my 2pennies: December 2011

Day 7 began under heavy cloud cover, as expected. The team packed up camp, for the last time, and began driving with the car on the trailer. I settled in for us to be trailering the whole way to Adelaide, which was still 500km away at this point.

Amazingly though, as we got on the road, the clouds began to lighten, and before long we began to see bits of blue. The next hour or so saw the team turn into cloud patch chasers, with us trailering until we sat in direct sunlight, at which point we would find a place to stop and soak up as much of the sun as possible until the shifting clouds forced us to move on.

After an hour, we stopped at the side of the road; there was no need to chase blue patches anymore because it appeared the cloud cover had completely broken. Alisdair's unrelenting optimism had completely flummoxed the outback's weather system, and the sun shone down on our car.

We stopped in the bay for some time, and were joined by MIT and Eclipse - a team from Montreal. There was a festive mood in the air; one of the Eclipse team members had brought out a guitar and sang some songs as we waited collectively for our batteries to recover from being completely emptied.

This is a major gig in the outback; a sandy rest area, a man with a guitar and a megaphone.

Once we decided it was time to drive, Emil jumped in the car, and we were off.

Zoom zoom zoom.

The final stint was probably the best stint we did all race. The sun shone through a clear sky; there was no haze or bushfire smoke or cloud to hinder it, and the route leaned towards being downhill into Port Augusta, and so coupled with the fact that we didn't need to have any charge left when we finished meant that the car cruised at around 80 to 90 km/h, a fair old improvement on the 60 km/h we had been managing for the rest of the race.

When we got into Port Augusta, the array was feeding the most energy into the battery than it had ever done during the race.

The team reached the final control stop, jubilant. This was the way how I had wanted the race to end, with Endeavour rolling under her own steam to the finish, and by some miracle, this was the way it had happened. The road into Adelaide was closed to solar cars as of that morning by the South Australian police, as it was deemed to be too busy for solar convoys, so we put the car on the trailer and drove the rest of the way into Adelaide. We had always expected this would be the case as soon as we had to trailer the car on Day 1, and so for us, Port Augusta was the real finish line, and in my view, despite all expectations to the contrary, we crossed that line with aplomb.

Trailering the car up at Port Augusta. The real end of the race for us.

We trailered into Adelaide, and...that was it. We had crossed the continent of Australia, perhaps not entirely on solar power, but the team had pushed hard to do as well as it could, and I think we eked as much out of the car as it would give. All that was left was the ceremonial crossing of the finish line, and then packing everything up to be sent back home to England.

The final few metres...

I couldn't really tell you exactly what I was feeling as I crossed that line, with people cheering and clapping and waving us in. It was a mixture of so many different emotions. There was definitely a lot of pride at what we had achieved: at so many stages did I think to myself that we weren't even going to make the start of the race, and so to actually be walking across the finish line, with a working car, just felt indescribably good. It was a really happy moment. But I also felt a little sad that the whole thing was over; driving through the outback, camping at the side of the road, watching the beautiful sunrises and sunsets and trying our best to nurse this piece of machinery we'd assembled across those harsh conditions made each day a complete adventure, and I knew I would miss it when we finally finished.

I also felt like I had accomplished something really tremendous, and it was an extremely fulfilling sort of feeling. It's the sort of thing I can hold up to myself and say: "Look, you drove a solar car across the outback...anything else will be peanuts." It was also so real. Because, let's face it, when you receive a payslip with some numbers on it, it's satisfying of course, but this...jumping into the icy cold water of the fountain, with the blazing sun overhead, screaming my heart out surrounded by the whole team, knowing what everyone had been through to get to that point.

It was a primal moment of triumph. A once in a lifetime experience that reminded me what it was to truly be alive.

Screw pay checks, I'll have more of this please.

I leave you with some pictures from our trip. I hope you've enjoyed reading this series of posts!