Intro

Yeah, we’re back at it, again. I swear with each and every time I do DI the voices get louder.

Anyways for a recap if you don’t remember what DI is here’s a copy and pasted definition of it from my last blog post cause I really don’t feel like writing another one.

What is DI?

DI (Destination Imagination) is a world wide tournament where groups participate in different challenges, for us it comprises of two tournaments, regionals which is just the lower mainland and provincials which is all of B.C. The challenges for this year and last were technical (hardest), engineering, fine arts and science. With each challenge it incorporates a hero’s journey which must be morphed into what ever solution the group comes up with.

Don’t You… Remind me of DI

After the pretty good success of LTF (our group name, I’ll let you guess what that means.) at the regional tournament placing second in our challenge category my group was pretty happy to take a break from DI, and with spring break right around the corner it was perfect. When we got back it was business as usual, DI was scheduled for the second weekend after spring break. Now in what was probably an error in judgment by us, we put it off for the first week, which I was more then happy to do. Then my blissful ignorance was interrupted by one of my group members. So we started working on improvements to our contraptions.

Cool Change

We didn’t change a whole lot, for the crane only added one thing which actually improved its functionality a lot. Here are some crude drawings of it cause it uh… it’s been “retired”. If you got that reference your cool. If you didn’t, go watch Blade Runner.

This is what we started with…

This is what we used in the regional tournament…

And the thing highlighted in red is what we added, now what that is is a cardboard stick attached to the rope, which helped to reflect rotation of the string and hook and help the pilot guide the hook to where they wanted. For the destruction element it actually looked like the thing we wanted it to.

We added a fake weight and everything, don’t worry I won’t plague you with more of my terrible art work so I’ll keep going.

Working For The Weekend

So after the end of the week, the day of reckoning arrived. I woke up, got to school and began preparing, our challenge presentation was at 11:40 and I got there at 8:00 so we had some time. As time went by we rehearsed and refamiliarized our self with the script. Then the time rolled around, we checked in, presented and it went really well, we had gotten more our stack items in the zone successfully without help and our destruction element worked like a charm. We then had some time to chill, and in that time I made my prediction. Normally I jinx myself constantly but this time I was certain we would win so I got myself a pin from this years DI. We then did our instant challenge and I think it went amazi-CLASSIFIED. I then chilled for the rest of the day and then the awards ceremony rolled around. All but me and one other person from my group hadn’t left yet so we filed into the gym and waited with time going by. They started by awarding the technical group awards first which was nice, that way I wouldn’t have to wait a while to see if we won. They announced third, they announced second, they announced who won the instant challenge and then “first place for the 2025 technical challenge, LTF!”. I was ecstatic, I had finally won first place for a DI challenge, everyone else in my DI group had won first place except me, I had won third last year and second at regionals this year. It was great, we celebrated, oh it was glorious. After that we packed up, cleaned up and went home.

My Way
“And now… the end is near.” You know DI was pretty fun, the competition that is, not everything before, but I’m very happy with how we did, I think our group was great, working together as a team and being able to get things done to a very good quality. I give my congratulations to everyone who participated and won at DI Provincials “and I did it MMMYYYYYYYY WWWAAAAAYYYY!”

PS. If you haven’t figured out by now what LTF stands for, I’ll give you a hint, It’s massive.