Day 9: Battle Mountain NV

A late start to the day made later, at least in terms of breakfast, by someone having opened a catering-sized tin of Dutch PSOs and sprayed the contents liberally around the lobby of the Super 8.  And then camera issues.  It won't switch on, even though it hasn't done anything since Thursday night except sit in the car or on the table here.  Problem eventually traced to bat flatteries, of which no warning was given chiz.  Anyway, I was able to snap this picture of the University of Toronto's new tandem being readied for a low speed tryout in the Super 8 parking lot.

DERP

Apparently the machine is officially called "Titan" but since Calvin Moes claimed on Farcebok that it was called "Double Eta Reverse Prime", DERP is probably what it will end up being known as.  I wandered over to the Civic Center just in time to avoid being press-ganged into going out to the course to life Heavy Things, and instead hung around taking photos of bikes and not much else, while Arnold Ligtvoet and Hans van Vugt did the technical inspections.  Seems I wasn't the only one to suffer camera problems: the Tokyo University of Science team failed their inspection as their machine, Haruka 2019, only has a single camera and screen, with no backup in case of system failure.  It was suggested they try the local car accessory outfit for a reversing camera and screen which, although not ideal, would at least allow them to stop without crashing but instead they returned from the hardware store bearing a hacksaw, cut a hole in the fairing and installed one of Hans' spare windscreens.

N-1 from Team Falcon of Australia

A Corner of a FOREIGN field Civic Center that is forever Delft & Amsterdam

Haruka 2019 before they started cutting holes in it

To alleviate the boredom of long periods of nothing much happening some of us moseyed over to the Big Chief motel, there to gaze in awe and wonder at the extraordinary Sprocket Rocket.  This is not only the first quadricycle to appear here, but also the first machine with more than two riders.  Five, to be precise.  Three 406 tyres on each rear wheel and two on the fronts.  Brake discs from a Mighty Kawasaki sports bike.  Radio from a light aircraft.  Transported on a custom trailer containing more engineering that many competing bikes.  Eighteen Mr Larrington-paces long.  And weighing in at 390 kg before adding the riders.  Everyone who saw it on Farcebok was anxious to see how it got on, but seeing the thing in the metal is another thing entirely.

The rear 40% of Sprocket Rocket, minus tail cone and outer skin

Triple-tyred rear wheel

Back to the Civic Center for further prodding, inspecting and milling around.  We have been joined by HPV Royalty in the shape of Todd Reichert, wife Jenny and numbawan pikinini Milo.  Figuring Todd is already used to no sleep, he was immediately roped in to help Arnold in the cat-herding duties at the start.

Jenny, Milo, Todd and Bas

And then the introductory meeting.  What with this being the 20th running of the event, the Governor of Nevada has recognised us with an Official Proclamation, as have the Lander County Commissioners, so let's have a little MOAR rispek from you riff-raff in future.

The usual introductions, rundown of procedures and allocation of duties for the morning qualifying runs.  Almost everyone here is going to have a go, so five heats with four riders each.  This will entail a fair amount of to-ing and fro-ing since many teams have two or more riders running the same bike - only Team Policumbent having the luxury of a multi-rider team with a bike each as they have built Taurus-X for Vittoria Spada (improbably, she's even smaller than Andrea Gallo).  For those watching in balck and white, Taurus-X has a red tail and Taurus a green one.  Such is their attention to detail that, well, have a look at the full-size version of this picture:

It only took about 70 minutes this year, though there was the inevitable scrum of team members filling in forms in triplicate, burying them in soft peat for three months and recycling them as firelighters¹.  I escaped early to the Colt, there to feast upon what the incumbent of the Awful Office would call "hamberders" in the company of the van Vugts and the Ligtvoets.  I have managed to upload some photos without too many bad swears and will shortly post this and bog off to bed, hoping that the heavy downpours, thunderbolts and lightning² we've beeg having for the last four hours get bored and bog off towards Utah before morning.  Night, all!

1: May contain traces of Lie
2: Very very frightening meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!