Day 4

We had to turn our array off for the last hour before leaving, because our batteries were fully charged. Seeing a constant 1000W of power going to waste due to mechanical problems is a depressing sight. If you can’t store the power, you get punished twice for unreliability. Dot drove for the relatively short run into Alice Springs, reaching 94km/h on the way. Queens University pulled into the media stop just as we were leaving but by the end of the day we had left them in our dust. Meg drove from Alice to Erldunda, where we were overtaken by NTU Desert Rose while changing drivers to Georgie. We maintained a constant 70km/h for the rest of the shift. Changed drivers to El, all very uneventfully which was a relief after the day of the donkey. Continued on at speed until the end of the day. Only two minutes on unscheduled stops (the only time we stopped was after a driver change John forgot to do up the chain adjuster). Our new set of front wheels seemed to exhibit the same poor quality as the last ones, so we were hoping luck would be on our side. Camped at a cattle grid, 14km north of Marla. After tilting the array we all relaxed and ate some watermelon. This ended up as a pip and watermelon fight. We were fortunate to meet Klaus and Nitay, two German cyclists. Klaus, we found out owned a bike store in Germany. That night he trued the wheels, front and back. We had to grind 4mm off the back of the calliper due to the new wheel spoking pattern. Other work was done but nothing too major.