Mad Dash to Adelaide

DAY 7: PORT AUGUSTA - ADELAIDE (298 km / 185 mi)

I’d just got out of bed at 6am, thinking that at least I didn’t have to worry about a live interview today, because my next scheduled one wasn’t until Monday. Then the phone rang…it’s the ABC radio Saturday Sports Show, would I mind having a chat about the World Solar Challenge live on air. Just perfect…nothing prepared, still half asleep and trying to remember what the hell happened yesterday that might be interesting. Anyway I managed to get through it, but that used up the extra time we needed to get packed, so it was a mad panic to get to the check in point on time.

We still needed to get an exhaust emission test done, so Heather, our team leader (and my wife!) figured out how to use the Yellow Pages function on the Telstra Next G phone and found some possibilities north of Adelaide. So during the drive, Syd was ringing around to organise something. We found an Ultratune on Main North Road and the GPS led us right to it…oops, there’s now a supermarket there instead! Finally discovered that the Ultratune had relocated down a block and finally got there after rounding up the rest of our team vehicles which had become scattered hither and yon in the confusion.

Anyway it was all worth it, because the emission figures blew the machine operator away. He reckons they are the lowest emission figures he’s ever seen. And that’s on straight ULP. It should be even better on E85, but anyway even this still makes us easily the most eco friendly Greenfleet car in the event. We’ll be publishing the results soon.

Arrived at the Torrens Parade Ground checkpoint at in Adelaide about midday, ahead of the other teams (surprise, surprise) and decided to go over to the Entertainment Centre for lunch.

We lined up at one of the eateries to order and noticed that a couple of people from one of the Asian teams were behind us. Since there were eleven of us we politely suggested that they could go ahead of us. There’s an old saying “no good deed goes unpunished” and this certainly proves it. What we didn’t know and they didn’t tell us, was that they were ordering lunch for two teams (23 people). Not only did it take forever, but they cleaned out most of the good stuff. What can you do except laugh!

The ceremonial parade finish was a total schemozzle. It was supposed to be all the cars under police escort arriving at the finish line together. But of course nobody had bothered to check that this was possible…it wasn’t! The police only allow a maximum of five cars under escort at any one time…and the Greenfleeters numbered 17! So they arrived in batches of five at half hour intervals and nobody seemed to know which car was in which batch until they arrived. So I guess you could say the event finished the way it started, in total chaos! Still we managed to get some great shots of the Saab arriving.

The people I feel the most sorry for were with Ecowash, not a Greenfleet entrant, but a local company whose employees came in to demonstrate waterless car washing. They used this labour intensive method to wash all of the assembled Greenfleet cars, leaving them gleaming like new pins…for 30 minutes. Then it rained…mud! I’m not kidding, it’s the dirtiest rain I’ve ever seen and the cars are now filthy. They’ll stay on public display, under 24 hour security, until late Sunday, and we hope to distribute the rest of our promotional gear by then too.

After the stuttering parade finish we all went back to the Country Comfort Inn for a quick shower, changed into our team uniforms and headed off to the Civic Reception. We were warmly greeted by Adelaide’s Lord Mayor and the legendary Hans Tholstrup and most importantly, free food and booze!

We spent the next few convivial hours catching up with our newfound mates in some of the other teams, last minute lobbying with the event officials and laughing at the few “oh so serious” teams. They spent so much effort and discomfort getting extraordinary (but unrealistic) fuel consumption, only to be blown away by the Saab’s incredibly low exhaust emissions. Great night all round.

Tomorrow the team members man the public display in 90 minute rotations and then we all go to the Awards ceremony tomorrow night.