Team 20 GMS/GAF Rally Wave Team crosses the finish line!
We won 3rd for most efficient car and first place for best design! Overall we came 7th out of over 40 electric Wave cars. Many thanks to all who delivered on the sponsorship!
After a night of white noise, wide open windows and the shock of the alarm reminiscent of the alarm in the underwater level of tomb raider we arose out of deep sleep mode. Bug eyed we threw our stuff into the appropriate bags, headed downstairs for the breakfast that would come too late for us to appreciate and headed out the door for the climb back up to the ABB Company grounds where our preferred mode of transportation awaited us. Today would be the day we would break the Guinness Book of World Records, the most electric cars in one place including the parade of all the e-cars in Zurich as part of the Zürich Festival. The accumulation of all of these vehicles which included Segways, electric motorcycles was a sight for sore eyes, especially those of us who are sick and tired of the fossil fuel guzzling stinkorific vehicular terrorists. A few of them became rather upset that we were here, en masse, and they were not invited and so they tried to gate crash this Eco party by bursting through the ranks armed with bad tempers, frustration and fear that their holy god given wheels would soon end up in a heap of scrap ready to be recycled into something much kinder to our wounded world and climate.
Arriving at our meeting point and destination was quite something. We were parked in rows of two. The man next to us in his small electric vehicle had set up a small table and chair armed with a thermos of hot coffee. It wasn't as if I was ogling that thermos of wake up juice but before I could say anything he offered me a cup of java. I accepted and he produced a small coffee cup, poured it full of that wonderful liquid and handed it to me. Drinking coffee along a shaded side-walk generously sprinkled with electric modes of transportation is truly delightful. You can smell and taste that cup of alternative black gold without the addition of the Texas black gold spewing cars choking you!
A stroll showed some fiercely hot cars, silent by design with smooth lines, head lights that looked like eyes including tear ducts and begging to be driven with an unsurpassed gentle fury. Sound odd? Try it out, sit behind the wheel, hit the pedal to the metal and your gone, quick as you please leaving others in the dust leaving them with the proverbial question, "Who was that masked man?" It wasn't the Lone Ranger folks or Tonto! It was simply a double edged sword in an electric vehicle whispering down the road of ecological positivity coupled with the planting of trees in the rain forest.
After a stroll between the vehicles we boarded our Peugeot iON in her array of stickerly dress and the count began as we hit the starting gate. A grand total of 388 vehicles were counted and filmed to prove the case to Guinness!
Our parade caused a traffic jam of google eyed spectators, hands a-waving like an ocean of plants in the gentle breeze. One by one we drove through the final gate ready to hit the tour of open doors which would take us through a variety of small towns, check points for getting the coveted stamp of approval which would increase the score at the end of the WAVE. With three more open doors reserved for the following day we reached the location for the evening meal and the accommodations for the night, Neuhausen Am Rheinfall. Not far from where we arrived was a spectacle to be marveled, the Rheinfall or Rhein waterfalls. Normally there would be 600 cubic liters falling per second, however due to heavy rain it was now double! I could sit here and describe what was witnessed but those words would do no justice to the utter power of the falls.
A few teams decided that cheap hotels would be the better choice and the rest of us went for the bunkered bed fandango! Having chickened out of the last bunker, I thought, what the hey, let's give this puppy a chance and see what the deal is and why it's supposed to be too cool for school to sleep in a bunker. I can honestly tell you, dear reader, its not what it's cracked up to be but be that as it may we conked out for the night amidst the snores of revolution which were not to be compared with the silence of those lambs, our electric cars.
