By Phil Monson
Humboldt native and Iowa State University student Andrew Bonde has gotten a lot of mileage out of his membership on the school’s solar car team.
Bonde, a senior at ISU majoring in Mechanical Engineering, was part of 15 team members on PrISUm, to travel to Australia last October and spend five weeks, which included racing in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.
The 1,877-mile, biennial race began on Oct. 8 in northern Australia, in Darwin, and finished Oct. 15 in southern Australia, in Adelaide.
“It was a really awesome experience. It was my first time leaving the United States and we went quite a ways away for that matter,” Bonde said. “Australia itself is a really neat environment. They kind of have that ‘Midwest-level’ of friendliness over there. The people were nice.”