I had the savings account since my teens. It was the account the Union, Sun & Journal opened when I had a paper route. They made you set aside some money each week into an escrow account in case you didn’t pay your bill. They kept the passbook, and if you stiffed them, they took it out. If you didn’t, when you quit, it was yours.

You probably haven’t heard of the bank. It was called Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank and the building is still standing in Lockport. It had the kind of old-fashioned, ornate lobbys that you’d picture Jesse James and his gang coming into and robbing. Teller cages and marble and wrought iron work. Of course, no such thing ever happened here. I don’t remember it ever being robbed of more than a pen off the counter. They were chained down, anyway.

Of course, today, the bank has another name and it’s one of the largest banks in the Eastern United States. In recent years, they have been on a buying spree, picking up branches all over from other banks.

Along the way, they built a new, more modern office a couple of blocks down Main Street/East Avenue and changed the name to Lockport Savings Bank. That was good for a long time and although they did open a few new branches in the immediate area, they were strictly a local bank supporting the local area. I had the mortgage for my house there for 30 years. Through job changes and layoffs, they were convenient to deal with and willing to work with me when times were tough.

In the late ’90s they decided to take the bank public and had a stock offering. As an account holder, I had the opportunity to buy stock at the advance price of $10 a share. It was pretty much assumed it was a sure thing to go up. I took a tax refund and bought 100 shares. I remember when I was there turning in my check for $1000, a man buying $25,000 worth. It was his mother’s retirement fund. It made my little investment seem, well, little.

They changed the name of the bank again once it went public to First Niagara Bank. It became the cornerstone of First Niagara Financial Group, and is still called that today. My 100 shares have turned into around 400 through dividend reinvestments and a stock split. While the stock hasn’t shot up into the stratosphere, it’s value is usually well above that $10 initial offering and the dividends are steady.

But like the changes to the bank over the years, the way I use a bank has changed as well. I rarely need to set foot into an office. Most of my banking is done online. The goal is to do all of it online and not need to go to the office.

As a result, paper checks are becoming obsolete. Plastic and virtual are the keywords. I kept the checking account active after I retired because it had free ATM transactions and they were plentiful in this area. I was once driving home from Vermont and was low on cash and spotted a First Niagara in the little town near Lake Champlain I was driving through. That was a welcome surprise then. Today, it wouldn’t be a surprise at all, they have so many branches.

But, I couldn’t get the account to work online. I had set up phone access for their dial-in banking system back when it was new. Unfortunately, I didn’t use it and forgot the access code. When I tried to switch to online access, I needed to give that code. Someone who had never used the phone banking was home-free, but I was kept out by my own account’s security. I went into the bank, talked to someone and they told me I had to do it online. I went online, and was told to call a phone number. The phone number couldn’t help me and told me I had to go into the bank. So, I never got it set up for online use.

Of course, I had all that convenience at another banking outlet all along, so it wasn’t a big deal, but it kept it from being as useful to me as it could have been. I kept it for the ATM convenience and that’s about all. When I got a check for something that I had to take into a bank, I’d go and put a hundred bucks or so into it for a rainy day. But my real banking got done at the other institution.

The final straw came recently, when they sent me a letter saying that it was going to cost me $7 a month to keep using the account. Well, it said more than that, and there were several other options besides the $7 service fee, but for the way I was using the account, I was going to be charged monthly for keeping the account open. So, I decided it was the end of an era and went into the bank, probably for the last time, and closed out the account.

I expected to have to see a bank officer. I expected them to try to talk me into keeping the account. I expected to be able to tell them why I felt it wasn’t worth it to me to keep anymore, but no, I could close the account at any teller. Basically, it involved making a withdrawl equal to the amount left in the account. I don’t even know if the teller made any notation that the account should be closed. She gave me back my ATM card when done and said nothing. I’ll bet, if I went and made a deposit before the end of the month, everything would go on as if I hadn’t closed the account. I half-expect to get a nasty letter next month telling me I’m overdrawn by $7 because of the service charge. Of course that will add $35 more…

I did find one way to use the checking account online. I had it set up with PayPal and if someone sent me money using PayPal, I could have the money transferred into the account. But that happens only infrequently. One of the things I had to do after I closed it was to set up my PayPal account to work with my other checking account.

As a stockholder, I’m happy that a costly account that doesn’t bring much money into the bank is gone. I hope my dividends go up! Now, what will I do with several boxes of paper checks I can’t use?

Try as it might, it couldn’t stick and didn’t accumulate except on the furniture. It made an interesting day, had it been just rain, it would have been depressing. But snow made it a bit interesting.

It wasn’t really cold, either. I went outside several times with just a sweatshirt and worked in my garage for a few minutes in my shirtsleeves.

The last two months have been spent pretty much all with robotics. So much so, that I haven’t been skiing this winter at all. One day out to Holimont has been all I have done.

The robotics team finished their build season and we worked furiously up until the last minute when we had to seal up the robot in a big plastic bag until our regional competition in Pittsburgh. We spent the last weekend working on it at the Kenan Center, our local recreational center, where they let us use some space to practice and work on the robot while school was closed for part of the spring break.

While we were there, we invited several TV stations to come interview the team and we had three outlets take us up on the offer. Some of the video footage can be found on the Team Website: warlocks1507.com

I had a week or so off, then was off to the Fingerlakes Regional at RIT in Rochester where our team wasn’t competing, but I volunteered to work to help out. I spent a day as a Robot Inspector and two days as a Safety Advisor. It was a lot of fun and gave me a lot of insight into the other side of the competition I’d never seen before.

Seeing the game play out and the strategies of the other teams playing was useful too. Many members of our team attended as spectators on Saturday to see some matches first hand. I know the experience helped us at our regional the following week in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh was our first regional event and being held the second week of the series, it gave us a chance to find out the nuances of the rules and see how the refs were going to interpret the rules. That was the main reason we decided to attend it instead of Fingerlakes.

My wife and I drove to Pittsburgh a day early, pulling the team trailer. Two other vehicles worth of team members did the same and we arrived on Wednesday evening with time to unload the still-bagged robot and out pit equipment at the venue the evening before the regional. It was nice not having to rush the morning of…

As for the competition, we did very well. There were problems. There always are. Mechanical, electrical, programming, all reared their ugly heads and fought us every step of the way, but we stuck with it and stayed very competitive. We placed 2nd after the elimination matches by a very narrow margin and ended up choosing the alliance that won 2nd (Silver medal) for the regional. The team that kept us out of 1st place? Our old friends Team 1114 from St. Catherines ON and their alliance mates Team 1503 from Niagara Falls ON. Both teams are teams we’ve played against before and ended up in the same position. Team 1114, the Simbotics, are multiple-time Championship winners and keep producing top-notch robots every year. We have to compete at a high level to stay with them each year.

We also won some other awards. A Coopertition Award based on helping other teams during the regional. That was a nice surprise. We always help out other teams if we can, but being recognized for it was a pleasant surprise.

We also won the regional’s award for the Best Web Site. For a number of years, we always submitted our web site for judging, but never paid a lot of attention to winning any award. We got a few honorable mentions, but no wins. Last year, we wondered why and took a look at the judges report. We found out there were a few key things they wanted to see in a team web site that we weren’t doing properly. So this year, we worked hard to make sure our site fit all the criteria that FIRST set for team web sites. It must have worked. Other than general guidance, and a little server maintenance, I let our web team do all the work, so it was 100% a student built site too. That makes the award even sweeter.

So, we’ve been back from the Pittsburgh regional a couple days now, but are still thinking and working on our plan for the St. Louis competition at the end of April. The robot has been resealed in it’s bag and the whole thing packed in it’s big wooden crate and will be picked up tomorrow for shipment to St. Louis. That’s the way it works; no working on the robot allowed, it ships directly to the next event. That doesn’t mean we aren’t working. We’ll be working on spare parts, programming and thinking about strategy until then.

Work on my cycle tour is at a standstill. With the St. Louis event at the end of April, I won’t be able to hit the road until sometime in May. That’s probably fine, the weather should be good by then. I’ll begin working on that soon.

We have more TV coverage coming this week with the robotics. They’re interviewing the team after our Pittsburgh success again.

In case you’re not familiar with this program, you can learn a lot about it at the official website of FIRST or you can watch the kickoff ceremonies Saturday. I’d urge you to do both, if you’re curious about it.

The program is a High School-aged competitive Robotics program that culminates in robots from all over the world trying to win the events in the Championship held this year for the first time in St. Louis MO.

But winning is just a goal. The real challenge is the whole process for the season. The kickoff both unveils a game the robots must play to compete in, and is the start of a six-week period when the teams are allowed to build their robot. At the end of the six-weeks, it’s hands-off and the robot is sealed for shipping to the competitions starting in march.

Every team is given a basic kit of parts and the same information about the game. They must figure out how to play the game, which is played by an alliance of three robots against another alliance of three robots. You need to cooperate with your alliance-mate, who are from other teams and schools that you may have never met before to prevail over the other alliance. But don’t beat them too badly, they might be you alliance partners in the next match held in round-robin fashion.

The team must analyze the game and determine what they want their robot to be able to do. Every game has too much to do. A common pitfall is trying to do it all and ending up doing it all poorly.

Then they must design a robot that does what they want it to do. Coming up with ideas and solutions, building prototypes, debugging them and getting the final result built all in six weeks is a daunting task. The team works every day they can for the six weeks. Our team works Monday through Saturday. We’d probably work Sundays, if we could get into the school!

This is the 20th Anniversary of FIRST and the program has grown to well over 2000 teams today. Our team, The Warlocks, Team 1507 from Lockport High School, is in it’s seventh year. A really neat page with the history of all the past seasons can be seen here.

To get into the game and see the Kickoff as it happens, the best place is NASA TV, which is carried on DirecTV on channel 289, Dish Network on channel 212, many cables systems (check you listings) and online by NASA TV. If you have your own satellite dish, there is information on getting it directly on the NASA page as well.

I ended up riding to Middleport and stopped for lunch at a diner there next to the canal. I’d been there before, on one of the bike club centuries I rode a few years ago. It’s always a convenient place to stop.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to ride back on Route 31, aka Telegraph Road and see just how bad the Bike Route 5 was. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all that bad. It was exactly as I expected, heavy traffic with cars and trucks pretty much constantly going by. But the wide shoulder was smooth and clear as can be expected. The riding was actually faster than taking the canal path and it’s crushed stone.

I kind of enjoyed the uphill ride. Most of it seemed to be gentle uphills folowed by gentle downhills. Not even enough to call rollers. The last hill up the escarpment was harder as you would expect, but an easier route then going up the hills on either Market Street or Clinton Street next to the canal.

When I got back to Lockport, I stopped by the Canal Street gazebo to see who might be playing there. It turned out to be Mike Petralgia, a friend who I knew from work. I hung out for an hour or so listening to him play.

From Fun on the Canal

The gazebo shows are a nice idea, but attendance always seems to be really low. In the not weather, there just is no shade and no one wants to stay there. Today, it was slightly more comfortable and a few people wandered by to watch. Some even took pictures at the Canawlers cut-out.

Ride mileage was about 29 miles.

Click on the photo to go to my Picasaweb album,