Falling into place in Sioux Falls...

We apologize for the radio silence for the last few days. It's been pretty busy, and pushing forward consumes most of our efforts, to say nothing of the fact that most of us have long since lost track of time and place (in regards day of the week and what state we're in!).

In regards to our performance of late, we are slowly increasing our performance as we get a better sense of how the vehicle performs in different settings and how hard we can push it. We can gauge our relative performance from day-to-day better now, which has helped us take risks and drive more confidently.

Currently, we are fluctuating in 10th-11th place for total elapsed time. This includes our initial mechanical troubles, as well as navigational missteps and inclement weather. Indeed, this last point has given us some trouble, as we have to be very wary of not running our batteries down too low. Nonetheless, we have been able to pass a few teams. There's a bit of schadenfreude involved when we manage to slowly overtake a similarly slow-moving vehicle on a rainy day...

All in all, we continue jockeying towards the lower-middle of the pack. Given our concerns about this venture being remotely viable at all, we're quite happy about our performance thus far. Be sure to examine the NASC site and the news links there!

NASC 2008: Start (Plano, TX) to leg 5 (Sioux Falls, SD)