Race day zero

Today we did dynamic scrutineering and our hot lap. Ian shaved three seconds off his best time to finish in 2:07.7. This puts us in third place for the start of the race, behind Kogakuin University (2:06.8) and Arrow (2:00.1).

Twente did their hot lap in 2:10. Nuon did a fairly slow hot lap and failed the brake test. They just now passed. Tokai spun their car once on their practice lap and again on their hot lap. They had to do a five point turn to get back onto the straight, and finished in 2:48. Michigan will also be behind us at the start of the race tomorrow.

At 8:00 the Cruiser class cars will start the race, one minute apart from each other. Challenger cars will start at 8:30.

Quick update

We passed static scrutineering after tweaking settings on our camera. We had to return again after our system passed because they wanted a picture to show that our camera was mounted soundly. The original plan was to mount it securely to the license late, but we don't get a license plate until we pass scrutineering. It's a chicken and egg problem, but we're past it now.

Tomorrow we have dynamic scrutineering. The day after we start the race.

This evening we went to a reception with some of the other teams. Tokai was there and we got a picture with them.

I look very short here because Toby decided to stand right behind me. Or possibly because I am short.

We also hung out with our new friends from the University of Western Sydney. We're looking forward to hanging out with them more after the race.

Heading north

Highlights:
- Camels chilling on the site of the road the first day
- A stop at Devil's Marbles the second day, where we climbed around on the rocks and got a group picture
- A peacock standing on the roof of the roadhouse at Ti Tree
- Real live kangaroos hopping on the side of the road at night! We see a lot of flat kangaroos on this road, but very few live ones. These were the first live kangaroos I've seen outside of a zoo on either trip to Australia.
- Meeting Michigan array standing by the road on the third day. We didn't get to talk to them much, but we'll see them again at the racetrack.

Pictures:
Greg, looking classy; Eric after eating a slice of bread slathered with Vegemite in one go; weather near Alice Springs; some pictures from Devil's Marbles; Ian rock climbing; team vehicles.

Static scrutineering

Today our team went through static scrutineering along with other Challenger class cars.  We passed all of the tests except for the rear vision test, which we failed due to miscalibrated white balance on our camera.  We are returning to scrutineering tomorrow to pass that final test.

Mock race redux

Blogger ate my last version of this post and left no trace. Proper behavior in the wilderness, but less helpful on my phone.

Mock race day one: started in Port Augusta and ended in Coober Pedy. We fell short of where we wanted to be due to headwinds but it was still a good test of our strategy.

The solar car almost hit an emu, and another ran between the solar car and chase.

Harry called out an emu as a bird on the radio; Max wisecracked that if Harry ever told us there was a lizard on the road, we should expect an alligator.

Mock race day two: down to Port Augusta and then north again. Ended about 50 km out of Port Augusta. Primary excitement came in the form of a full sized house coming down the road with a police escort. This is a normal enough occurrence that the race officials warned us about it at the driver briefing last time, but it's always an astonishing and impressive sight.

I was driving Luminos at the time so I don't have any pictures of the house, but instead I have a picture of another thing we saw on a truck on the Stuart Highway. This digger takes up one and a half lanes and also has a lead and a chase vehicle.

We camped on the side of the road for the first time and watched the Milky Way appear in the sky. The stars in the outback are incredible. I can't wait for calling during the race, when we will actually be in the middle of nowhere.

We had Luminos up on sawhorses for a mech check and a very strong gust of wind at the beginning of a storm blew her off the sawhorses and onto her left side. The sawhorses crumpled in the wind.

Luminos didn't have any tires at the time, so she landed on her left side. We called off the mock race so that we could do repairs properly during the day instead of hacking at night. In the end we got really lucky: the only damage was two bent brake rotors and a cracked taillight.

On day three we started at noon, after a morning of mech checks and repairs. I was in scout and we pulled ahead with the trailer to fuel up at Pimba. The trailer had one driver and no passengers, contrary to our usual protocols, but we thought this was fine because we had already been through that stretch of road three or four times.

This turned out to be mistake.

Scout headed out first to catch up to the team at the control stop in Glendambo, and trailer was supposed to leave five minutes later.

An hour later, at the control stop, we got a call from the trailer that made even Wesley facepalm. Jason had managed to drive south out of Pimba instead of north, and had driven 110 km before he figured out that anything was wrong. He was pulled over a whopping 17 km north of where we had started the day.

The Stuart Highway runs directly across the center of the continent. There are no turnoffs that our team takes. The gas station was on the highway. There was a giant green sign that says Darwin one way, Adelaide the other. Somehow none of this changed anything for our hapless trailer driver.

We changed plans and decided to spend the night in Glendambo. Wesley told Jason to not budge and Greg, Anna and I went down in scout to pick him up. We didn't want him driving another four hours and possibly into the night with an expensive car and our team's trailer, in light of what had already happened so far.

Greg drove back with Jason. I don't know what happened in that car.

I predict no end to the jokes about this in the coming days, but in the end nothing was lost other than hours of time and a lot of gas. It could have been worse.

Next time: cross-country driving!

Pictures: Touareg and trailer; sunset reflecting in the bubble, with and without photobombing; slothing around; the Stuart Highway at high noon, in both directions; a very large digger.

The spider game

Step one: go three feet away from the rest of camp at night in the outback

Step two: turn on your headlight and look around

Step three: realize that every glittering dot out there is a spider

Step four: climb on top of the trailer and resolve to sleep there for the rest of the trip

Driving a solar car

There is a peculiar mix of terror and boredom that comes from driving a solar car.

The first few miles are exciting, especially on a new car. There's that great new car smell, and you get to play around with the dynamics and steering of the car.

The next few miles just feel like the beginning of a road trip. You're still fresh and alert, the day is young, and holy crap it's a solar car.

Half an hour later you are much less excited. You wriggle around, trying to find a better way to sit, and you inevitably turn the steering wheel a tiny bit. You correct instantly, but not fast enough: chase saw the swerve and calls out "chase solarcar, watch your lane." You find a comfortable position and settle in for another three hours of driving.

In another hour or so, you are bored out of your mind. You sang out loud until you realized that it's too loud to even hear your own voice. You conjugated verbs in Latin and Russian and Spanish. You pretended you were flying a spaceship and shooting down enemy ships. You've tried every possible seating position. There are still two hours left.

An hour later you're still bored, but the boredom is tempered by terror. You're sleepy and tired. You haven't even noticed the scenery passing because you were so focused on staying between the lines. You are sick of hearing "watch your lane" from chase. What else could you possibly be watching?

For the next forty-five minutes you are hyper-focused. Nothing would be worse than driving this car off the road. You blink constantly and sweep your eyes left to right. You watch for the little green signs every ten kilometers that tell you how far you have to go before your shift ends. Every time you pass a sign you do the same math over again, converting speed and distance into time left in the box.

The last fifteen minutes are agonizing. Driving into the control stop is a relief. The vibration finally stops and you can close your eyes for a long moment. You unclip your radio, undo your seatbelt, and make sure you're not leaving anything in the car. Then you open the door and bail out as quickly as possible, taking care to not shade the array.

When you get out somebody hands you a sandwich and a water bottle. You take off your helmet and shrug your shoulders to loosen them. You drink, you eat, and suddenly you feel human again.

At the end of the control stop you jump into an air-conditioned car and listen to music while you watch the world go by. After half an hour you feel ready to drive again. After all, what's better than driving a solar car?