My early impression of electrathon racing was that it was a trivial
entertainment for high school kids. This was until the 1999 SolWest
renewable energy fair in John Day, Oregon, when I witnessed my first
race in person. The race was held at the high school running track in
nearby Canyon City.
About halfway into the first race, it was obvious that one car and
driver was having difficulties, the car was going slower each lap
until it was not much faster than walking speed and losing that
velocity quickly. Each time the car passed the spectators that I was
sitting with, they stood up and cheered, shouted encouragement, and
gave him the thumbs-up. I would have expected that his crew would
have pulled him out of the race, or the staging officials to
black-flag him for holding up the rest of the racers, but on he went.
In the end, determination won out, and that car and driver ended up
finishing in second place as the rest of the field broke down, blew
out tires, or ran out of charge before the last lap.
I made sure to attend races in subsequent years, some of the last of
which were held at the Grant County Fairgrounds in a specially laid
out course. It had all the thrills and spills of professional auto
racing without all of the (or at least not as much) blood and gore!
Real lessons of design, construction, and driving strategy were
cultivated at these events. It would be gratifying to see them return
with the twist of modern battery, motor, controller and chassis
materials available today.
(And with a nod to David, I agree, web sites that are too flashy to
display on a modest browser of relatively recent vintage are a
turn-off. Can't view them without cookies and javascript turned on?
Sorry, got plenty of other places to surf today, see ya later
[maybe]. Secure https://, goes bonk if I don't want to accept a
certificate? Goodbye. Analytics? Don't get me started..)
NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! NOTE!
Due to an overload of spam and other issues, I've decided to
deactivate my Juno mail account.
All new messages should be directed to me at: shar...@housetrucks.org
Please update your address book to reflect this change,
I'll continue to check the old account for a short time.
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