The cookies were baking in our solar oven, the music was blaring on our solar radio, and our solar car mascot, “the Turtle,” was laboring down the sidewalk. All was good for SolarTown’s open house, which we celebrated yesterday here in our new home in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, DC. We may not have had throngs, but we had a good turnout of friends and neighbors who came to show their support for SolarTown and to share their latest solar war story. The weather was perfect to hold the open house on our patio, but since we held it late in the afternoon we were not sure whether we would be able to “fire up the grill.” In this case, the “fire” had to come from the sun as the solar oven does not store the sun’s rays. It was late in the afternoon, and the first challenge was the large cumulus clouds looming over us. With the sun oven, it is pretty clear, if the sun doesn’t get through, the oven won’t heat up.