Missouri S&T was in a nip-and-tuck race for most the way north from Sioux Falls today. Our Miners were running in an extended pack with Bochum, Waterloo, Calgary, and Minnesota, teams that seemed to continually change order due to quick repair stops, driver changes, or good old-fashioned racing effort, but later in the day some high clouds moved in for a few hours, seriously cutting into SMVI's fuels supply (with which, by the way, they did NOT leave Sioux Falls). About that time the Miners' intermittent electrical problems began to raise their ugly little symptoms again. First, the solar car driver's radio went dead, necessitating a quick stop, then the turn signals began to act up because of a loose cable. Most of those issues could be resolved during driver changes (Matt Bloom, seen leaving his driving shift, Adam Lewis, and Mike Janeske held the reins today), but a critical loss of telemetry played havoc with race strategy because the EE's had no way of knowing what shape the batteries were in and couldn't tell the driver how fast to go.
Anyway, they pretty much held their race position until they approached Morehead, MN and then had to cut their speed nearly in half, which sliced into their race position much more than they'd hoped. They gave up about an hour to an hour and a half on their racing friends, limping into Fargo in 7th place just ahead of Iowa State, Red River, and Arizona.
We're not going to gloss over things; tomorrow looks troubling. S&T's batteries are not in a fully-charged state, and the forecast is for overcast skies with rain showers in the afternoon, and the sprint to Winnipeg is around 250 miles.

While all that news is a discouraging, the crew took in the beautiful Minnesota countryside with a ceremonial pass-by of the world's largest lutefisk in Madison, MN, the Official Lutefisk Capitol of the World.

Just down the road in Canby, where the team camped on the '05 race, SMIV got a great reception from a group of lovely ladies who seem to think that SMVI/Joe Miner is really sexy.

Lastly, here are some staff members of Mac's Hardware in West Fargo, ND. They were kind enough to let the Miners use their back lot to work on the car and set up Chef Letha's gourmet buffet. Mac's is unbelievable! Not just a hardware store, but a grocery/army surplus/furniture/hunting/home decor/farm and things we didn't even know existed store. If you have an aircraft carrier stuck in the mud, they have the stuff you'll need to pull it out.