learn, live, work, play, and all that stuff. We don't worry about being really great here, because this is a special bonus episode. 00:00:17 Sumer Beatty: It is a bonus. You're going to notice a little noise. 00:00:21 Carlos Ramos: Oh my gosh, just a little? 00:00:24 Sumer Beatty: Right when we're getting ready to record, we're getting some maintenance done to the windows and there were, there was some banging. We had a random head pop through the window. 00:00:34 Carlos Ramos: But you know, it was really cool when, when the, when the head pop through the window and we're, you know, there's just a train in the distance and I'm hearing the traffic. I'm like, maybe we should just do an outdoor podcast or just take this thing on the road. 00:00:46 Sumer Beatty: Just give up on trying to make it quiet. Well, the birds are chirping. It is quite nice out right now. 00:00:52 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. So why are we doing this thing? When students aren't here, there's no one here to listen to this. Why are we doing it? 00:01:00 Sumer Beatty: Well, I think the dust is still settling on the amazing weekend we had. Well, four days, right? Yeah. We had at Penn College. 00:01:08 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. So we had Baja SAE Williamsport, down at our Earth Science. Well, I don't know if it's actually Earth Science Center. It's the heavy equipment site. Yeah. That would be the actual name 00:01:20 Sumer Beatty: Yes, about 20 minutes from campus. 00:01:22 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, so it was, you know, just a beautiful three sunny days, one drizzly rainy, but really nice relieving day because the sunburn was real. 00:01:34 Sumer Beatty: Because the hot days were so, so hot. 00:01:36 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, but beautiful view over the Susquehanna River Valley, cars moving around, 1, 700 students, participants. 00:01:48 Sumer Beatty: And then what did Brad say? 3,400, including spectators, perhaps. 00:01:53 Carlos Ramos: It was just Yeah, 16, yeah, 16 plus the 17 and change, so yeah. 00:01:58 Sumer Beatty: It was a busy day, so much fun. Yeah. So much fun. 00:02:03 Carlos Ramos: This will not be the last time we see Baja, for Williamsport and Penn College's support. And hear so many great stories from Brad and from Marshall. Marshall, our first, two timer. 00:02:15 Sumer Beatty: Oh yes. On tomorrow Makers? 00:02:16 Carlos Ramos: Yes. I thought, I thought that title might go elsewhere, but, no, it is Marshall 00:02:21 Sumer Beatty: and he is very well deserving of that. 00:02:23 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. So, Brad Webb, our Dean of the School of Engineering Technologies, and Marshall Fowler, who was the. President of the PCT Baja Club and also one of the key drivers during the endurance event. 00:02:38 Sumer Beatty: And recent graduate of Engineering Design Technologies. He just graduated in May. He's had a busy couple months. 00:02:45 Carlos Ramos: All right. So we're going to get right into it. And, Unless we have any other special, episodes to drop, we'll see you back here in, August or September. Well, we've got, as you can hear, there's a little bit of noise in the background. I'd love to say it's the Baja team, you know, working on the car, but you guys are done! 00:03:09 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. We're done. Everything we've been spending the last about two, three days ripping everything apart, tore everything off the car so it doesn't rust over the summer. We soaked it in WD 40 and washed everything and now we're cleaning out the trailer and getting everything for when the team comes back in the fall semester. That they can just hit the ground and everything's going to be fine instead of rusty. 00:03:31 Carlos Ramos: That had to be an endeavor. If anyone, you know, you're listening, go out to pct. edu, go out to the news, find the Baja article, you're going to see photos of these cars where you don't see Any part of the car is nothing but mud. 00:03:49 Marshall Fowler: We took the skid pan, which is the part that's on the very bottom of the car. We took it off and weighed it and it was 49 pounds. 00:03:56 Sumer Beatty: Wow. 00:03:57 Marshall Fowler: 49 pounds of mud was just in the car. So we had to like dig through and try to find what the screws were so we could actually take it off and everything just went. Boom! Dropped on the ground. 00:04:08 Carlos Ramos: And to put that in perspective, your car is 350 ish? 00:04:11 Marshall Fowler: 375. 00:04:11 Carlos Ramos: 375. And then you were driving. 00:04:14 Marshall Fowler: Yep. 00:04:14 Carlos Ramos: And, Isaac? 00:04:17 Marshall Fowler: Yep. 00:04:17 Carlos Ramos: Isaac was driving. and you guys are both like... 00:04:20 Marshall Fowler: 150 to 160, yeah. 00:04:22 Carlos Ramos: Okay. So, 00:04:23 Marshall Fowler: I mean It was an extra 00:04:25 Carlos Ramos: You've got it packed in there. 00:04:25 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. Yeah. 00:04:27 Sumer Beatty: I like that you weighed the mud. 00:04:28 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, because we were in We tried. We were We were scooping it out and I was like, no, keep everything in. I want to see how much was actually in there at the end of the race. So now we can take that information and when we go out to test, we can plan for that by putting a 45 pound plate in the car to see how the car's going to handle with all that extra mud weight, how it's going to be tuned for all of that extra mud weight and we can. Count all of that in when we do our testing and tuning in fall, 00:04:57 Sumer Beatty: You're telling all your secrets to your competitors . What if other people are gonna do the same thing? If they do, they do good for them. 00:05:03 Carlos Ramos: That explains that last, what, three or four labs like you, you, you guys, you were three and four. I mean, you were, you were flipping positions and then 00:05:13 Marshall Fowler: we were battling ETS at the, at the end there. And it was, it was a challenge. there's some things that went on in the race that. would have pushed us ahead but, you know, that's, that's what racing is. Yeah. 00:05:24 Carlos Ramos: So what was your experience in the race? 00:05:26 Marshall Fowler: It was awesome. I guess, I don't know of any other word other than awesome. It was, John and the crew did a phenomenal job designing the track. It was a fast track. It was a really fast track. The obstacles were just challenging enough that everybody could, it was getting cars stuck, but also you could get through it if you took the right line and If you knew what you were doing, you could get through everything really easily. It was just a very, overall, it was just an awesome, awesome experience to get to drive on it. A lot of the other teams I talked to also had the same experience with it. It was just a phenomenal, phenomenal track to do. 00:06:05 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, I ran into plenty of teams, plenty of spectators who had been at different Baja events, and they said that this was, this one was different than anything else. So, for those that weren't there, or even those that this was the only, you know, Baja event that they've, they've been at, and they expect that these are all held on the side of a mountain, 00:06:25 Marshall Fowler: No. No. The past, I've been I've been doing Baja since 2021. I believe it was 2020, 2021. that first year was Kentucky. all the other tracks I've been at have been incredibly flat. Kentucky was very, very flat. Tennessee was probably the most hilly one, or no, Rochester, I guess, was the most hilly one, but all the other ones, the elevation gain was very, very minimal, where this one, you're going, if you looked at the top to the bottom, you're looking at several hundred feet of elevation difference, where others were just maybe a hundred feet, so it was, it really challenged a lot of teams climbing up the hills and everything, which was awesome. 00:07:06 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, and it wasn't gradual where the hill parts were either. 00:07:10 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. Then we're talking like 45 degree inclines, which is really awesome. It was really cool to see. 00:07:16 Carlos Ramos: Brad, you were, you were instrumental in getting this event hosted, in Williamsport. 00:07:22 Brad Webb: Yeah, it was, a labor of love, certainly for a lot of folks here at Penn College, and we were excited when SAE said, yeah, we'll let you do this. Yeah, it was a tremendous amount of work, some great team of folks here, but super excited to be able to host it here. One, we love Baja, you know, we've supported our team for 20 years. and then to bring it home, show these other schools, what we can do is phenomenal. I know President Reed was sharing on Monday that, Penn College, had the best team in the big team. which is really exciting to be able to, go up against some of these, Division 1 schools that have some serious resources, and that our team was able to do that. And then our Penn College team was able to put on an event that I think is the gold standard. SAE doesn't like me using that term, but I think we put on one heck of an event. 00:08:15 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, I mean, this was everything from just the sheer number of volunteers that were there, down to the porta potties, to, you know, cone maintenance, to everything. There wasn't one detail I saw that was overlooked. 00:08:33 Brad Webb: Yeah, and we, so the numbers that I get from SAE, which indicated the teams, were right around 1,790 students came in. Our numbers show spectators around 1,600 and change. So we're around 3,400 people on our site, which is phenomenal. and some of the best feedback from the students where they loved the trash cans because we had a trash can at every single paddock. And they loved how clean the porta potties were. So I, we already thanked, the honey dippers of like coming county for their assistance. But those are the two things that, you know, are relatively minor when you think about it, but those make a big difference in the, in the event and how it feels for the competitors. 00:09:12 Marshall Fowler: As somebody who races and needs those services, it was so handy to have a trash can at every single place. And you can just, you kept the site so much cleaner. A lot of other sites have not had that and you have to walk several hundred yards to go dump it. And then if you get some people are just like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I'll just drop it right here. It kept the site so much cleaner. We could just clean up everything, have it nice and neat. And then having the. Just everything was convenient, and it was thought out for the competitors, which was super, super awesome, on your guys end. 00:09:47 Brad Webb: Yeah, and I appreciate how well the teams kept our site. You know, I, on the first night, I, I asked them, You know, please dispose of your trash. Please don't, you know, go into the woods. Please, please treat this like your lab because this is one of our students' labs. It's our heavy equipment lab and we want to keep it just like you would your lab at home. And I think that resonated with students and they really, I think we're super respectful of the space, of the people, of the volunteers. You know, I, when you get almost 2,000 college students together, you never know what you're going to get, but, every student was super thankful and respectful and, it makes you want to do it again. 00:10:22 Carlos Ramos: Speaking of the heavy equipment students, you know, we had several different areas, that did not exist on, on the site, you know, as identifiable areas. You want to talk about that? 00:10:34 Brad Webb: Sure. So, yeah, so our heavy equipment site is really just. a couple, actually five dirt fields and we just do random stuff all the time. It's, but we had to cohesively put something together to make a track and to do those types of things. So we're able to work with Glenn Hawbaker to excavate shale from our shale pit and our student volunteers who are members of our service and operators club, helped haul 14, 000 cubic yards of shale and lay it down and pack it in. So we had parking for the paddocks and the volunteers. and then the students and Seth Welshans, who's our lead faculty member down there. They built all the things that you saw if you were at the event. So the whoops, the tabletops, the mud pits, they moved all that. They dug holes. They, they were, I mean, every day it was calling Seth, Hey, can we do this? Can we do that? And, and they were super on board. It was an exciting time for them. And, it's really cool to, for our students to get that seat time, and for us to transform it so quickly. And I was out on Monday after the event helping tear down and they already have almost all of it gone already. 00:11:35 Sumer Beatty: Oh, wow. 00:11:36 Brad Webb: Three, three bulldozers make quick work of a shale parking lot. 00:11:41 Carlos Ramos: I'm gonna have to go up there just to get the eyes on it again, just to get that perspective. 00:11:45 Sumer Beatty: So for someone, I've never, I was never up there before the event. So I was impressed with just the layout of the course and how you could see Pennsylvania in the background. It was this gorgeous backdrop of the mountains. And it was such a nice time of year too. So, you know, we're hosting all these students from beautiful places like Colorado and you know, they've got these great outdoor spaces. And I kept saying, what do you think of Pennsylvania? What do you think of this space? And everybody was like, it's gorgeous here. So was that. Almost, it was like, like I said, backdrop. Was it like that before? Or did you guys plan that accordingly? 00:12:20 Brad Webb: Well, so the terraces have been there, so you could always have a nice view of the river, but it definitely played into how we were going to set up the track. We wanted to have it down. We really thought about how spectators would view the action. And so when we were setting up the different obstacles, start, finish, where it was going to go, we were thinking, all right, where would we sit on these grassy areas where they could see not only the cars going, but also that beautiful background. And so I think it really came together. There was beautiful views everywhere. And then even, so I closed down the site almost every night except for Friday, so that involved driving around and telling students get your cars put away, you gotta go home, you know, you can't stay here kind of thing. And Sunday, you know, after the race, many teams stuck around because once some of those paddocks emptied out, there was a nice flat area right there with a river view, so they were just lining up to push their cars over to the edge, and stand there with their teams, and so they have these beautiful, shots of the team with the car, and then the Susquehanna River and the mountains behind them, it was just gorgeous, and I wanted to, I wanted to go home, but I, I just couldn't, I couldn't say no to them, you know, so we just kind of hung out and let them take all these pictures, because it truly was beautiful, and I'd want that picture as well. 00:13:27 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, very cool. 00:13:29 Carlos Ramos: You know, we had fantastic weather for it. Hot and sunny for the first couple days. We had that little drizzle for the, the maneuverability and the hill climb. When you were here last time, we were talking about, you know, what, what, what did you want for, for rain? And, and how did that play out for you? 00:13:45 Marshall Fowler: I wanted no rain. I wanted no rain because as we saw, like in the very beginning, the course was super wet. The very bottom mud pit was soaking wet, and cars were getting stuck, and stuck, and stuck. So you'd go down, you'd get, you'd finally get past a lot of the slow cars, get some good speed coming down, and then you'd run into the mud pits again. where a lot of people were getting stuck, and they had to slow everybody down. But as the day went on, and the weather cleared up, and just, it dried everything up, you could fly through everything, and it was just, it became, the track changed so much from hour 1 to hour 3. And those two are even in that time frame. The track was completely different and you had to navigate it completely different. I remember sitting in, I forget where I was, I was coming up a lot of schools, and I was watching this rain cloud come by and I was like, Oh, it's going to downpour, it's going to downpour. I could see just a couple of it that just kept moving closer and closer and closer and then it just eventually passed and I was like, Oh my goodness, because I didn't want it to downpour while we're all in the cars and we're all getting soaking wet. We're already muddy, but getting wet in the car, it's hot. It's hot. It's a different kind of thing. 00:14:55 Carlos Ramos: How about for, I was working maneuverability, and so I got to see firsthand that, you know, the challenge that the, the cars had working in, you know, we had a couple muddy spots, in there. You were one of the few teams that actually got through. I don't recall if you guys, did you guys go through successfully twice or did you, you got stuck once? 00:15:15 Marshall Fowler: I got stuck once because I avoided the mud puddle. I was trying to avoid the mud puddle, which caused me to. not be able to swing the car around and hit a, I ran into a tire and got stuck. Where the second time, I was like, screw it, we're going straight into the mud puddle, was able to navigate all the way through but that challenge, like you were talking about, it had rained not too long before and that mud puddle was there the day before. So a lot of teams were like, or it was very, it wasn't as severe. So a lot of teams were like, oh, I'm just gonna try and avoid it but that, That condition caused you to not, it didn't line you up well for the first obstacle, so it was kind of cool to see who was going to take the risk and just get their car dirty, get themselves dirty, and take that leap to get through. 00:16:00 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, it seemed to be designed that, you know, go for the very first spot. What wouldn't make sense? What would be great for a line, be terrible for traction, go right for that. it was just, it was incredible to watch these cars go through it. But then, you know, you'd have the occasional, wasn't too many teams that had this. They'd get in, they'd, they'd get themselves aiming for a cone. They'd stop and you're like, we want them to keep going, keep going, keep going. But nope, the driver's got something different in mind. You hear beep, beep. It's like, Oh, you have reverse, but your team didn't have that. What were the choices that you made for your car around things like that? 00:16:42 Marshall Fowler: well, our car does not currently have reverse. We've talked about potentially incorporating it. It would be a lot of design change, with our gearbox and that kind of stuff. But we saw this competition reverse has always been one of those gimmicky, type of, features that a lot of people have on their car. But this competition, I really think, really solved the benefit, especially in S&T. In S&T, there was one team that used reverse four times to get out of obstacles, and I was like, That is really, really cool, actually. Like, this is the first competition I think I've seen that somebody has used reverse as it's been intended for to, like, maneuver out of an obstacle, which was amazing. And it worked really well. 00:17:25 Carlos Ramos: And S&T is Suspension and Traction. I'm sorry. 00:17:27 Brad Webb: Reverses. They get bonus points, in the design competition if they add that, but as Marshall was saying, it does add complexity to their design and weight. 00:17:37 Marshall Fowler: Yep, you have to add a backup beeper, you have to add a backup light, you have to have another lever to pull, it doesn't add much weight in the gearbox, but all these things compound onto the additional weight of the vehicle. I'm trying to shoot for light weight here. 00:17:53 Carlos Ramos: Four wheel versus two wheel. Can you talk about that for this competition? Was this different than other competitions or a relative? I think we talked about this a little bit the first time you were on. 00:18:03 Marshall Fowler: So this is the third year, I believe, that SAE has mandated that teams have four wheel drive to compete in the competition. And this year, the last two years, you could get through a track in just two wheel drive alone. You didn't need four wheel drive at all. And we kind of designed our system around that because you can't make it too challenging so that the slower cars or the, the under, underdesigned cars can't get through or you can't have it so unchallenging that you don't need it. But this year, they made the track just incorporated enough that you needed four wheel drive in certain spots to get out. So the bottom mud pit, I was in four wheel drive pretty much the entire time I was in the mud pit. And it helped so much because I could feel my back tires spinning at certain times. I'd kick it into four wheel and just drive straight out of it. But as soon as I started to climb up, I could disengage it. And our team did a phenomenal job this year of It's redesigning our four wheel drive system so we can engage and disengage on the fly. It's more robust and this course definitely challenged the team's four wheel drive systems and I hope a lot of people learned a lot from it. I know we sure did. it validated our design a tremendous amount and we're always looking forward to what we can do differently next time with it. 00:19:21 Carlos Ramos: Talk about that hill climb. I looked at that the morning. I didn't know where it was. I'd gone out the week before and I was like, I kind of know where it is, but I was completely off. And then when I, once I actually saw where the cones were placed for the end of stage three, and I, and I'm on the edge and I'm looking over, I'm like, How? 00:19:41 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. So, we had one of our smaller drivers, Casey, he was one, he was the one who, actually drove Hill Climb. Watching, spectating, we didn't know where it was either. We walked down, we're like, oh, that's what it is. You can't even see the first section of it. So you just see this car come flying out of the woods, making a left turn going up this relatively steep hill, but then the final one, it's like a 45 plus degree angle and you just see him get up and shiver there at the end and finally getting over it. It was really satisfying to see. I know, our advisor John was like, That's going to change next time we do this. That was not challenging enough. 00:20:21 Brad Webb: It was too easy. 00:20:22 Carlos Ramos: Oh, it was? 00:20:23 Brad Webb: Yeah. 00:20:24 Carlos Ramos: Wow. 00:20:24 Brad Webb: Yep. No, more than 50 percent of the cars got it. 00:20:27 Marshall Fowler: He was looking for like 10 percent of the cars to, get up. 00:20:31 Sumer Beatty: Is that standard? Such a low percent actually have success? 00:20:35 Brad Webb: We want 10 percent to get through. 00:20:36 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:20:37 Brad Webb: Yeah, we want it to be tough. It's an engineering challenge. Yeah. 00:20:40 Carlos Ramos: It was different than like Baja, California. I, I saw theirs, which is, if, if I, if I saw the whole thing correctly, it was just pretty much a, a single approach and ... 00:20:50 Marshall Fowler: yeah, it wasn't just a drive and match the pedal. This one you had to find the right line to go through. 'cause you could take multiple different lines. up the obstacle, but if you chose the wrong one, then you'd be set up really bad for the next one, or you'd take a much more challenging one. But there was a certain line, after looking at it, looking at it after the fact and seeing a bunch of other cars through, I think I figured out where it was, but you could see that, like, as the track got eroded, there was a certain path that you could just take. Shoot straight up. Whereas in California, it was just mash the ego and start and mash the pedal and try to hope you can get up the entire thing. 00:21:30 Carlos Ramos: So Brad, one and done? 00:21:33 Brad Webb: No. That was, when we said we were on board, I definitely wanted to make sure I knew getting into it, we're going to be significant amount of work. And so I wanted to make sure that we could do it more than one time. So, yeah, we're definitely, we're definitely on board for the next one. when that one is, is a, is a topic of debate currently. I'm, I'm leaning, I'm leaning towards three. 00:21:55 Carlos Ramos: You're ready to jump right in for fall. 00:21:57 Brad Webb: Seth was, you know, Seth was like, yeah, I'll start building it again tomorrow. And I was like, I don't know, John and I need, like a week, you know, give us some time. 00:22:04 Sumer Beatty: Give us some time to recover from that. 00:22:05 Brad Webb: Yeah, no, but it was a phenomenal experience. I mean, A huge team, you know, the, the resources that Penn College could bring to bear on something like this were phenomenal. The General Services employees, facilities and events, you know, the faculty, those of us in administration who could, you know, rally people around like, Penn College really stepped up and I think that made this event be really successful. But SAE was really instrumental as well. so the, the folks there, Damon, who leads this event, answered all of our questions, got us the information we needed, and then we have some alumni and some of the tech inspectors. who were like, we don't know what this means and you know, they would, they would answer those questions and provide that advice given, you know, the tech inspectors go to all the events and so they see, you know, three a year and they've been doing it for years, a lot of them. And so you know what works, what doesn't work. And so I think we were able to benefit from their knowledge, to make sure that we put on an event that was going to be, amazing and, and I think we already know, I already have notes of things I'm going to tweak for the next time, but I don't think we have any major, like, Oh, this was a disaster kind of an area. It's just things that will make things flow better, make it easier on the teams and the spectators, and us. 00:23:14 Carlos Ramos: And from a safety perspective, I mean, it was, I mean, that, that was carried through all the way. I mean, no one was like, I didn't see it was really stressed. No one seemed to be in danger. Well, maybe you, Sumer, in the pit. You can talk about that. 00:23:30 Sumer Beatty: Well. I wanted to be close to the action and wanted to be with my team who was taking photos. So I was permitted to go in with a camera. And then, the Baja media team was in there giving direction and really saying, you know, head on a swivel, watch where you're, you know, this and that, don't sit on the hay bale, stay here. And everything was just whizzing every direction. And, you know, he, the one guy was like, What's your experience with Baja? What's your experience with professional racing? What's your experience with photography? And everybody around me knew, you know, our teams, our photographers have been through it all. They were answering and I'm thinking, okay, I'm probably gonna need to leave now. But I, I captured some great photos and was able to be close to the action, but it was pretty fast paced down there. 00:24:15 Marshall Fowler: Tell them about your experience in the car. Monday morning, after the competition, I got President Mike and Brad. We all went down to the site and said I got them to go in the car and get to drive it around a little bit. 00:24:30 Brad Webb: It's amazing. you know, that's, I can't think of many more adjectives, but, it was really cool to be able to, you know, sit in that car. And luckily I'm, I'm roughly the same size as, as Marshall here, so the car fit me real well. And just the, you realize the engineering and the design that went into the building of that car because you could put it anywhere you wanted. You know, I don't think I'm a professional race car driver, but. I could make tight turns, I could turn, I could do donuts, I could put that car anywhere I needed it to be, it was, it was amazing, so the, the way that they developed the steering, the, the power, you had the acceleration, the braking, everything just, just worked, and it, it was, for me, I definitely realized, you know, this is 20 years of Penn College building teams and iterative design, and you can see, even in the, You know, I've been closely associated with the Baja team probably for five to eight years now, and you can just see the, the change in the design as it goes forward and how we're just making these incremental improvements every year. And, and it's just, I actually asked if I could start taking a class so I could join the team and be a driver next year. 00:25:39 Sumer Beatty: I'm curious about that driving. So when do you know you're done with your piece of the driving and the next person jumps in? 00:25:46 Marshall Fowler: So we usually go by time. We had planned it out that it would be two fuel stops. The new gas tank is, the new gas tank with the new motor, the combination is completely different than what we used to have. So with the old Briggs motor in the gas tank, we could do a one stop race. And that at the two hour mark, you swap drivers and one person finishes the rest of the race. For this one, I was supposed to do about two thirds or about three hours of the race, because we were getting about an hour and a half out of the race. tasks, but I had two rollovers and I was at hour two thirty, you know, two and a half and I was like, I'm pulling myself out. I don't want to risk the team, getting DQ'd for me getting another, potentially getting another rollover. So I pushed Isaac in for the last leg of that, but we usually go off time. Time is our, time and Fuel are our two. The grand judge are there. 00:26:42 Sumer Beatty: Well, my first question when we had you on last time, I'm like, Oh my goodness, what if you need to have something to drink? What if you need to use the restroom? Like, there's so many things and you're just... 00:26:49 Brad Webb: you could do anything for four hours. 00:26:52 Sumer Beatty: Well, I'm sure you're feeling so tense in there. Yeah. Or maybe you're not. I don't know. I think I would be. Like, when you jumped out, You ran somewhere. Yeah. Okay. So you're ready to be out of that driver's seat. 00:27:03 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. I mean, I was fine. I felt fine. I mean, this car definitely has lighter on ourselves than pressed cars. Okay. This car, we had a little more, I want to say creature comforts in there, but I had a pad, I figured out that I could have a pad on my back, which really, really helped the way I was strapped in and, the way my body just conformed to the car. That pad saved my entire driving because I've driven without it and it's a completely different. 00:27:30 Sumer Beatty: You're bouncing around a lot, right? You get 00:27:32 Marshall Fowler: out and you're just like, I can't walk right now. 00:27:36 Sumer Beatty: And then when you woke up Sunday morning. What time did you wake up? 00:27:40 Marshall Fowler: I woke up at 6:30 because I had to be at the track. I had to leave, I had to be at the shop by seven so I could get the car ready, meet John by seven, leave the track or leave the shop by 7:30 to be at the racetrack for eight o'clock so I can meet President Mike and Brad so they could drive. And I was like, I wanted to sleep in a little bit. 00:28:00 Sumer Beatty: Oh, wait, 00:28:00 Brad Webb: That was Monday. 00:28:01 Marshall Fowler: Oh, I'm sorry. 00:28:02 Sumer Beatty: That's okay. No, I'm curious. Sunday. I'm just wondering, because that's the big day. Sunday's the big day. Like, do you sleep Saturday night? 00:28:09 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. 00:28:09 Sumer Beatty: Are you so excited? 00:28:11 Marshall Fowler: I hung out with the team a little bit on Saturday night. hung out with some alumni and then, I got some pretty good sleep. I was still up at six, for, because we had to leave. We wanted to be at the track by seven, and then, it's just, I just go through my normal, normal I just treat it like a normal day and try not to get too stressed about it. Put on some music and do all my, getting suited up. I put on music and then I just hop in the car and then it's go time. 00:28:38 Sumer Beatty: And this suit looks like pajamas. 00:28:41 Marshall Fowler: We call them our jammies. We call them the jammies. This year they required that we have, Fireproof pants as well. So before we just have like one of these very, I'll call them dingy cotton shirts from G-Force. They've been used for many many many many years and they're they're white. So the the mud stains them really easily. But now we got nice new ones and we got matching ones. So it looks like we're kids about to go to bed wearing these matching pajama pants When we first got them I was like, these things look like pajamas. Yeah. And then I put them on and I was like, these are really comfortable though. These are super comfortable, but yeah, I liked how they matched. We tried to go a little more, with a more professional look this year, we tried to get a helmet that matched, the Penn College colors and the paint scheme of the car. We tried to get gloves that matched that as well. Instead of looking, we tried to make our appearance a little more professional looking this year. 00:29:39 Sumer Beatty: It was interesting seeing the different teams and how some people, I think the one team, I think it was ETS, actually put dress pants on to come to dinner. Yep. So we were serving food and really appreciating that level of professionalism. 00:29:53 Brad Webb: Matching polos. 00:29:54 Sumer Beatty: Yes. Some people, like the hats, the bucket hats, everybody matched. It was quite a scene. 00:29:59 Marshall Fowler: Each team has their own, like, their own thing that they do for the competitions. People do matching overalls. People do matching bucket hats. a lot of the polos and the well professional dressed ones are for design report and business report kind of stuff. but we've done polos in the past, we just didn't have a chance to do the polos this year. But it'll be hopefully for Michigan we should have, our polos done. 00:30:23 Sumer Beatty: You're saying we. Are you still? 00:30:25 Marshall Fowler: So I am still connected with the team for six months after the, after graduation. So I can still eligible to go to the Michigan race in September, which is super exciting. So I'll be helping out behind the scenes, I'll take a major step back and let them do their thing but I'll still be helping with organizing and getting event, getting our sponsor stuff and just doing one last push to push all, impart all the knowledge I've gained over the last four years onto them before it's a final, "you're done." 00:30:56 Sumer Beatty: I don't think there's going to be a year done, is there? I mean, we were still seeing Dakota and some other graduates who've participated in the team come back, and their parents even coming to volunteer. It's amazing. 00:31:08 Brad Webb: We had more than 50 Baja alums, help out with the event over the weekend. 00:31:12 Sumer Beatty: Wow. 00:31:12 Brad Webb: Yeah, including, Zach Mazur, who's one of the founding members of our first team. 00:31:17 Marshall Fowler: The Godfather of Baja. 00:31:18 Sumer Beatty: Oh, that's so cool. 00:31:19 Brad Webb: Yeah, no, it was great to see, you know, lots of faces that I remember and, and those that we don't, but they, everybody wanted to be a part of Baja Williamsport. 00:31:26 Sumer Beatty: It was clearly a community. I mean, I was thinking we're putting this out into the world. Is anybody going to show up? And that was laughable as the, the, you know, 00:31:34 Brad Webb: As the parking lots filled up and we had to scramble and find a second and a third parking lot. 00:31:39 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. It's like, boy, yeah. You just have to put it out there. They will come. 00:31:43 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. And even the third parking lot was, I was hearing that that was nearing capacity or, or hit it. 00:31:48 Brad Webb: Yep. Yeah. It was, we were quite full. And it was really exciting because you're right, you know, we, we were one of the first events to actually, I think, really push spectating hard. you know, even the other ones, we talked with the folks at Oregon, you know, given their size and where they host their event, they limit the number of members of a team that can come. They don't let them bring more than 15 to the event, you know, like ETS and Virginia Tech rolled in with 30 some people. And so, you know, we had that luxury of, given our size and us wanting to really make sure this was a community event, because I think it's, it's not only helping, you know, the, the Baja competition, it's helping our students, it's helping these other students, it's helping our local community, and, and putting, you know, folks to realize what Penn College does and, and how we can, you know, you know, make a difference, you know, in many ways in our local community. 00:32:41 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, we're, a lot of the restaurants were like, oh, I guess it was, it must have been Monday or Tuesday night before the competition. We had, as a team, we had gone out to, I think it was, a couple of us went out to The Kast and, they were talking, they were, one of, I've been there many times, and she was like, oh, is it starting? And cause there was, we had a massive amount of people there and she was like, oh, the event is starting, already two days earlier than we wanted to. And they were like, oh, I'll prep the kitchen. So for the next couple of days, our, a lot of the community eateries and everywhere was just getting prepared for this mass amount and they delivered. The race delivered a lot of people for their businesses, which was really awesome to see. 00:33:27 Brad Webb: Yeah, we know the hotels here were full. They were going to Lewisburg. We had some teams in Bloomsburg to get hotels. It's kind of like, you know, I called it mini Little League. we filled up again and, it was phenomenal. And speaking of Little League, they helped us a lot too and gave us, all those spectator, the metal gates and stuff like that. So it was nice to be able to call on partners who, who are used to doing huge events like this, to get some of that advice too. 00:33:50 Sumer Beatty: Has there been any discussion about having host families for teams? I heard some people talking about, like, oh, I would love to host some students. 00:33:59 Brad Webb: No. 00:34:00 Marshall Fowler: There was one. 00:34:01 Brad Webb: Oh, really? 00:34:01 Marshall Fowler: There was one, I believe. 00:34:03 Sumer Beatty: An informal, maybe? 00:34:05 Marshall Fowler: Kind of. It was for a Brazilian team that was staying in South Williamsport. and an Airbnb, they called it a farm because we had helped them out a lot. We had given them Argonne, and helped them with a couple of missing items that they had, but they were, I believe they had a host family with them there, just helping them through the process. 00:34:24 Brad Webb: It's a, you know, it's a fine line, right? Because, you know, initially we were like, well, would we want to offer our residence halls? Which we probably could have done, but then. One, that's more work on the college, but two, it also doesn't impact the community. You know, these teams are, you know, our teams are used to traveling and getting hotels and buying meals in those areas. And so, you know, some of that we need to make sure that we can give back to our local community and have that economic impact that's going to support them. And so, you know, that's kind of what we did. We did house, you know, our volunteers. If they were alumni of Penn College, they could come and stay in the residence halls for a pretty fair price. And, and we had about a dozen or two take us up on that, but a lot of them were like, Nah, we're just gonna, you know, we remember college, we're gonna stay in a hotel room. Laughter 00:35:11 Marshall Fowler: It was an awesome event. That's all I can say is it was an awesome event. Just the impact, the memories that were made, the, just everybody who was there loved it. And they're like, I can't wait for it to be again. 00:35:23 Brad Webb: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, no, we're, I'm getting emails from, from folks saying, you know, this was great. Thank you for doing this and a lot of work. And, you know, I was at my son's baseball game last night and I, and, a guy walked up to me and he's like, how'd they do, you know, we, we saw you on TV and we saw about it and, you know, they were excited about it. And, One of my fellow coaches, he was fishing on the river in Montgomery on Sunday, and they kept hearing this cheering and these loud noises like, what's going on? And then he's like, Oh, that's the Baja thing, you know, so they could hear us down from Montgomery, from the river there, they could hear the cars and the cheering. So, I think, I think the neighbors knew we were around 00:36:00 Sumer Beatty: As they should 00:36:02 Carlos Ramos: Now, Marshall, you had, how many were on your team? 00:36:05 Marshall Fowler: I believe we had 14 on here right now. 00:36:08 Carlos Ramos: Okay, so half the size of some of the larger teams. Last time you were on, we talked about the different ways that students could participate in Baja. It's a shame that students weren't here on campus when Baja hit. I mean, we had commencement the week before and then most of the students were gone the week before that. Not having eyes on that, hopefully they'll get to watch our video, but If you could just reiterate, how could students that are, whether they're Penn College students that want to get involved in ours, or maybe other colleges have similar setups in how they involve their students in a club like this? 00:36:45 Marshall Fowler: Absolutely. So our club is, we're open to anybody. Anybody and everybody. If you want to learn We're here to teach. That's what we're about. We're here to impart all our knowledge on to you guys and continue the generation forward. we'll take any majors. We're mostly manufacturing and engineering, but we will take business. We will take anybody and all, anybody who wants to be here. You can be in culinary. If you want to learn your, you really like doing food stuff, but if you want to learn about cars. Come join the team. we'll find something that you, we'll find an area that you fit into, can help out. so we're open to anybody and we're always looking for new members to continue that generation forward and continue to push the club forward. this event really brought a lot of attention to the school and the school's Baja team. It's kind of like our football team, I guess you could say like that. a lot of teachers. A lot of schools were like, wow, I wish I would've come here instead of, go to, a four year Penn College. 00:37:42 Carlos Ramos: Well, they still can. pct. edu/ transfer. 00:37:45 Marshall Fowler: Yup. Yup. There were a couple people, there were a couple people who were like, I'm highly considering transferring. Because they see how much the school puts into this program and the dedication that they have to it. And it's an awesome experience. But yeah, we're always open to everybody and everybody who wants to learn. It's come join the team. I know other schools have the same kind of deal, but you can go on. I would talk to your student government associations or whatever you're at. But yeah, we're always open. We're in the MTC. Just come, come stop by. 00:38:17 Brad Webb: And if your college doesn't have one, you can start it. I was chatting with the Cincinnati State guys, and this was year two for them. Like they had just started the club and they were here and excited and. but that's where we started, right? 20 years ago. and so somebody's got to put the legwork in, but they can do it. 00:38:33 Carlos Ramos: And Brad, I'm sure you'd love to see the, the team take the design challenge on. Yeah. So, so from your perspective, what, what types of students who may not typically consider, you know, joining a club like PCT Baja, what kind of students do you think would be needed? 00:38:50 Brad Webb: Anybody can benefit from, from this organization because there's just so much that's involved. I know where I sit and where I want to try and drive this team and help them out as best as I can is I'd love to get some business folks in there because we concentrate on building a car, but there's lots of other parts. There's the cost event, there's the business event, there's the design event, and I think we do well in the design and building of the car because that's where our students passion lie, but we could really I'd love some business students to help us. You know, Hey, these are some things we should talk about when we're presenting this because, as I said before, this is an engineering competition. So the race car is the cool part, but why would anybody want to buy your race car? so you have to formula plan. You have to sell that. You have to market it. and so that's, those are different skill sets and not everybody can do everything. And so that's why we want a robust team. So that way, we can have some business students here talking about that, but they can also take over things. I was chatting with the University of Alabama team at the event and I let them park their trailer on campus overnight. So they didn't have to take it, you know, to their Airbnb on a twisty road Sunday night, but I was talking with their business manager, who was a student. He was a business student, and he helped obviously with their business presentation, but also, you know, renting their rooms and helping with meals and those types of things. So there are different pockets. You know, this is, it's an organization of 13 to 15 people that we're sending. eight hours away, somebody's going to help us, we need help, you know, that legwork of where are we going to stay, where are we going to stop, handling the business aspects of it, managing the budget, we have our treasurer, and so those types of things, there's lots of ways for any student to get involved. 00:40:26 Carlos Ramos: Great. We'll share the URL because I think we have several different Baja URLs, so I don't want to get the wrong one out. Any last message that you'd like to give, you know, a key memory? 00:40:39 Brad Webb: My side of the event, well, obviously I'm super proud of what our team did, but my side was organizing, right? And hosting this and and I learned that, you know, Penn College is a place, where people truly care, you know, we, we, we talk all the time about the family of Penn College, but it truly was, like, I met so many people, and I've worked here 15 years, and I met even more people, and who are just here to help Penn College in any way, and to help this event, and to help these students, and people were blown away by what Penn College could do, and what we could do, to show the world what we can do. One of my, well, so we did a lot of impromptu tours of our shops. You know, some students showed up late, you know, Tuesday night. And so, or, or yeah, Wednesday night, excuse me. So we did some tours of our facilities and students were blown away by what we can do. I got called by the technical inspection team and asked if I could give them a tour. So I did that Thursday night. And, they walked into our Larry A. Ward Machining Technology Center and they said, Oh, expletive. which on the podcast. I probably can't say what they really said, but like, like people were blown away by Penn College and the facilities that we have. And so that was really remarkable for me as the Dean, to be able to show the world what we can do. So many times people say, Oh, you're the best kept secret. And we don't want to do that. You know, we want to show people that, that we are a true engineering school, and that we, you know, we are putting students in great positions and we do phenomenal things. And this was an event that allowed us to show a lot of people that, and I have ways, to show people even more the next time we host. 00:42:10 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, I guess for mine, passion drives innovation. If you're passionate about it. It's going to push you forward, and a lot of people are like, How are you doing? How are you getting no sleep in doing this? It's because I'm passionate about doing it. if you're passionate about what you're doing, and this goes for in life in general. If you're passionate about what you're doing, you will find a way to get it done. so pushing that forward and getting the car done, it came from true passion. and I can see that in the next generation as well. There's a couple of really, really passionate guys. And so I'm hopeful for the future. I'm hopeful for the future of the club because I see there's a lot of passion there that wants to drive forward. And we were talking on, we've been talking the last three days about what do we want to do for the next two years? What do you want to, what do you guys want to do for this? What do you want to do for that? I'm waiting. You guys got it down. You guys got it down. You know what you're doing. But yeah, passion drives innovation. So if you're passionate, Keep going forward. You'll find a way to make it work. 00:43:04 Carlos Ramos: Fantastic advice. Thank you, Brad. Thank you, Marshall. 00:43:07 Sumer Beatty: Thank you. 00:43:08 Carlos Ramos: Thank you, Sumer. 00:43:09 Sumer Beatty: Yes, no problem. Until next time. Thanks for hanging out with us today. 00:43:16 Carlos Ramos: Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. 00:43:21 Sumer Beatty: Check out our show notes for bookmarks to your favorite sections and links to resources that we mentioned in today's episode. 00:43:27 Carlos Ramos: You can also find past episodes and see what's on deck for upcoming ones at pct. edu/podcast. 00:43:34 Sumer Beatty: And of course, we are open to your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. So send those over at podcast@pct.edu. 00:43:42 Carlos Ramos: It's been real. 00:43:44 Sumer Beatty: Catch you next time. 00:43:48 Brad Webb: My grandmother wanted me to be a minister, and I was like, that's not going to work out well for me.