More breakthroughs today as a result of the late night efforts of Scott, Doug, and Bob Monat.

We attempted to test until about 11:30 a.m., then turned IRV over to the mechanical team to strip it for transport.  This involves putting the small temporary spare tires on the front (to reduce height) and removing the odometry wheels. Mike Harrison, Brad Snodgrass, Vadim Gitman, and Mike Filburn pulled this off in record time.

Broke camp about 12:30 and headed "down the hill" to the California Speedway in Fontana. Our final images of base camp will be the diamondback rattlesnake found run over in the road, and one final "bush inspection" before heading out. 

Aaron Williamson was assigned the task of taking the tin bucket back from the bees. It wasn't pretty.

Checked in at Fontana about 3:30 p.m. and set up in the garage. Robots all over the place.

Software team is set up in a conference room in the hotel doing development and debugging.

We're all going out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant tonight. We're told they have food that doesn't come in a sack--our first real meal in 12 days. 

Mandatory DARPA meeting of team leaders at 5 p.m. this evening will lay out the plans for the qualifications. Scott and Doug are attending, and we'll all get the update when they meet us for dinner.

Speedway will be available to us from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and we intend to use 100% of the available time. So it won't be a late night tonight.

The real value of the desert testing was we could see firsthand where we needed to rethink portions of the system. Team members really stepped up. Dennis Wallen pulled an all-nighter and delivered a rewrite of a major module. Dave Layden and Brad Hansen have been doing similar long-hour duty. We've made great progress.