As of noon today about half of the solar cars have reached the race's first stage stop, hosted by Crowder College. Solar Miner VI rolled into Neosho at about 9:30, just behind Bochum and Minnesota, leaving us in 5th place unofficially; Michigan and Principia survived half a day of cloudy racing to slip into town last night just before the stage stop closed.

Even though we have glorious weather right now (cloudless, cool, and breezy), new race rules limit battery charging time so SMIV won't be operating at full speed tomorrow, and that may be true of other cars as well, as they are all suffering from a cloud "hangover". They'll head up through western Missouri at 9:00 a.m tomorrow before turning west towards Topeka en route to the next stage stop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota by Wednesday.
S&T is expecting a busload of supporters to arrive from Rolla this afternoon, and S&T is hosting dinner for ALL the teams and their supporters. The bus is also carrying emergency repair parts that were quickly scavenged from various campus workshops this morning. Even the Rolla City Police Department chipped in by rushing some replacement radio microphones to the bus just before it left campus, so the next time you get pulled over in town, thank the nice officer.
The Miners' race crew has unexpectedly grown with the addition of three race team members from Western Michigan University. It has long been a race tradition that when a team fails to qualify for the race, those students are offered temporary membership on other racing teams. WMU's car had its solar array blow off its car during track testing, and the team was unable to repair the car in time for qualifying. Some WMU students jumped at the chance to experience the race, and their new S&T shirts are arriving on today's bus.
That's an indication of the inter-team support common to these events. The night before the Plano start Minnesota blew up a power tracker, and Principia gave up their spares to keep the Golden Gophers in the race. Michigan was seen helping fellow Big Ten rival Minnesota with some programming issues, and we assume that Michigan is helping the Go-phers Go-Faster, but ALL teams are having their electrical issues.