What happened in Victorville

These are the last batch of photos from our trip to California, mainly photos taken in and around Victorville.


I think I mentioned in one of the previous post that the weather was so hot there, we went to Target to buy a cap for Sonya. We couldn't find any children caps and there were only these soccer caps besides the more expensive golf caps. I just had to put it on Clara and take a photo :)


We spent a lot of time waiting for the testing at the DARPA Urban Challenge. This is Sonya outside NQE Test Area C. Did I mentioned that the whole place was like a huge sandbox for her. She got her hands pretty dirty playing with the sand.













This is outside NQE Test Area A.


We went driving around US Historic Route 66.






























This is taken at Silverlakes which is not too far away from the race site. It seemed like we are in a totally different place once we drove into the residential area. There was the lake with ducks and birds. It was like waterfront housing with private boats parked right outside the backyard of the houses.








And, this is the weird place along Historic Route 66 with all these glass bottles and stuff welded onto metal rods.




This is a close-up shot of one of the mountain ranges.



This is back to outside NQE Test Site A. We kept Clara in the stroller most of the time when we were not camping out in the Ford Taurus :)






Sonya got tossed about to keep her happy but Justin's arms got pretty tired from all these swinging besides carrying her to watch the race.













I was taking photos of the race and she wanted to copy me so she took Justin's camera phone and did some snapping of her own before the battery went dead.




This is the LR3 trying to turn left at the T-junction with all the human driven cars circling round and round and round.



This is Clara in her carseat while we camped out in the Ford Taurus.


MIT got into the Finals and they managed to find another test site to test the LR3 before the big day. This is Sonya playing around the Ford Taurus.














These are the surrounding houses near the test site. I think this is a pretty new estate. Most of the houses were still vacant.




I bought these Crayola window markers for Sonya. We decided to use them to draw on the Ford Taurus instead. Don't worry, these inks come right off with a cloth/tissue and water :)














The moon was out in the day :)



This is Sonya at the indoor playground at Carl's Junior, a pretty popular burger place in California.











This is one of the first times I placed Clara in a high chair.








This is the day before the actual Final race. They got all finalists' vehicles lined up in the start chutes.




Clara was the pretty sunhat :)














This is the day of the Final race. We were at the spectators' stand before moving into the tent to watch the rest of the race which took more than 6 hours.



There goes MIT's LR3 :)



Family portrait with MIT's LR3. Oh, did I mentioned that I designed the decals and also the polo-shirt :)


This is Team MIT :) Can you spot Justin?


These are the guys from the Planning and Control group of Team MIT - Justin, Yoshi, Gaston, Prof Jonathon How, Prof Emilio Frazzoli and Sertac