{"id":1555,"date":"2012-12-01T11:09:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-01T16:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2012-12-01T11:09:44","modified_gmt":"2012-12-01T16:09:44","slug":"best-competition-getting-ready-for-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1555","title":{"rendered":"BEST Competition &#8211; getting ready for Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/media\/2012BEST\/IMG_4658\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/2012BEST\/tn_IMG_4658\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignright\" \/><\/a>There is never an opportune time to get sick, but here I am, with a cold, at the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.southsbest.org\/site\/\" target=\"_blank\">South&#8217;s regional BEST competition<\/a>in Auburn, Alabama. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been very fortunate to have traveled to many, many places, both inside and outside the US, but I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever been to Alabama. \u00a0Last night was my first experience with Chick-Fil-A and, I must say, the sandwich lived up to the hype.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m staying at a Best Western hotel in Opelika and at breakfast this morning, there were a lot of teams\/team members there &#8211; very neat to see&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Competition doesn&#8217;t begin until 5pm today at the Auburn Arena. \u00a0The time prior to that is setup and preparation and I&#8217;m looking forward to wandering around the arena, introducing myself (as much as my sore throat will let me), taking pictures and, in general, just soaking up the competition atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>Gonna be fun!<\/p>\n<p><em>(The picture thumbnail is of team #408, in the hotel parking lot, getting a last-minute briefing from one of the adult members. \u00a0Click on the thumbnail for a full-size picture.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is never an opportune time to get sick, but here I am, with a cold, at the\u00a0South&#8217;s regional BEST competitionin Auburn, Alabama. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been very fortunate to have traveled to many, many places, both inside and outside the US, but I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever been to Alabama. \u00a0Last night was my first experience [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements","category-spaceelevatorcompetitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}