Welcome to the first world tour of a vehicle powered only by solar energy!
From Washington DC to Philadelphia06.09.2008
Comments: 2
I love computers. Specially when I sit here for an hour, write all I remember from my Washington DC visit, then send it to the server and a few seconds later get the message "connection failed" and then loose all the data. Great! So just do it once again!
Washington is a city i the middle of the forest. That's my first impression. It is green and full of trees. But when we visit the city coucil, I get the impression that "green" is even a good word to discribe the movement which is taking place here in the city. We met some of the members of the city council, even the city administator, and I was told, much to my surprise, that this city has the second lowest rate of cars of any US city. Because there is a great subway and bus system. Hm... this is a quite a different story than what we usually here from :Washington:. At least change is taking place on city and State level. Good News.
It was the Swiss Embassy who helped us a lot to set up a great program for our three day visit, togehter with the Electric Vehicle Association of Washington D.C., especially Charly Garlow and David Goldstein, who also offered us great hospitality. I visited two universities (Georgetown and George Washington) and we had lots of press, so we made local, national and international news once again. Only our press event on Capitol Hill was a little bit different to all the other press event we had so far. A Police dog checked the solartaxi, and then we had to cover all our sponsor's logos with white paper and scotch. This is the law here, no advertisement and influencing of the congress people. (Well, the congressmen were all out of town this week.)
I finally found two free hours, so I walked down from the Swiss Embassy to the famous Zoo. The first time in my life I have seen the Great Panda. A symbol for the extinction of the species. The zoo is a great place, and I wish I could have spent more time in this city and visited more of the museums. They are all free, there is nothing you have to pay.
In Washington I also waved bye bye to my passenger Raphael Domjan. He was my passenger since Toronto through the hills down to Washington DC. He had to go back to Switzerland to continue his work on his genious solar boat and the planned world tour.So my passenger to Philadelphia was my team mate and lecetric engineer Frank. I could drive my car alone, too. But the closer home we get, the more careful I get. I have a pretty bad dead angle to the right, so whenever I turn right it is always good to have a passenger who can tell me if the road is clear. No more risks ... this is my new slogan.
Nextstop: Philadelphia. It was Swiss Consul Franz Portmann who helped us to set up a press event at the Franklin Insitite, together with my great media supporter Ceri Williams inLos Angeles. Just about all the tv station sof town showed up. But before tht could happen, we had to enter Philadelphia on a Friday night. In the suburbs many people were shouting at us (though friendly), many pedestrians crossed the street without watching, and some few drivers were driving with an aggressiv style. We were glad that we could leave the car in the Chinatown Fire Station and so we knew someone is taking car of it over night. But the first impression is sometimes wrong, in Philadelphia we met only very friendly and helpful people. It was a very peaceful place and again, I would have loved staying a little longer, but NYC is waiting.
by: aregbe
10.09.2008 02:09
should not drag solar cells behind it, it is better to put the cell on the roof of the car.