Sunday Oct 25th

Sunday October 25th everyone is up early. The car needs to be at the city center for the opening ceremonies. It was great fun with the speeches while the band played. The starting flag was waved for each car about 1 min. apart. The cars quickly merged with city traffic leading to the Stewart Hwy.

Annette and I enjoyed the start but left to finish packing the now empty trailer and get checked out of the hotel. It was a lot of work but we finally got on the road two hours behind. We needed to catch up. With pulling a trailer and traffic, we had to put the hammer down.

This is racing and anything can happen and usually right at the start. The Bochum team from Germany was stopped because their lead car was totaled by a rental car being driven by Stanford parents who were following their team.



Michigan State and Tokai University

We went by several teams with flat tires and passed over 30 teams before the end of the day. Finally caught up with Eleanor by 3:30 shortly before getting to our Control stop at Dunmarra.  A Control stop is a required 30 minute rest period. There is one about every 300 km.
We were right behind Team Twente that had arrived 20 min. earlier.

This was a good place to stop. Showers, bathrooms and picnic tables were great for our first night in the outback. A good first day with everybody in great spirits since we were in 5th place with Team Twenty in our sights.

There are 7 teams in the race that have the gallium type array that produce 20% more power than our silicone array.  They are incredibly expensive and only afforded by teams with 7 figure budgets.

Annette made dinner with the team eating in shifts. Some working on the car, others setting the array to catch the last of the days sunshine, while the rest were getting ready for bed. The night sky was incredible but little star gazing was done as sleep comes quickly when tired bodies climb into sleeping bags.