Full time CUER

This year, I have been involved heavily in CUER. Just a brief recap, CUER stands for “Cambridge University Eco Racing”. It is a student run society that designs, builds and races solar powered vehicles. We compete at the World Solar Challenge (WSC), which is a 3000 km long race across Australian outback that takes place every two years.  One day, I received an email about moving our kit. I was asked if I could give a hand with that so I agreed. It was meant to happen on Thursday. The original plan was:8.45 meet outside CUED* 8.50 Load stores van** with remaining kit in department*** and drive to Marshall’s**** 9.45 leave from Marshall’s to go to Lords Bridge*****  10.10 arrive in Lords Bridge and load CUER equipment that needs to go to Marshall’s into the Stores van10.30 leave lords bridge11.10 unload all kit in Marhsall’s However, it was moved to 2 pm because our driver, Theo, was not free between 11 am and 2 pm. I knew nothing about what was supposed to move but as I was not organising it, I did not bother trying to find out as I was recruited as a muscle for the operation. At 2 pm Theo and me were at the car but there was no sign of the organising it. When we gave him a call, he told us he was not coming. When we asked what is actually supposed to move, he did not know. Brilliant, I thought. After several calls to other people in our team, we managed to find out and we simplified our plan is it was unnecessarily complicated: 1. Load stores van with everything and drop it off at Lords Bridge2. Load stores van with all tools we can fit in and drive to Marshall’s3. Unload all at Marshall’s Adam, another member of CUER, who happened to be walking around saw us and offered us his help. Together, we loaded the car with required items. I went off to EDC****** to pick up the keys from Lords Bridge. However, I could not find them! I had searched the whole place but sill I could not find them. I brought Adam there to have a look as well, because it had happened to me last time that simply I did not noticed the keys lying in a drawer. How stupid, I thought, we have loaded the car and now we cannot go because we don’t have the container keys.  As the car was booked only for the afternoon, we would probably have to unload the stuff and return it. Both me and Theo run out of our credit, so we were really lucky that Adam joined us as we could use is phone. We called our head of logistics who told us, that it was Full Blue Racing who had the keys last time. Luckily, a bunch of students from that society was working on their formula car just next to our parking spot so we obtained the relevant number and rang up their team member who had the keys last time. They also told us, that this person is currently in Austria. It turned out, that the keys had someone different who was at Cambridge so after several calls and 20 minutes we had the keys.  As Theo and me were driving away from CUED, Adam called us that we left the keys with him so we had to return. It was 4pm now when we were finally leaving the department.  Both of us had been to Lords Bridge before, but it was some time ago so we were not sure where exactly it was. Theo’s phone was low on battery and we wanted to keep it for driving to Marshall’s as neither of was had been there before. However, the route to the container is simple. Once you leave Cambridge, it is straight across two roundabout and then turn to a little side road with a sign ‘Gate 3’. As we were approaching gate 3, I got confused in my head and told Theo not to turn at gate 3 but gate 5. After driving down the road for about a kilometre, I realised that it was gate 3. Unfortunately, there was no suitable place to turn back so we ended up driving for another 3 km before entering a village. A very slow agricultural vehicle was just driving through the village so when we turned back, we ended up slugging ourselves behind this vehicle. Not turning at gate 3 cost us more time than we thought. Having unloaded and picked up what was required at Lord’s bridge, we went back to CUED as we were not sure what was the procedure with going to Marshall’s. It was 5.30pm and Marshall’s closed at 4 pm. The car keys had to be returned the next day at 8 am. We left the stuff in the car hoping, no one booked it for tomorrow morning. The following day was also very disorganized but it was mainly my fault as I thought my flight was sooner than I thought. In the end, all went well.   Our parking space at the back of the department____________________________________________________ *CUED = Cambridge University Engineering Department**The car we used for transporting items***CUED allowed us using one of the parking spaces at the back of the deparment as our workshop.****The company Marshall Aerospace provided us with an empty hanger over the summer which we can use as our workshop*****A place with a shipping container. CUER uses it as storage. It is about 8 km SW from Cambridge******EDC = Engineering Design Centre. CUER has got a desk with two very powerful computers in the department to do our work.