American Solar Challenge 2003 - July 22th

Solar Car Gossip

We are definitely in the desert. The temperature at 4:00 AM this morning was 95 degrees. The highs get well into the 110s, but it's a dry heat.

Yesterday evening when our time ended we were in the middle of the Mojave Desert, 20 miles from the nearest sign of civilization. We charged our batteries next to the sand and desert bushes and then went to Lake Havasu City and spent the night. We were somewhat surprised to see the London Bridge at Lake Havasu - it took hours of discussion for us to all agree that it was the REAL London Bridge.

Today we're about to cross the CA border. We're still in the desert and will be until we get past the Colorado River.

Chris Trueblood

I must confirm the rumors about the team being in the desert.

Today we drove almost 200 miles in the 110 degree plus heat. Things were so hot that we had a little difficulty keeping our electronics within their operating temperature range.

Another really fun thing about desert heat is what it does to the roads. Route 66 in this part of the country is pretty much a continuous pot hole. We had our first flat tire today but changed it within six minutes.

The good news is that we made it to the end of the stage this afternoon and have completed all of the miles of the race so far without trailering.

The bad news is that the electronics overheating, tire changing, poor road conditions, and thick cloud cover delayed our arrival in Barstow until late in the afternoon, leaving us little time to charge batteries for the final run tomorrow. We'll just have to continue playing it smart for the last leg
tomorrow.

I am not sending any photo captions or that kind of thing, you'll probably get an email later with that kind of thing.

From the west coast(ish),

Vince Moody