 |
|
| September 6, 2008. Day 87 - Whitehorse, YT |
|
|
|
|
| A nice beautiful, sunny and warm day in Whitehorse for a change. This morning, I met Phellipe from "Phellipe bike repair". He is a local hero. Bike hero that is! Phellipe picked me up at Andrew's home, no school show and tell planed for the day (its Saturday). We took the solar car for a drive around downtown Whitehorse and parked it by his shop, later Jack Kobayashi and I moved the solar car to Baked Cafe, the meeting place for Yukoners, great food specially for a vegetarian wannabe like me. At Baked, I had the opportunity to meet many locals and tourists, a good number of the people who came to talk to me had already heard about the solar car on the news or seeing in on the road, the solar car had been all over the region the last few weeks (Dawson, Eagle Plains, Fairbanks, Anchorage, Inuvik, etc...). I was nice to hear their stories of where they saw the solar car and how they react to it, a surprising number o people said the same thing; "I thought it was a UFO". I guess the person who called 911 in Palmer, Alaska to report the UFO was the only one that act on it. Other comments were "I have been working too much, I was seeing things", "I was hallucinating", "had to rub my eyes", etc... We all had a good laugh and the people around listening to the ongoing conversations had a grim from ear to ear. There was a constant flow of people looking, taking photos, lot's of questions and enthusiasm about the project. Now that I am getting out of gravel, potholes and road construction areas it is time to start thinking about mounting the fairings (wheel covers) back onto the car but before I have to do some composite repairs. It would be nice to wait until back in Pinawa, MB to make the repairs using the high tech E-beam equipment and material but for now off the shelf epoxy / fibber-glass / micro balloons will do just fine. I'll use that technology for the next UFO project :) I have been storing the solar car at Murray's shop, an enormous warehouse located in the industrial area of Whitehorse. I didn't want to warm up the entire warehouse just to work on the car, 25C is a good curing temperature. Phellipe offered me to use his small garage size metal shop to work, it use a small fireplace for heat. Michelle who was enjoying the afternoon at Baked got busy helping Phellipe and I take the solar car to Phellipe's metal shop in Riverdale at the end of the evening. We did a quick stop in front of John Streicker's home, in seconds there were a small crowd gathered around the solar car, an enthusiastic couple excited to see the solar car in person came to say hi and share their kids enthusiasm about the solar car, they saw the solar car at their school yesterday, it was the first thing they told their parents when they got home. Nice to get some feed back from the parents, glad to learn it was the day's highlight for the kids. By the time we got to Phellipe's metal shop it was late in the evening. I decided to take the night off and join everyone at the dance celebration of the Chilkoot International Road Relay. Skagway to Whitehorse ~200km (130 miles) relay. Many of the people I meet in recent days were there, including Michelle who said she didn't dance but after a couple of beers took over the dance floor :) I tired the hula-hoop but no luck, couldn't keep it going more them 4 times around my waist, I'd better stick to volleyball :) Thank you all who came to see the solar car for your support and encouraging words Special thanks to Jack Kobayashi, Whitehorse for adopting 40km/miles |
|
|
|
