Somehow it is a fitting end to this race that we have lot of clouds today. This has been the least-sunny race since the '99 rain-fest from D.C. to Orlando won by upstart Missouri S&T, the first of our TWO national championships.

'08 won't be our year, obviously. Yesterday's standings have us in a respectable 6th place, considering that nearly all of the faster teams have been running in the Australia's World Solar Challenge in the non-NASC years. There are also several listings where the higher-ranked team has a longer elapsed running time than lower-ranked teams, so we are are confused in that matter. The Miners have fielded a simple and reliable mechanical chassis that has run beautifully, but the electrical side hasn't held its own. Late yesterday they found that three sub-arrays had somehow lost their connections so the car has been running on only 70% of its potential power. They don't know how long that has been the case because they were attributing the low power to so many cloudy days. Add to that the gradually shrinking battery back and you'll understand the Miners may be arriving at Calgary on solar fumes, so to speak.

We'll have more from the S&T Gypsy Caravan in the morning.