Since the race started at 6 AM Saturday morning, we drove to Barstow Friday night. It was too dark to tell for sure, but I was hoping the town had been transformed. A flammable, alcohol-fueled mixture of rowdy desert racers and macho roboticists spilling out of bars onto sidewalks and arguing whether using GPS waypoints was cheating.

We kind of passed out, and the next thing we knew we were an hour behind schedule. We were relieved to see there were still a couple Palos Verdes High School team members grabbing complimentary coffee as we checked out.

We raced to the race. On the way we passed the first autonomous vehicle of the day, CyberRider.