Formula Sun Grand Prix 2019 — Day 0
Day 2 of travel ended up being a pretty early start. True to word, we were up at 6:00am to get everyone up and running for 6:30 leaving. We almost left on time, checking out took forever and we almost decided to eat breakfast at Dunkin Donuts two and a half hours away, but hungry stomachs prevailed and we drove three minutes to the nearby McDonalds. Their dollar menu isn’t in effect in the morning, which kind of sucked, but I still ate my fill and got another large Sprite. Hilariously, we actually halted the whole restaurant with the volume of orders from our team. About two thirds of the team ordered, then the cashier walked away to help with orders and left everyone else standing in the line wondering what was going on. We had to wait about ten minutes before orders resumed again
My dumbass after yesterday still thought that the large Sprite was a good idea. Spoiler: it wasn’t. My bladder was pretty upset with me later and this time I did end up pulling the trailer and truck over to a rest stop to use the bathroom. It was getting pretty darn uncomfortable. I also broke yesterday’s record for time driving, driving a seven hour stretch in the morning and another three hours at night. Pretty good for someone who previously could only go one and a half hours, but maybe it was because the group I’m travelling with was great at talking and keeping me awake. I even got Mandarin lessons since the other three could speak properly so I can now say I am capable of ordering food in Mandarin. In theory.
I also drove over the Mississippi River, which was pretty neat to see for the first time ever. I’ve never previously been to this area of the states before, only the coasts and the route to Nebraska last year for ASC. Unfortunately, we noticed pretty quickly the water levels were higher than normal due to heavy rain a week ago, but still an impressive sight.
We ended up at McDonalds again for lunch in Little Rock, Arkansas, which we’ve seen a lot of the past couple days. Admittedly, we tried Waffle House at first but then realized it would take too long and walked to McDonalds. A couple of us decided they were tired of burgers and went to Taco Bell instead, where they were asked to recite a Bible verse because of their names. One was ready, the other failed miserably (as I would have) and it was kind of surprising, but I guess I should expect this type of behaviour in the area. We passed dozens of billboards with slogans for Jesus, some were pretty entertaining.
Meanwhile the Air Canada flight carrying several of our team members passed Little Rock, enjoying a considerably shortened travel time and covering the distance we spent a day and a half driving in maybe four hours. Speed demons, so spoiled with fast travel. They’re also out a few hundred dollars so maybe we did win in the end.
I switched off of driving and we traded the 3D printer in the back to the truck for the other RAV4 driver, great trade in my opinion. I got maybe an hour and a half worth of sleep before I woke up and remembered I wanted a video of the Welcome to Texas sign so I couldn’t go back to sleep. Grumble grumble. It ended up coming faster than I expected (about 10 minutes before I thought it was going to hit) and got about three seconds notice to get a three second video. Mission accomplished though, got the sign.
The weather is also a bit weird down here. Sky was clear, then we got rain so furious that we couldn’t see the trailer ahead of us and five minutes later it was sunny again. Sun was on and off throughout the afternoon and we stopped at a very nice rest stop. It had educational exhibits and a pond and some nice washrooms, pretty unusual for rest stops.
For dinner, we wanted to avoid any chain restaurants and ended up at Jason’s Deli. This was definitely not because the guy driving the truck is named Jason. I got a half pound corned beef sandwich, was actually pretty decent but at the same time I was pretty hungry so maybe everything was considered decent to me. I don’t know, hunger = everything is delicious. The team members from the RAV4 and truck were also asked if we were international students by someone sitting at a table nearby. Technically we are? Depends on definition of international students I guess but I think they were just confused by the number of asians. Texas doesn’t see a lot of them. He followed up by asking if we were competing at the local high school which I think we left unanswered.
After dinner it was another three hours to Austin. One vehicle had already arrived at the airbnb with the other on the way so yeah, we were pretty behind schedule. We also got left behind by the trailer when they went through a yellow light exiting the mall from Jason’s Deli, so we were abandoned by our soulmates. We also had to stop for gas which put us further behind, but like true love we eventually came back together and linked up again at a gas station half an hour down the highway. This also meant I didn’t really get to eat my sandwich so I ate half of it as we filled our car with gas and the other quarter when we were waiting for the truck to fill up. Tragedy struck when I had to put my sandwich down because the truck started moving, but someone in our car was collecting garbage to toss. I set my sandwich to the side and it ended up in a bag that got thrown out. Absolute tragedy I tell you.
We got into the airbnb around 11:30pm local time. Honestly not too bad, about 15 hours total with stops and the trailer. We finished off the night with a team meeting, although it got delayed due to the team having to go park the trailer somewhere on University of Texas Austin’s campus but we have to be out the door at 6am to get to the track at 6:30. Fantastic.
Daily Flag count: 514
