A wild guess, if you’re a sports fan you’re likely bubbling enthusiastic about your favorite football team’s most recent exploits. I know, it’s that time of year, and pretty much anyone you might meet has a favorite team and color they’re rooting for. Go Bears! Go Broncos! Go, go, go!
Well, not me. It’s October of an odd-numbered year, which means one thing to me. The World Solar Challenge is keeping me up late at night so I can catch the latests news from Down Under.
Right now teams of college students are battling black flies, heat, and intermittent cloud cover as they race across a couple thousand kilometers of Austrailian outback. My favorites tend to come from the Cruiser class of vehicles, mostly because they’re demonstrating that long-distance (potentially self-sustained) solar travel is not only possible but happening at a race pace. My imagination is turning as fast as a full set of Bridgestone Ecopia tires and I wonder what might happen if hybrid human powered assist (like you might find in a Twike) could be added to these sorts of vehicles.
“Over the river and through the woods,” is this an element of our shared future?
FeetForBrains 