Out in the outback: days one and two

(Written September 23rd)

Hello from Port Augusta! This is our second time here; we booked it here from Adelaide, camped for a night, then headed out to the outback for four days. Our fourth day was a full day of race driving from Coober Pedy to Port Augusta, and today was our rest day.

(Pic: our tents at 7:30 am on our rest day. Emergency measures were taken to make the tents stop inverting themselves in the wind.)

Our first day out of Port Augusta started around noon and involved a leisurely drive up to the lovely town of Glendambo. We spent the drive working out our radio protocols, talking about road trains, and getting used to our new vehicles.

Glendambo is a big town by outback standards, which means it has all of two gas stations and a bar. It also has about two million flies. Eric bought a fly net and I decided to rock a bandana and my dbx hat to keep them off my face. The nice thing about flies in the outback is that they go to sleep shortly after sunset and don't come back out until approximately nine AM.

(Pic: bandana and safety vest. Stylish.)

At the end of the day we tested our new array stand. In the wise words of Ian Girard, "It'll do."

Array standing for our team takes a fair amount of work because we have to lift the entire car, not just the top shell. (On Xenith and previous cars the top shell was removable.) We've decided that holding up the array stand is going to replace hitting the gym as a way to keep our team in shape. And it also gives rise to some great jokes: when Greg found all three girls on the team (and one guy) holding up the array stand, he asked us how all of that leaning in was working out for us.

The next day we did short speed runs just north of Glendambo to characterize the power draw of the car at a variety of speeds with our new black edition motors. I drove the morning shift, which was my first time driving Luminos at a reasonable speed. She's touchy and the bubble is hard to see through, but she's a solar car all right-and therefore awesome.

(Pic: panorama at Glendambo with a full moon.)

When I get another chance to write I'll put up a post about days three and four in the outback. Tomorrow we're heading out for a three day mock race to test our strategy. I don't have a whole lot of pictures because I've been pretty busy, but here's the outback:

(Pics: somewhere between Pimba and Port Augusta. It's pretty flat.)