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An End to an Era, A New Beginning
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On Thursday, June 4th, the Winston Solar Team brought an era of solar car building to a close when it moved out of the original "Solar Shed," built by the first Winston Solar Team in 1991. Eighteen years of memories will be gone when the old building is torn down in the next few days to make room for the new Winston Solar Science Lab.
For more information about the new Solar Lab, click here.
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Original Team Members names carved in concrete at the building:
Jon Stein, Jeremi Hall, Keith Plaskett, Andy White, Will Rogers, Brian Brooks, and Mike Jobe.
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The new Winston Solar Car Team will lead the team into the 21st Century with a new Solar Science Lab, a new 2010 solar car, and an Australian Adventure in 2011, the World Solar Challenge.
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Team Members: [left to right] Tres Hodge, Ben Thompson, James Martin, Bret Martin, Cameron McDonald, David Newton, Stephen Kadesky, Doc, T.J. Dailey, Neil Olney, Grace Foree, David Unfried, Wolfie Tregoning, and Devon Flynn.
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Comments
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Fare thee well, old lightning rod!
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I had thought a few times about how I felt about the old Solar Shed going away, and I decided that "out with the old, in with the new" definitely applies here. For anyone reading this who has never become so intimately familiar with the old shed where The Winston Solar Car Team built, deconstructed, and rebuilt a good many sun-powered vehicles, I must tell you that there is a decent chance that you have a living room larger than this little space provided by our high school.
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It was small, cramped, impossible to organize, and even more impossible to work on the solar car while it was in the shed. It was cold and drafty in the winter, hotter than hell in the summer, and it leaked like a sieve when it rained. These conditions are not conducive to building a high-voltage electric vehicle, but dammit, WE STILL DID.
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So when Doc, DM, or Dr. Lehman Marks told me that they were building a brand new, larger, fancier, climate-controlled workshop with a classroom attached, I thought, "Oh, that is AWESOME! Way better than that old heap of tin!" While I still feel this way, there's a huge part of me that is actually legitimately saddened by the ol' bandaid box meeting its demise over the next few days.
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One thing I must say he is not correct about, though: eighteen years of memories will not go down with this shed, they'll just hover around like ghosts, brought out whenever any "solar veterans" come back to see the new and improved "Solar Shed."
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-Matt Carter
1995 Team | 1996 Team | 1997 Team | 1999 Team
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You are breaking my heart here. I am going to miss all of this very much, but Yeah! a real building and lab!
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God bless,
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-Elizabeth Foree
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Oh the stores that could be told . . . . you could write three novels . . . and that's just during my time on the solar team. The first novel would tell all the good things I have learned; the second novel would be about the friendships that I have made; the third novel would be the longest. It would contain the jokes and all those things that you're not supposed to tell Doc. I think we can tell now! Besides, the statute of limitations has probably expired. Doc that was a joke. Ha ha! We can tell you everything that we see . . . . everything that we decide to remember.
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-Rob Blackburn
1995 Team | 1996 Team | 1997 Team | 1999 Team
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Matt Carter's comments pretty much sum up my thoughts.
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-Grace Foree
2005 Team | 2006 Team | 2007 Team | 2009 Team | Team Bio
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