10/25/07

Up in smoke

VICTORVILLE, Calif. - The competitive fires burn deep within every member of Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing team, which over the next several days will be competing for a chance to win $2 million in the Nov. 3 DARPA Grand Challenge event for robotic vehicles. But the fires that have devastated so many homes and so many, many acres of forest here in California have not caused problems for the team members, as they gather today for the beginning of the Urban Challenge's National Qualification Event tomorrow morning.

Some members traveling from Pittsburgh yesterday opted to fly into Las Vegas, rather than nearby Ontario, Calif., because of fears that a combination of the forest fires and shifting winds might cause problems for planes. But there is only a slight haze in the still air today here in Victorville, a desert community northeast of L.A.; some of us can smell the smoke, some of us can't.

And we all know that there's nothing the fires could do to this competition that in any way matches what they have done to thousands of California residents. My own flight out of Pittsburgh yesterday carried a fair number of Golden Staters. The women sitting on either side of me were both heading home to the Los Angeles area and they spoke of their efforts to track friends and family members who had been evacuated. Whether those folks had homes to return to, they couldn't say.
      
      

Byron Spice