The rest of the day Nik and Toby had a chance to perform some general maintenance on the SRZero. Nik also implemented some modifications, with new longer range radio communication. Clemens and I spent most of the day arranging lodgings, charging points, updating the website and working out the details for the press day in Mexico City.

In the evening we went for a meal, had a whole beer each to celebrate my 23^rd birthday, and then went to sleep wondering what fate would await us on the other side…

So on Sunday morning, our 41^st day, we rendezvoused in the garage of the hotel and got all our equipment together. Everything was packed and the SRZero was ready to go, but the support vehicle was not; the battery was dead. It is an interesting observe that a battery and motor are needed to get a petrol engine going, and when that little battery is flat, that big lump of metal is useless (unless you have a hill handy, and you’re at the top of it!) Fortunately however, one of the hotel’s valets came down with his car and jump started our van, so finally we were able to get going.

The drive out of Austin was pretty hectic, especially in the SRZero where your head only comes up to the top of the wheels of most vehicles! The traffic was heavy, and it was getting difficult to drive as well as give coherent answers to the in-car interview Claudio was subjecting me to, but soon we were out of the city and on long, flat country roads.

Our goal for the day was Eagle Pass, a town 220 miles away and situated right on the border with Mexico. The aim was to get there early enough to charge up overnight and leave very early in the morning for the border, so we were pushing quite a pace to get there on time. The drive was beautiful; the last of the Texan countryside flew past us, the sky was blue and the sun bright. Soon we were turning off the highway onto a small road that was to take us the last 95 miles to Eagle Pass, and this is when disaster struck…

The first thing I noticed that was wrong while driving the SRZero was a loud click somewhere behind me on my left. I was a little concerned, but the car was still driving fine and I suspected it may have been a stone hitting the inside of the wheel arch or something. But a few seconds later, a loud bang occurred in the same place and I knew something was very wrong indeed. Luckily there was no traffic, and I was able to quickly pull over to the hard shoulder.

Upon taking off the rear bodywork, we found out what had happened, and it wasn’t good at all. The shock absorber, one of the last components we would ever have expected to fail, had snapped clean in half, and the car was now listing heavily to the left. Now, how on earth were we to get the car moving to Eagle Pass with a snapped shock absorber and without a spare? It was a Sunday evening and the chances of anything being open which could help us were incredibly low.

Nonetheless, we headed back to the last service station we passed, and asked for the number of the local mechanic. However, after several attempts at reaching him we still couldn’t make contact, so we decided to drive to the nearest village and try and find something, anything, that could help save the day. So, while Toby, Nik and myself were charging around the countryside trying to find help, Andy and Clemens were babysitting the car and sharing a rather intimate moment which can be seen in the appropriate video on our website!

After reaching Pearsall, about 15 miles from the breakdown site, Toby spotted what looked like a workshop on the side of the road. We pulled up to the building with the broken component in our hands and tried to find someone, but no one was around except a dog which looked inquisitively as we walked around. Our next attempt involved going to one of the nearby houses and asking if there was someone who owned the workshop nearby. It turned out that the man we approached was the owner, and he quickly agreed to help us.

After an hour or so of bashing, milling, grinding and turning, we had the top of our damper reunited with the bottom half. Sure, it was pretty crooked, but it was strong and we were sure it would do the job. 15 minutes later, we arrived at the breakdown site and quickly had the spring and damper back in the car. After dropping the car back down onto its wheels, we were relieved to see the damper take the full weight of the car, and other than the car leaning ever so slightly to the left, it looked pretty normal.

We still had 95 miles to cross, which we drove very gingerly at first to test the component, but as our confidence in our quick fix grew, we slowly brought the car up to the speed limit of 55mph. The car performed flawlessly and after 2 hours we arrived at our hotel in Eagle Pass. We could see Mexico from the road, and the possibility of having to drive into this potentially dangerous territory with a broken shock absorber was not incredibly appealing, but it was probably the only option we had if we were to make our deadline of getting to Mexico City in time. Nonetheless, this was an issue we were forced to address the following day when we could make phone calls to the necessary people. For now, it was time to get the car on charge and get some sleep.

Disaster averted…for now!

NI Week

We arrived at the hotel late on Sunday night and, in true RGE style, parked the SRZero right in front of the entrance. You could tell that the NI team had eagerly been awaiting our arrival. By 10pm we had already met with Shaker (our main contact’s boss), Rod (the Organiser of the entire NI Week), and accompanying Mark Gradwell were all 3 of the 3 UK journalists that were covering NI Week!

MONDAY

The morning after, the car needed to be in the exhibition hall by 9am or we would lose our prestigious spot at the front… We were all pretty tired after the previous few days driving, but luckily Alec had just arrived. After being stuck in Belgium with University commitments, he was understandably keen to drive the car and was therefore more than happy to get up at 7:00am and drive the 40 yards from the Hotel to the Convention Centre. However, 40 yards was clearly not enough and 20 minutes later, after a suspiciously high number of wrong turns by Mr de Zegher, we still hadn’t made it in.

Once his enthusiasm was curbed, we headed back towards the convention centre and Alec had the first drive of the SRZero indoors. This was a fairly surreal experience, passing by half built exhibitions and half-awake exhibitors, but eventually we made it onto the carpet with half an hour to spare, nice!

Next up was cleaning… a lot of cleaning. 4 man hours to be precise. But by lunch the car was spotless and we had met with Julie Schreier. She showed us our media schedule and introduced us to all the main contacts, and then it was time to meet Mark Walters. This was the man with his job on the line if we gave a bad presentation, his relief at seeing the team physically present gave way to anxiety as we ran through the presentation and he saw us chopping and changing the slides in front of his eyes…We assured him that we would be ready with a version that we were happy with by Tuesday, and he left happy but still somewhat apprehensive (all the other presentations seem to have been prepared weeks in advance!).

The rest of the day was spent showing the car to NI staff and preparing the media for the main event. This involved a couple of videos and some quick 2 minute talks by Alex as the media packs toured the floor in search of the most exciting applications of NI technology.

By the end of the day we were relatively tired and I for one was ready to sleep. But then the silver lining – our stand was right at the front of the exhibition hall, and at 5pm a bar and food magically appeared 5 meters to our left, brilliant! Now Toby, Alec and I were all extremely tempted to sample the Austin nightlife, but we remained disciplined and made our way to the hotel room to work on our presentation until the early hours (3am for reference!).

TUESDAY

We were all up early on Tuesday to man the stand and meet the public for the first time! Alex, Nik and Dave took over the stand for much of the exhibition while Pambo and Clemens worked hard on the website and logistics respectively. As for the 3 musketeers, we were working once again on our scripts in preparation for lunch with Mark and Kelly. There are some benefits to having to work on the keynote presentation, and this lunch was one of them –P F Changs is highly recommended. The spicy chiken lettuce wraps are a great starter, and don’t get me started on the main course!

When we got back, Julie and Trisha were on hand to dispatch various media outlets to our stand. We paired up with Toby and Alex taking the left side, then Alec and I took the right side. Look out for some of the articles here!

Tuesday evening ended much like Mondays, with a bar and food – although it was far busier than the previous night. All the team were on hand to answer questions and then it was time for the 3 presenters to grab some food and head to the hotel room for another late night. This time however, we managed to finally get a script that we were happy with! We had it together by 11pm and spent another hour memorising it before ambling into bed and falling asleep in seconds.

WEDNESDAY

This was the same drill as Tuesday for the team on the ground, and it started the same for the 3 presenters. But then at midday we had to head up to Ballroom D for the first rehearsal..

We met with Mark and Shaker beforehand and then had a run through. I was up first on stage and you look up and see 3,000 seats stretching out in all directions – only about 10 people in the audience mind you, but when the slides showed up in a funky order it was enough to confound me and I promptly forgot my second line… it wasn’t looking good. Toby and Alec made it through their sections without any issues but perhaps a little flat – the efforts of pervious evenings, and repeating the same thing 30 or 40 times made it hard to sound as enthusiastic as we should have been!

There were nods of approval for the NI team, but we were about 1minute 40 over time, uh-oh! It was time to start cutting our carefully crafted masterpiece… Luckily Shaker was on hand to help shakedown the technical section and after an hour of intensive re-working, we had an entirely new, and much improved section – only thing was that now Alec had a whole new piece to learn!

Then Thursday’s Master of Ceremonies arrived, and it was time for the penultimate rehearsal. We met Ray briefly and he told us to relax and wished us the best of luck, then he had to be working on remembering his own lines! Now with the very recent changes to our script, we had to change the slides too. Unfortunately during the last run through of the day, the wrong version was uploaded and subsequently all 3 of us stalled at some point, and Toby had to take a few seconds to recover. Mark Walters was getting very worried now and before we left at 8:30pm he said to Toby;

“Tonight, make sure you go over your lines and make sure you know them backwards!”

Toby nodded, looked at the floor, and said nothing.

You see RGE had a different approach. We knew the lines, we were just too uptight and to be honest, not really enjoying the experience in that moment. It was time to relax. Everyone else was at the big NI Conference party and so we decided to go for a meal – we joined the rest of the team and film crew at Six and enjoyed some pizza on the roof terrace at sunset. A slightly too bro-mantic setting began to evolve. As the dulcet tones of one of Austin’s famous musical offerings filled the air, the terrace began to fill up and before we knew it, the place was packed, so we decided to stay a little longer!

The evening was going swimmingly until we bumped into the NI UK crew – Adam Bakehouse, who was the first person RGE approached about sponsorship, and who has backed the project for the keynote speech was there too! He was utterly horrified to find the keynote speakers out and after seeing him we decided to head home in true Cinderella style before the clock struck 12.

THURSDAY

The big day had arrived, the team were showered, dressed, fed and in the ballroom by 6:30am. We had time for a final run through and aside from some digestive issues (owing partly to the occasion and partly to the night before) we were fine.

I haven’t yet mentioned these two teams and so perhaps now is a good time to do so. One has been building a hybrid SUV and has been doing extremely well in national competitions, but the project that really impressed us was the team that have developed a way that enables blind drivers to drive, not simply be driven by an automated system. They have developed an interface whereby the blind driver can be informed of the space around them, and actively make driving decisions – a truly remarkable and inspiring project!

We had developed a sense of camaraderie as we went through the endless rehearsals and refinements together, and were all looking out for each other, while at the same time being focussed on remembering our own parts.

The run through was delayed as Dr Kaku, the headline speaker in the keynote session, had to check through his videos with the AV team. We used this time to good effect, drinking water and practising our lines but the nerves were beginning to set in and before we were really ready, it was time to do the rehersal..

It actually went ok and we all, for the first time, got our lines right! We went backstage and the presenters from Virginia Tech were on hand to hi-5 us as we came down. The other two presentations went by without a hitch and we began to relax a little before the big moment arrived. We decided to go outside and grab a drink – mistake. Outside the concourse was packed with a couple of thousand delegates eating fruit and drinking coffee, all eagerly awaiting the keynote that morning. This promptly awoke the butterflies in my stomach that had only just subsided. Then, to compound the growing sense of unease, Claudio turned up and wanted to film us and find out how we were feeling, not something that you normally want to do before a big presentation, but duty called.

Suddenly, before we knew it, a booming voice asked the audience to take their seats and we rushed backstage to get our microphones on. A couple of videos rolled and then Ray walked out to a rapturous reception, clearly a local favourite!

We were backstage pacing nervously, reciting our lines and drinking water to whet our drying mouths… The familiar sound of Alex voice filled the room as the introductory video started and it was 1 minute to go… nerves gave way to a couple of nervous jokes and then..

“Please welcome, Alec de Zegher, Toby Schulz, and Andy Hadland…”

The video finished, we were up the stairs, through the black curtain and out into the blinding lights with 3,500 faces looking up at us. Ray passed us the slide clicker and it was time…

http://www.racinggreenendurance.com/videos.php 

… Afterwards we were greeted by the familiar hi-5 from Virginia tech as they went up for their big moment. Claudio and Jonathan’s big video finish enabled the presentation to finish on a real high! A shake of the hand from Shaker and Mark, a polite nod from Dr Kaku and a few proud text messages from Adam, Mark and Dave, as well as the rest of the RGE team sat in the audience.

We sat by the side to watch the rest of the keynote – the other teams did well and the blind driving team delivered a rousing speech. Then Dr Kaku wooed and wowed the audience with his descriptions of how technology will evolve in the future, and how we are already on the way there today.

After all this we talked to the press for 30 minutes backstage before heading back to the hotel. We saw Kelly from NI who proceeded to join us; she actually bought the team lunch and sorted our hotel for the next couple of nights which was very much appreciated!

We were all extremely tired after the excursions of the keynote and promptly fell asleep until 6pm before heading out for a meal with the NI UK team who had been the ones to sponsor RGE in the beginning. Fantastic peppercorn steaks were had all round at Flemings, and suitably stuffed we headed out into the night – towards Austin’s famous 6^th street to celebrate..

Thanks to everyone at NI who believed in the project and helped to get the RGE message out there, and of course,  for making Austin such a fantastic experience. Despite the stresses of rehersals, the feeling when we finish the presentation was phenomenal, and we would do it again without hesitation!

It is perhaps the right time now to mention RGE’s timekeeping; throughout the project we have tried exceedingly hard to stick to a planned and well thought out schedule, and this has served us extremely well. Here we were, after a month on the road and over 10 months since we promised National Instruments to be in Austin on or before the 2nd of August, just 290 miles away from our final destination. But we’ve come to appreciate Sod’s Law whereby things just seem to go wrong at the most inopportune time, so we were not counting our chickens just yet!

Anyway, a short drive from the hotel and a quick detour off the main road, we found ourselves driving through what was, by far, the biggest collection of large wind turbines I had ever seen. Off into the horizon they stretched, and it was here, in the midst of these giant machines that Andy and myself did a piece to camera about wind energy, what’s good and bad about it, and how their use relates to electric vehicles. The video of this can be seen at http://www.racinggreenendurance.com/videos.php.

After our quick video shoot, which lasted for around an hour, we headed onwards, and when hunger struck we stopped at a restaurant promising an all you can eat BBQ. I think by now you’ve heard too many of my endless food ramblings, so I’ll leave it out and save it for later, but suffice to say that the food was really exceptional! It was one of those perfect days; great weather, car driving perfectly, delicious food, but as always, just at the time you least expect it, things go wrong…

Rick suddenly announced that he would be leaving us. This may not sound like such a big deal, but for us it was. For weeks he had helped Claudio with the filming, helped navigate, entertained us all with great stories, and was an all round amazing travel companion. For personal reasons he had decided to leave, and while we are upset to have him miss out on the fantastic journey ahead, we wish him all the best for the future. He was at least planning on coming with us to Austin, so we vowed to give him a night to remember, and we got on with the driving.

The scenery was spectacular, and drive was only broken by a couple of stops by the local police. This was our first time being stopped since Yreka in California, and we were beginning to notice a very spooky trend. I will embellish more on this in a special blog post, but for now all I can say is that we were beginning to see a very unusual pattern emerging. But anyway, we carried on rolling through the countryside, which looked very similar to the English countryside, with rolling meadows fringed with oak trees; very different to the preconceived perceptions we all had.

Finally, the glistening city of Austin appeared in the distance. Smart but not ostentatious sky scrapers sparkled in the distance, and our final destination was almost in reach. I say almost, because we had one further obstacle to navigate; the STOP signs. In the US, these signs are at every crossroad where there isn’t a traffic light. The idea is that from whatever direction you come from, you come to a complete halt, and whoever came to a complete halt first, gets to go first. On the route into Austin, there was an long section of junctions with these signs, and so I did what I was taught in the UK; slow down as you approach the line, but if there is no one coming, then carry on through. I did this 3 times before a flash of red and blue appeared in my mirrors and I was forced over by a police car. Two more cars subsequently joined the fracas.

The police surrounded the vehicle, and one of the officers came up and asked how many more stop signs I was intending on running tonight. I explained my reasoning that in the UK, stopping when no one was there is considered an entirely pointless exercise. While he agreed, he still said it was against the law and at all times, one must come to a complete standstill at these signs, regardless of the number of cars in the vicinity.

After checking my driver’s license and conferring with his colleagues, he said it was stupid for him to give me a ticket as I would soon be out of the country anyway, but he did proceed to give me a warning ticket, which fortunately is not recorded and as he put it “will be merely a souvenir from your trip to the US”. Phew!

After the police disbanded and left us to our own devices, we headed a few blocks south towards our hotel, the Marriot on 4th street, which NI had kindly provided us. Upon arriving, the hotel staff were delighted to have such a car in their driveway, and promptly freed up a spot on the concourse where we could safely leave the car in full view. It reminded me a lot of our experiences at the Fairmont in Seattle, and the Mirage in Las Vegas.

However, the overwhelming feeling among the team was that we had made it exactly on schedule! After months of planning and over a month on the road, we had arrived exactly as promised. We had pushed so hard for this moment, often leaving very early in the morning to keep our schedule, especially in the northern section of the trip through Alaska and Canada. On any one of these days, had we not been bothered and just had a longer sleep, we would not have made it to Austin on Sunday night. I must congratulate the team, and all our supporters and sponsors who have helped us along the way, for the most incredible sustained and determined effort to make this happen!

We had to celebrate. Apparently 6th street was the place to be, and so after throwing our bags in the hotel room and having a quick dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, we headed the two blocks towards 6th street. It was a really great place to party; very European in style with bars and cafes spilling out into the street. Along with Rick and Claudio, we enjoyed our first night in Austin until the early hours of the morning!

The first surprise we had when crossing into Texas, and one that would perpetuate throughout our stay there, was the abundance of wind farms. My previous, and obviously misinformed view of Texas is that of America’s oil capital, and of endless scrubland interspersed with nodding donkeys, the mainstay of onshore oil drilling for the last century. But the reality was far different, at least from what we could see. Huge meadows and farmland stretched out from the road, and yes, there was the occasional nodding donkey, but they were dwarfed in size and number by the near ubiquitous wind farms. On the 290 miles to Snyder, I don’t think we were ever out of sight of a wind turbine. We were amazed, and we vowed to check them out the next day.

On we continued to the small town of Snyder, population a shade over 5,000, where we pulled up into Days Inn hotel. The owner greeted us, and as chance would have it, he was from the UK too. And not just that, but he owned a petrol station in Nottingham which was just round the corner from where Andy used to live as an undergraduate! Anyway, this nostalgic discussion obviously appealed to him as he gave us a room and the first round of our drinks at the bar for free!

As always, the car was given preferential treatment and was hooked up to the mains supply, this time by running a cable into a 50 amp socket located in the hotel’s kitchen. This was quickly done and then it was off to the bar for some food and some drink. And this is where the night’s adventure began…

We ordered our food and drinks, the latter which were provided complimentary from the owner, and we began tucking in. As soon as we finished our beers, another round arrived. The kindly bartender informed us that there was a gentleman at the end of the bar who wanted to buy us drinks. This is where we met Mike, a very friendly and chatty guy who got talking with over the rest of the night. When the bar closed and his wife Andrea came to pick him up, he suddenly came up with an idea; he suggested that we drive out to this place he knows, right under the wind turbines and with a view to take one’s breath away.

This sounded very enticing, so with Andrea at the wheel (she was the only one who hadn’t drunk anything) we drove out to this location some 35 miles away from the hotel. After a while we turned off the main road and took a side road that wound its way up the hillside until such time that we could turn off onto a dirt road that ended right at the base of a large wind turbine. As Mike promised, the view was spectacular, with a full moon ahead illuminating the fields below, and distant town lighting up their respective areas. That combined with the stars above and the wind in our hair did make for quite an amazing experience.

We should have stopped there and turned back, but Mike was determined to show us an even higher point which required quite a trek through the bush. So the team went off with him with the exception of Andy and myself who stayed back at the car with Andrea. About half an hour passed when Clemens came running back and asked to take the car into the bush to fetch Mike, who had had an accident. We instantly jumped to the conclusion that he must have been bitten by a snake as we knew there were some in the area, but it soon transpired that he had fallen down a 1 metre drop and severely fractured his ankle. So between us, we managed to carry him to the car and start driving him to the hospital, during which he was clearly in an excruciating amount of pain. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we got him safely to the hospital where they quickly received him and got him in for an x-ray. We would like to wish Mike a speedy recovery, and we hope that he is quickly on his feet again!

As for team RGE, it had been a long night, and we were happy to get back to the hotel and catch some sleep before yet another early start the next morning; the last leg we needed to complete in order to get to Austin on time!