The rainwater collection team was able to set up systems at two different locations as examples for the locals. We will continue to work with them after we leave by funding 10 houses at a time until all 36 families have a system set up. What we set in motion will improve the living conditions for this community dramatically because currently they have no way of obtaining clean water.

The rainwater project will provide the people of Santiago with more water, but still not of a high quality. Two more rotary biosand filters were purchased and placed in the church and the home where the rainwater collection systems were installed. A few of the filters installed earlier in the week had a few problems, so they were replaced with working filters for the families to use. Dr. Raul, the area's mayor as well as medical doctor will continue to check on the success of the filters, and that they are being properly maintained and used. If all goes well, we plan on providing the community with more filters, and will send the educational materials that we have made to the community leaders, to better help them instruct the community of their use.

This afternoon we had a meeting with community leaders to discuss the results our trip, the findings of our assessment team, and future plans. They expressed appreciation for what we've been able to do and that we completed it in the time here. It was sad to say goodbye to the friends we made and take the last drive back to Pimienta over the mountain. Tomorrow we´ll see San Pedro Sula and get ready to leave. We're definitely looking forward to coming back to Santiago next year.

As for our other groups, the water filtration team met yesterday with the families who received water filters. The families also received small water storage tubs to put their filtered water in. Today, the team went to the homes and helped set up the filters and answer any further questions. We have seen a lot of excitement over the filters and hope to be able to get many more to the community soon. The team also went to the Kindergarten and high school yesterday to talk to the children about the filters. The young kids were more interested in the “gringos” than they were with the filters, but nonetheless, it was a great visit. And one of the girls at the high school requested a filter be donated to their school. So it was nice to see interest in what we are doing.

The rainwater collection team began their project yesterday on the house that was chosen. After many attempts and several embarrassing hints from the non-engineering town’s people, the young engineers were able to make progress with their project. Today, two large tanks were bought to store the water for the collection systems. The team is currently meeting this evening with the adults who will be affected by their project, because it is hard to make decisions during the day when they are all away to work.

We have an exciting next couple of days planned for the team. Tomorrow night, after a long day of work, will be the futbolito (soccer for all the gringos) tournament with the community. The following night is a going away party for our team and a team of dentists that have also been working in Santiago. Friday night is a fair in Pimienta in celebration of the town’s patron saint.

We’ll be sending updates in between our fiestas! Hasta luego!

We arrived in Honduras yesterday afternoon, exchanged our dollars into limpiras, and then met with our Washington Overseas Mission contact, Janice, for lunch. After lunch we took a bus to Pimienta, where we are staying in the nicest house in town. It’s not exactly what we were expecting -- it's much nicer -- and we have been fed delicious food. We also took a short trip to Santiago for an initial meeting with the community members. We traveled to see the foundation that had been poured for the tank and took a look at the filters we are installing in some of the poorer homes.

Our first day of work began with being hauled on the back of trucks from Pimienta to Santiago.

The rainwater collection team had an impromptu meeting with the poorest part of Santiago located on the outskirts near the trash dump. A house was chosen to be the first attempt at our in-country rainwater collection system. The team did see one of the houses which had already designed their own collection system. Jason Co mentioned how he was really impressed that this man had developed a system that would provide enough water for his family of seven. The man said that water would be used for everything they need.

The water filtration team distributed 21 Bio-Sand Filters to homes in the community around the Health Center. We put them in a central location so that the community leaders can easily assess their effectiveness (whether the community is using them properly and if cases of sickness decrease because of their use). We are planning a community meeting tomorrow to discuss the maintenance and use of the filters.

The assessment team walked around the streets using GPS to locate the pipes for the distribution system. Tomorrow they plan to meet with the plumber who installed most of the pipes. This was a good chance for the team to meet many members of the town.

We plan to get an early start tomorrow morning to beat the heat of the day and try and get the tank prepped for the cement work. We managed to keep well hydrated and lather on the sunscreen and bug spray all day today. We only had one soldier fall ill. We will check in within the next few days, hopefully to add pictures and report on more successful days just like today.

That way all twenty of us can swear we have never seen him before in our lives.

S&T's decision to trailer Monday afternoon, even under sunny skies, worked out to be an excellent strategic decision because they were able to pour just enough energy into their battery pack to keep their grip on 7th place and run ALL of Tuesday's final stage under SMVI's power, even though roughly 40% of the Medicine Hat-to-Calgary route was not very sunny. They must have calculated their power just right because Solar Miner Vi coasted across the finish line on electrical fumes. No power left at all, they tell us.

The '08 Miners has a rough year but still managed to complete the grueling, sometimes sunless race, in the middle of the pack, taking 7th place out of 15 teams to hit the road. Their lack of experience (except for Chris Pieper's race-time leadership and '05 alum Tim Robillard's sacrifice of his vacation time) meant that when things went wrong the students were less likely to understand the myriad of electronic hints that Solar Miner Vi threw at them. When array connections broke the students mistook the lowered output as a result of cloudy weather rather than the broken sub-array connections that were discovered on the last two days of the race, and who knows how long the sub-arrays were compromised. When your array is incomplete you are racing (fighting?) with one arm tied behind your back, and no amount of battery excellence will save you. S&T's decision to manufacture their own circuit boards in-house may also have held back the team as there were hundreds of potentially fault connections that could have been been the reason for their telemetry and turn signals problems. The crew has already started a long list of things to change in the next car, so there has been a tremendous amount of learning that has taken place, and that's what S&T's experiential learning programs are all about.

This was a year that many schools fielded inexperienced teams because of the three-year gap in state-side racing, and at least another dozen schools (some quite well-known) didn't even get their cars completed in time or make it through qualifying trials in Texas. The late announcement that Toyota's sponsorship rescued the event shrunk a two-year build and test cycle to a mere 7 months. S&T's solar superstars barely got the car finished in time and had no where near the hundred (thousands?) of miles on the car necessary to work out all the kinks. During this race nearly every top-grade team, such as Minnesota, Bochum or Principia, had sudden breakdowns that kept the runner-up order in constant turmoil, so even if you've completed your shake-down testing there is still no absolute assurance that you'll sail through at top (legal) speed.

The University of Calgary will host the awards ceremony at noon today, and as soon as all the t-shirts are traded and hamburgers consumed, S&T will hit the road to Great Falls, Montana for the night.
They'll arrive Friday evening in Rolla and clean out all their gear before disappearing until semester's start in three weeks.

The weather for today's return trip? Cloudy! Go figure..........

'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.

Tomorrow we'll head to the finish line in Calgary, 187 miles away, if we remember correctly. Michigan appears to have vanquished the field, as has oft been their history. As of early this morning Principia had a very slight chance of catching Big Blue, and it looked like Hochshule Bochum, Waterloo, Minnesota and Calgary in that order were going to be the bridesmaids (again). Today's racing threw that book out the window when Principia suddenly vanished from the radar and Waterloo was flying along VERY strong. Rumor had it (and trust us, this event LIVES on rumors until the standings are published each morning) that wundercar Principia hit a big pothole and was sidelined, but the RA VII crew arrived in Medicine Hat around 7:00 p.m., quite late for such a fast runner.

University of Michigan, 34:14:01
Principia college, 35:35:37
FH Bochum, 40:59:51
University of Waterloo, 42:05:46
University of Minnesota, 42:58:22
University of Calgary, 51:09:39
Missouri S&T, 53:19:54
Red River College, 59:19:39
Iowa State University, 63:52:37
University of Kentucky, 66:55:55
University of Arizona, 67:05:08
Northwestern University, 69:51:30
Queen's University, 73:16:45
Oregon State University, 83:03:21
Durham University, 90:56:48

At least one Miner nearly came jumped of his sleeping bag when a freight train rolled by at 2:00 in the morning. We promise you, when a train roars by just 50 yards away, it sure feels a LOT closer in the dark.

The Miners will head back toward Regina a few miles, set up the car and charge exactly where they stopped last night. They should be through Regina's check point shortly after nine, past Moose Jaw by early afternoon, and into Medicine Hat, the race's final stage point by suppertime. If they don't make that they'll have to trailer in to participate in tomorrow's last stage start, and it probably won't be until then that we'll know what the race standings are. We hope the final standings will have S&T at the head of the middle pack, but there us no way to tell at this point. We are sorry to report that Principia's amazing run at race leader Michigan will probably fall short, as Ra VII is reported to be 60 miles farther east than S&T. Principia has run a very clean and organized race, and should be considered the event's best performing team, in our opinion.

Just so we don't forget, we want to recognize the contributions of Jennifer Claybrooks of Mizzou's Hydrogen Car Project. The Tigers' demonstration car was one of several that didn't manage to qualify for this tremendous race, so she joined the Miners and proved a ray of sunshine when it was most needed.

Lastly, we thought we'd post a photo of Jennifer, because without her help.............

Sorry, we just couldn't resist!

S&T made the decision this morning, as did many other teams, to trailer their car from Winnipeg to the Brandon check point, where they FINALLY caught up with open skies. They figured the trailer penalties were better than driving the Trans-Canada Highway at 15mph, and we're sure our Canadian hosts would agree.

At Brandon the Miners got about two solid hours of charge time, enough to feel confident enough about the available sunlight to hit the road, and under partly cloudy skies they struck out behind Michigan and Calgary.
From that point we didn't hear a thing on the team's radio, and in this race no news is scary 'cause you never know which car will emerge from the distant prairie horizon. Much to our delight it turned out that Solar Miner VI, under the care of Nathan Steckel, sailed about 200 miles from Brandon to very close to Regina with just two quick stops to fix loose wires. In terms of physical placement S&T ended up third in line at evening time. Where a team ends up each night has virtually no bearing on the official standings, but we can tell you it sure feels better to have more cars behind you than ahead of you.

Meanwhile the real drama unfolded among the teams that drove from Winnipeg. Michigan, Waterloo, Principia, Red River, Bochum, valiant Oregon State and maybe one or two more challenged the clouds, probably because there was a tiny glimpse of blue sky way off to the west. Michigan, of course, took off, with Bochum and Waterloo close behind. A dozen or so miles down the road Principia roared past
Waterloo as if they were standing still, and then disappeared. Unfortunately Principia turned up later on the side of the road, peering into their battery box with great concern.

At that point News Chopper 1870 headed up the road to find the Miners charging at Brandon, and at day's end eventually found them charging under COMPLETELY clear skies! WHAT A RUSH!!

Our Miners were pretty loose when the pulled off the road to charge. Maybe it was the kind of sunlight they last saw in blistering Cresson, TX, but they were all having a good time so it was time to get into

mischief, like putting coins on the adjoining train tracks (now THERE'S something than no one ever thought of before!). Driver Matt Bloom spent his time pouncing on grasshoppers and finally caught a fresh one, and was offering to eat it raw for $5. At $5 he had no takers, or at $4, 3, 2, or even a buck.. Being a REAL MAN, he was honor-bound to eat it at the lowest bid so he ended up broke but not hungry. And temporary Mizzou teammate Jennifer was NOT much impressed.

Speaking of hungry, we are now setting up camp in Creekside Gardens, Jewel of The Prairie (really!), and we hear the hunger pangs of hordes of mosquitoes just waiting to dine. We'll publish the names of our survivors in the morning.

P.S. At 7:00 a.m. big, noisy thunderstorm is sweeping through Winnipeg, very close to the stage start at Red River College. There is a glimpse of relatively clear sky well of to the west, so let's keep our hopes up.

S&T didn't expect to go very far or fast today because of rain, heavy cloud cover, and their low battery power, but they certainly didn't expect to get lost (stupid route changes!). About 25 miles north of WInnipeg slow-moving SMVI missed a turn and lost about seven miles one way. By the time they figured it out and got back on course it was pretty much time to load the car in the trailer and haul it the rest of the 225+ miles to Manitoba's capitol city.
The Miners weren't at all happy with the course of events because this was the first time since 1999 that the car had to be trailered on a race, but it did get them far enough north to find some clearer skies and get several good hours of charging under their belts. This writer is not sure of SMVI's power status, but there is at least another day of cloudy weather ahead so no matter who wins this race the 2005 race record is probably safe.

Tomorrow starts the second-to-last stage start of the big race. We'll leave Red River College at 9, and head west until we hit the Rockies some 600 miles later. It's tough to tell the standings right now, but a lot of teams trailered into town today, and we don't know when the trailer penalties will be announced.

Stay tuned.

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.

Right now the overall standings (and times) are as follows:

Michigan 22:15:52
Principia 22:37:15
FH Bochum 25:23:41
Waterloo 27:26:41
Minnesota 28:18:27
MISSOURI S&T 28:32:29
Calgary 30:50:54
Red River 34:01:57
Iowa State 39:28:01
Kentucky 40:11:04
Arizona 42:38:32

No times have been posted for Queen's, Northwestern, Oregon State or Durham University.

While MIchigan left Neosho first and arrived in Sioux Falls the same way, race officials can assess penalties for unsafe driving, SPEEDING, or other rule violations. There are no print-out of traffic fines but rumor has it that Blue was....................oh, never mind, you can guess.

The Miners are doubly excited because they have fixed their air gap adjustment, which is similar to the speed selector on your automatic transmission. If you are stuck in a low gear your fuel consumption goes through the roof, and the same applies if your fuel is solar/battery power.

Matt Bloom is scheduled to start today's sprint into Minnesota, and Andrew Lewis will take over later in the day.