Day The Rest Of It: Gilroy CA - Larrington Towers

Considering the sheer quantity of traffic to be found in the Silicon Valley/Bay Area, er, area the trundle back to SFO was relatively painless, especially in comparison with the outward leg two weeks ago.  It helps if you read the signs pertaining to the operating hours of the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes on the divers freeways strewn around the place like a bundle of asphalt spaghetti dropped from a very large military transport aircraft.  It's after 10:00, innit.  See also: bus lanes on the A312 on the way to/from Hillingdon.

Way early dropping off the car, but this is infinitely preferable to fighting through traffic to for e.g. Denver/Chicago/Seattle with 15 minutes to go before They charge you an extra day or report the vehicle stolen.  Little clockwork train to the terminal and go to the BA Bag Drop, which is not like the one at Heathrow, oh no.  Here a BA Minion scans your passport and attaches a label to The Luggage and is, in fact, indistinguishable from a regular check-in desk.  Except that regular check-in desks tend actually to have BA Minions staffing them which in the case of the SFO ones they had not got.  Much waiting and FUMMIN ensued.

Something peculiar then happened, viz. the staff at the security wossname were actually cheerful and polite.  Must be a wormhole in space-time, or something.

Stroll down to Gate A11 which smelled very strongly of Cannabis sativa and had the acoustics of Utah's Echo Canyon, rendering the BA Minions' increasingly desperate calls for Passengers Drkh, Cmndh and Skrrgh utterly incomprehensible.  I did manage to catch the call for Group 4 boarding, by looking at the screen.  To the back of the top deck of the Shiny Metal Birb where the Bad Lads sit.

We must’ve been very Bad Lads indeed, because the BA Minions ran out of BBQ Chikn'n'Rice before reaching us, and I put it to the massed caterers of San Francisco International Airport that eating a mass of spaghetti glued together with some foul-tasting and lukewarm sauce, with plastic cutlery, from a foil container is this: impossible.  Looks like that wormhole sent us back to 1973 after all.  Also be advised that a “Full English Breakfast” contains BACON.  And does not contain potatoes.  #FirstWorldProblems, though imagine the fuss if they’d run out of the meatless dish and found the back of the Shiny Metal Birb full of militant vegans 😈

Hounslow, bang, bounce, terminal.  Clockwork train, passport control, baggage reclaim and Praise Be!  The very first bag I clocked on the carousel was The Luggage.  And then what felt like a week on the Piccalilli and Queen Vic lines before the bus home and if any part of the journey was likely to break my laptop it was that last mile-anna-bit because these new-fangled anbaric W15s are incapable of starting, stopping or cornering with anything approaching decorum.  Larrington Towers has not burned down, fallen over or sunk into the swamp and if OVO Energy Services are reading this: piss off, you’re not getting any more money.  Thus concludeth ye Automatick Diary 2024 edition.

Day 14: Jackson CA - Gilroy CA

So, yeah, the California Gold Rush.  Once upon a time there was a Swiss chap named Johann August Sutter who emigrated to what was then Mexico.  He was a speculative philosopher who as also considered a thinker and a dreamer, and, by his wife, an idiot had planned to establish a colony to be known as New Helvetia in roughly the area around modern-day Sacramento, to which end he established a sawmill, powered by a water wheel, at Coloma on the South Fork of the American River.  In January 1848 his employee James Marshall found Shiny Things in the tail-race of the mill.  Not wishing to have his plans messed up by the arrival of thousands of uninvited visitors Sutter tried to keep the discovery a secret, which worked as well as one might expect.  By the end of that year thousands of uninvited visitors had turned up in California in general and the site of New Helvetia in particular.  Which buggered Sutter's plans to the extent that he declared bankruptcy and moved away from the area altogether.  Which probably serves him right as, if Wikinaccurate is to be believed, he was a right bastard.  Once the gold was gone Coloma became almost, but not quite, a ghost town as agriculture took over from mining as the area's economic driving force but these days it's been turned into the Marshall Gold Discovery State Park, which this Unit hereby endorses.

Replica of Sutter's sawmill, a little way up the river bank from the site of the original...

...which was approximately here.

Note to the California Parks Service: if you actually want people to pay to get in try unlocking the little tin boxes the payment envelopes live in.  That way I will not have to resort to leaving 2D Thomas holding a note explaining why I ent got a ticket.

From some of the plaques dotted around the place it can readily be seen that Lewis & Clark were not the only folks in the American West with their own esoteric variety of spelling:

And further to the matter:

dogg of the alsatian breed fetching a stick

A whole bunch more photos from said park at here: Clicky.

Prod the SatNav.  It tells me that it is 193 miles to Gilroy while the motor-car says it contains enough petril to cover 190.  Of them.  Back through a few miles of foothills and onto US-50 which in this part of the world is not America's Loneliest Road but a multi-lane freeway.  South down the Central Valley on US-99 - which is a handy alternative to the virtual I-5 in your virtual truck as there aren't any weigh stations - then across to I-5 near Stockton, I-580 and 680 to the southern edge of San Francisco Bay then south on US-101 to Gilroy.  All nicely conducive to Economickal Motoring.

On arrival the motor-car says I still have petril enow for 43 of your Earth miles.  Yay!  Go me!  Unfortunately the shortest route to SFO from here is 67 miles so I will still have to bung a gallon or two in to get it home with as little motor-spirit in it as possible.  While on the subject of the motor-car, the two switches on the centre console which I assumed to be blanks to operate something or other which in my case I have not got are nothing of the sort.  Poke them and semi-circular wossnames pop out of their little hidey-holes and turn the outsize cupholders into sensibly-sized ones.  For two weeks my water bottle has been jumping around the car every time its velocity changes and I discover this on the last full day of the trip less than seventy miles from the flippin' airport?  Bah!

Still tonight's caravanserai has BEARS.

Hotel BEAR

As does the Black BEAR diner on the other side of the car park.

BEAR family at the diner

Sorted!  Also the tap on the washbasin is made by Hansgrohe and thus endorsed by cycling's Crazy P Sagan.

There'll likely be a final instalment at some point but this time tomorrow I shall be in seat 81D of the Shiny Metal Birb somewhere over Canada eh.

Day 13: Susanville CA - Jackson CA

Susanville hav some very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are.  It was originally called "Rooptown" after one Isaac Roop, who was later the first Governor of the Nevada Territory, but got renamed after Roop's daughter in 1859.  As did the river that runs through it.  It was also the epicentre of the "Sagebrush War" of 1856, a non-vicious conflict over whether the area was in Nevada or California.  No-one actually got killed utterly to DETH at all, in fact, and the whole area was determined to be in California.  It also has some interesting switches for the bathroom lights:

Fascinating, no?

Highway 36 leads west out of town and immediately one is surrounded by trees.  Lots of 'em.  And over Fredonyer Pass.  This was named after one Dr Atlas Fredonyer, a Swiss traveller who was later convicted of incest.  You'd think they'd have changed the name after that, no?  Wikinaccurate says this marks the boundary between the Sierra Nevada to the south and the Cascades to the north.  Wowsa.  Down at the bottom of the western end is Lake Almanor, which sounds like it ought to be in Middle Earth but is actually a reservoir formed by damming the North Fork of the Feather River.  And named after the daughters of one Guy C. Earl, Vice President of Great Western Power: Alice, Martha and Eleanor.  This seems to be something of a theme round these parts.

There! Behind that tree...

If you turn left after crossing the top end of the lake you will find yourself in California Highway 89.  Like many of the roads in these parts it is pleasingly three-dimensional and heavily wooded.

Typical scenery for much of the day

After a Several of miles it forms a codeshare agreement with Highway 70 and passes by Keddie Wye, which is a Feature of the Rail-way.

With added trainy goodness!

It looks like a bonkers place to build a railway but the Western Pacific company wanted to find an easier route over the mountains than that taken by the first transcontinental railroad, viz. Donner Pass more or less west of Reno.  Their line leads up the valley of the Feather River and ultimately through a tunnel under the rather lower Beckwourth Pass before heading off into the Nevada desert.  This is also why there is a second set of tracks a couple of miles north of the ones that run through the middle of Battle Mountain, because the two lines stay separate most of the way across the state.

Eventually Highway 89 reasserts its independence after a while, so I went thataway before turning onto Highway 49 for the rest of the day.  This wends its way through more mountains all the way to Grass Valley, where it suddenly goes from being a single carriageway road through the forests to a suburban freeway.  This lamentable state of affairs continues to Auburn, where a certain TwatNav of my acquaintance will try to put you on I-80 for Sacramento.  This not being somewhere I wished to go, some manual navigation was required before the 49 reappeared.  The plunge down into the valley of the American River is even more three-dimensional that most of today's route but at the bottom there's a cool view of this bridge:

Foresthill Bridge

The other side is equally steep and twiddly, with the bonus of laden logging trucks coming the other way on the blind hairpins but after a few miles all the other traffic disappeared off to the west somewhere as 49 continues through the foothills, crossing this trip's outbound route a few miles from Jackson, wot is where I am now.  The hotel has its own bridge.  How cool is that?

Yes, I promised Gold Rush Stuffs but it was late.  I'll go look for them tomorrow.  In the meantime listen to "Days Of '49" off His Bobness' Self Portait.

Day 12: Battle Mountain NV - Susanville CA

No need to get up at Audax o'clock this morning but I was still up by 07:15 along with the remaining, er, remainers viz. Joyce, Al'n'Alice and Eleen & Hans.  Leisurely breakfast before we went our separate ways.  The Van Vugts are flying home from Las Vegas while the rest of us were, at least initially all going west on I-80.  Though Joyce stopped by the Civic Center to introduce herself to some of the staff as it looks very much as though she's taken on some, or more, of the responsibility for putting on the show next year.  w00t!

I-80 westbound is very much like the scenic joys of 305 south of Battle Mountain except that it's 200-odd miles to Reno instead of 20 to the start of the five mile course.  And in rained, off and on, with a serious deluge just shy of Fernley.  Wipers to max and still blind when overtaking trucks.  Happily it didn't last long.  At Reno I turned off onto US-395 northwards.  The scenery is very similar except that the mountains off the west have actual trees on them.  And that's pretty much all there is to report today.  Tomorrow I shall make a concerted effort to find Scenery, History or Both.  Should be a fair bit around as I'll be on the California side of the mountains and squarely in 1849 Gold Rush territory.

Honey Lake.  Over there, behind the cows!
The only noteworthy scenery encountered today.

Additional: Internets here are officially Bastard Slow.  Bah.

Additional 2: 

"Come to sunny California!" they said...

Day 11: Battle Mountain NV

I normally clear off on the Sunday morning but having no pressing need to be anywhere else extended my stay for another day to help with the loadout¹.  A fair bit of this got done last night by worthies such as John Jackson and Battle Mountain Mike Engel but there was still much to do this morning.  Your Unit went out with Al, David Van Erd and Robert from the local feed store plus his three sturdy sons and got 120 straw bales off the ground and onto the trailer without dropping them on our own feet or each other's heads.  Which could have been a disaster as it's Al's 65th birthday today.  Fortunately they did not get rained on during the week as this makes them officially Bastard Heavy.  Back to the Super 8 for a while fiddling with yesterday's photos before returning to the Civic Center to clear unsold posters, magazines, T-Shaped shirts, 2-D Mikey,, TPsOC² etc into boxes, then lunch, then more packing and removal of said Stuffs into the storage unit across the road.  And then ice cream, which someone - possibly Team Policumbent - had left in the freezer in the Civic Center kitchen.  Big ups to Niklas, Weibke, Joyce, Adam, David, Ellen and Hans for sticking around and moving Heavy Things.  Most everything is clear now so we can push off with a collective clear conscience tomorrow.

Weather.  Sunday.  Nevada.

Fortunately when the Weather happened later in the afternoon we were all safely back where we belong i.e. indoors.  Heavy but brief shower and power cuts, the number and duration of which varied according to your room number.  I had two.  Yum.

Nothing else to add today save to express the hope that:

• there actually is an event next year, and
• I can get here

on account of the reports of many more competitors already preparing their machinery.  Crosses thumbs, presses fingers.

1. Rock'n'Roll-speak.  Blame the terrible influence of rock'n'roll's Sonny Flint Drummer and his wife 😈.
2. Teetering Piles of Crap.

Day 10: Battle Mountain NV

Last day of racing onoz, o woe, o waily waily!  Climatically it was more of the same with low temperatures and light winds, at least for the beginning and end of the session in the case of the blowy Stuffs.  Before the runs on the full course Diego had another crack at the 600/200m record that currently stands to BRITAIN'S Ken Talbot at 33.81 mph.  Wind was legal but he came up around 2 mph shy and thus will have one final bash at it tonight if the weather is coöperative.  We're planning to send him off as soon as the road is clear after 18:30 tonight.

Cerberus at Badger Ranch Road.
Dachshund joke goes here ==>

Lizanne was first off on the full course but was again short of the ARION 5 record from 2019 with 54.38.  Next up the Morris twins in Pillbug, who upped their previous mark to 43.51 mph.  Having been posted to Badger Ranch Road to oversee the short course attempts I was actually able to observe the bikes at full chat for once.  Hurrah!

MQ2 at full chat

Lynn's Camaro at full noise

By the second heat the wind had started to muck around so Daniel's 57.48 in Cyclone wasn't legal but Ellen's 49.20 in the Milan RS was.  And also demonstrating the speed difference between even a sleekit velomobile and a no-compromise racer like ARION 5, MQ2 or the CO2 in which she set a Women's Multitrack record a Several of years ago.  She was followed by Kai in Tempest, who earned both a Hat and a chance to run in the evening with her just-legal 50.96.  It's her birthday next week too.

Ellen/Milan RS

Kai/Tempest

Having already completed one run as a warmup Lizanne came up to Badger Ranch for a crack at the Women's 600/200.  The previous record has stood at 37.04 mph by Alaina DeWit for thirty years and Lizanne duly mullered it until it was discovered that the wind had increased again, nullifying her 39.71 mph run.  Bah!

Attempt #1 for Athlete Lizanne

The third heat saw the two Toronto bikes running.  Neither Lincoln in Cyclone nor Christopher in Tempest bested 60 mph and neither had legal win either chiz, but by the time heat four rolled around it had dropped again.  Ethan ran Cyclone to 60.43 and Diego 49.54.

Lincoln and Cyclone on final approach

It was all a bit too exciting for some people at catch...

After which Lizanne had another attempt on the 600/200.  This time the wind played nice and she claimed the record with a 39.34 mph run.  This, by the way, is an outright Women's record for the discipline, regardless of vehicle type.

She's in there somewhere...

Final heat of the morning had Wild Bill doing a solid 54.70 and Bella and Gigi¹ in the Pillbug lifting their own record again, this time to 44.87 mph.  Hurrah!

Exiting Pillbug:
Above: Gigi
Below: Bella

That wasn't quite the end of the morning, though, as the much-advertised head-to-head velomobile race over the full six miles had yet to be run.  We'd hoped to get a substantial number of other competitors outwith the regular sprinting gang but with one thing and another we ended up with but three: Peter in his DF and Niklas and Weibke in the two Milans.

Riders slowly melt while waiting for Nik to get his drone up

The last-named took off like a stabbed rat with Calvin waved the flag² but the event appeared to get tactical for the first couple of miles.  With a somewhat blinkered view of his surroundings Peter decided to take off after that lest Niklas sneak up in his blind spot and launch a Mighty Sprint, and won comfortably.  I'm not sure of the finish order of the other two coz both machines are white and very similar looking in footage from a drone 50 metres above and half a mile back from the competitors.

Back to town for the traditional group photos and ritual shoving of someone up a chimney ladder.  Officer Aten was otherwise engaged this morning and so unable to cuff some hapless crim and haul them away to the hoosegow but we are assured that he will be on hand tonight to ticket the various wrong'uns and probably throw away the key in the case of David Van Erd.

Calvin surveys the rabble
Note 80 mph Hat...

Vehicles and teams

There will be an update to this post with Stuffs about the final evening runs but Dog knows when it'll get posted.  I'm stopping here until Monday morning to help with the takedown and packing of Stuffs though, so we'll see...

Edit #1:  New Aussie record for Adam: 75.62 mph.  New World Record for Women's Multitrack for Lizanne: 60.17 mph.  w00t!  More Stuffs to follow, Stuffs fans.

Edit #2, Sunday morning:

OK, so I've now had a lie-in until 07:15 and am back from the 305 where we've been throwing the straw bales back onto the trailer.  This is harder work than setting them up in front of immovable signs, mailboxes, culverts, bridges, Jun and Danny, ect &, moreover, ect but we had a few more people, most of them young and sturdy locals lads.  Thanks to David Van Erd for helping and Macquarie and Team Falcon³ for volunteering to help only to be told to clear off and have some fun instead.  But anyway, Saturday night...

Flat calm when John Jackson and I went out early to set up the distance markers but by the first road closure at 17:30 the wind was up to its old tricks again and only Wild Bill opted to run.  His 56.70 mph was his fastest of the week but with a mighty rushing crosswind.

The Milan now boarding at Gate A1 is for Catch

The second heat was again a tad on the blowy side, but both Toronto bikes ran, heeled over to port like pirate ships after the helmsman has been at the RUM.  Daniel and Cyclone reached 53.46 mph and Christopher in Tempest 64.30.  Peter made his last run of the week at 53.71 mph.

The 18:30 heat was run off with much much less wind as the sun began to dip behind the mountains and all runs were legal.  First up was Adam, who banged in a new Australian records of 75.62 mph.  He was followed by Lincoln in Cyclone at 62.50 mph.  Next up Lizanne, who finally got the magic combination of weather and Athlete and added the thick end of 4 mph to Yasmin Tredell's Women's Multitrack World record, leaving at at 60.17 mph.  w00t!

Adam en route to the highest speed of the week and a new Aussie record

The final run on the five mile course was Kai, who clocked 52.84 in Tempest.  Closing out proceedings was Diego, having a final pop at the 600/200 metre record.  Wind was perfect but he fell short with 32.90.  Bah!

Diego warming up at badger Ranch Road

To the Finland Station Civic Center.  After the world's most expensive burritos we'd had for the last few years this time we had pizza sent over from the Wol Club for 1/3rd the prices and BYOB⁴.  Much MOAR betterer.  I got roped in to do the announcements for the door prizes.  I do not think a new career as a game show host beckons.  Most of my photos from the awards bash are utter bobbins so if you want some decent ones pop over to Jun's blog where there a pics taken on a newer camera by people who actually know what they're doing, like Danny Guthrie.

Officer Aten then got hold of the mike and ticketed the Morris twins for Youth, Daniel for failing to maintain his travel lane, Adam for speeding and David for speeding, attempting to elude tha polis, the murder of Rasputin and walking on the cracks in the pavement sidewalk⁵.

A right villain an' no mistake, Guv!

Then the presentation of Hats:

50 mph: Jun Nogami, Kai Zabitsky

60 mph: Lizanne Wilmot, Christopher Koehlmann, Daniel Tykei

65 mph: Ethan Elbaz

70 mph: David Van Erd

75 mph: Adam Hari

Picture on Jun's blog because mine were a Rubbish

And prizes:

Collegiate:

3rd: University of Toronto

2nd: Team Policumbent

1st: Macquarie University

Velomobile Race:

3rd: Niklas Bostelmann

2nd: Weibke Last-Name-Missing-From-My-Notes

1st: Peter Borenstadt

Whatever class Team Pillbug was in:

1st: Bella & Gigi Morris

Men Arms-Only:

1st: Diego Colombari

Women's Multitrack:

1st: Lizanne Wilmot

Men's Multitrack:

3rd: Jun Nogami

2nd: Peter Borenstadt

1st: Bill Thornton

Women's Singletrack:

2nd: Kai Zabitsky

1st: Ellen Van Vugt

Men's Singletrack:

3rd: Ethan Elbaz

2nd: David Van Erd

1st: Adam Hari

Finally Jun presented a Special Certificate of Appreciation for general awesomeness to Al'n'Alice Krause from Lander County.  This year was my nineteenth time here; Al'n'Alice have been Organisators of Record for fifteen of those (as well as the two I missed because Reasons) and are now stepping down from running the show.  Everyone who has competed here since 2006 owes them a massive round of applause.  Though I am reliably informed that Alice will still be working behind the scenes on the project to build a track in the area while Al is helping with the proposal to get our stretch of Highway 305 resurfaced again after it's had fifteen years of bashing by harsh winters and heavy trucks.

Jun embarrassing the Supreme Leaders

I made my excuses and left after that.  I think the Cool Kids probably congregated at the Big Chief motel for further celebration, though someone was setting off fireworks outside the Super 8 some time after midnight.

So one more World Human Powered Speed Challenge done and dusted.  As of now interested parties are putting together a committee to take over the tasks to run again next year.  All assistance gratefully received, especially if you happen to live in the USA.  Lie in tomorrow followed by general tidying up.  I'll bung some pictures from Saturday pm up later coz there's more Stuffs to be done.

1. Actually Isabella and Evangeline, but because teenagers.
2. Actually a slightly grubby hi-viz weskit tied to a pole.
3. aka Adam and David Hari.
4. "Bottle" or "booze".  Not "Bombs", you System Of A Down fans.
5. List may contain slight inaccuracies.

Day 9: Battle Mountain NV

Friday the 13th.  What's the worst that could happen?

Quite a lot, as it turned out.  Cold at first but little in the way of wind.  The first heat had three starters but only two finishers - Lizanne with 48.99 mph and Diego with 47.65.  Pillbug was a DNF 1000 metres from timing when the P*nct*r* F**ry visited one of the side wheels.  Repair not possible in time for them to run again chiz.  In the second heat Orange Bullet was scheduled to run with Ellen at the helm but they had further camera issues and didn't start.  Peter did an untroubled 49.57.  We like velomobiles.  Easy to start and stop.  Kai set off but had to pull up after not very far as the gear shifter had come loose.

Calvin observes; Larry pushes Pillbug with air in all four tyres

Things perked up a bit in the third heat as Adam set the highest speed of the week so far with a wind-legal 68.57 mph.  The two Toronto machines, powered by Lincoln and Christopher this time, did 53.95 and 54.40, also with legal wind but thereafter the weather gods decided they'd been generous enough and no subsequent runs were legal in that respect.  Daniel's 60.56, Jun's 50.33 and Kai's 44.51 in heat 4 and Ethan's 62.03 solo run in the last 5 mile heat of the morning.

Kai waiting for a Minion to deliver her helmet

After the main event we also did 600/200 metre runs for Lizanne and Diego - standing start 600 metres from the start of the timed 200 metres.  The wind was still not playing and neither MQ2's 48.71 nor Cerberus' 32.33 were legal chiz.  We'll give it another go earlier tomorrow morning when the wind is more likely to behave itself.  New face in the crowd in a chap named David, a former cow-orker of Organisator Al.  They hadn't met since 1980 when the both worked on the ill-fated Vector sports car project and apparently David had no idea that Al was running things.  Spook!

The afternoon saw the drag races run as always by Robert Barnett.  Overall winner was Lizanne on her track bike.  Larry was somewhat put out at being relegated to the runner-up spot, but then she's an athlete.

Winner of the drag races

The wind forecast for the evening was officially Not Good.  This was about as truthy as tales of cat-eating migrants; winds were legal for everyone and speeds correspondingly high.  Adam was first off and did the quickest run of the week thus far with 72.31.  David in Orange Bullet wasn't far behind with 70.32 before causing alarums and excursions among the skeleton crew of catchers when we realised that no, he wasn't going to stop.  This, it transpired, was because the brake fell off.

It's not meant to look like this!

After two gentle pumps, in fact.  The 10mm thick carbon sheared clean through, David went though catch at > 55 mph, blew past a startled Geri-Ann and a line of traffic at the road block and carried on with speed scarcely abated until the road starts to go upwards.  Hotly pursued both by his chase vehicle and Officer Aten's truck - the latter complete with flashing lights - he finally came to a halt some two miles further down the road than expected.  Ellen and Larry almost caught him but missed by a few yards.  The bike can't be fixed here so it is perforce out for the remainder of the event.  Ellen has, however, arranged to run one of the Milan velomobiles tomorrow in an attempt to regain her Women's multitrack record before some upstart Aussie can boost it out of reach.

While all this was happening Lincoln arrived to an undramatic catch after a 60.1 mph run and Lizanne simply trundled up and stopped after her 55.76.  Natch I had put my camera down while we were catching Adam and then not catching David, so I didn't get many pictures from all the excitement.  Then I left my camera behind when I drove sweep for the second heat, Lynn having repaired his Camaro sufficiently that it didn't try shedding vital components at three figure speeds and doing the job for the first and third heats.  Local fixer Paula Tomera rode shotgun on the latter before driving the beast back down the course afterwards.  This seemed to make her happy.

Use your Junior Pocket Microscope (Model 3a) to spot Paula in the passenger seat...

The two Toronto bikes ran in this one, with Ethan clocking 65.52 mph and Christopher 61.56; a quick turnaround saw Cyclone back to the start for Daniel to round off proceedings with a 64.29 mph run, followed by an heroic but unsuccessful attempt by Toronto old boy Luke Patterson to keep the bike upright with a near diving somersault that earned high marks for artistic merit from the international panel of judges.

A little less drama and some proper records tomorrow please, you Fates.

Day 8: Battle Mountain NV

My notebook is mostly dry now after spending the night atop the aircon wossname.  Hurrah!  So, Thursday morning.  Last night's Wind, which we subsequently learned was blowing a hooley all the way to Austin, the thick end of ninety miles away, had thankfully gone to annoy someone else but leaving in its wake a distinct nippiness.  About seven of your Earth Celsisuses on the way out to the course, at least at the cold spot by the golf course¹.  We only ran on the long course this morning, which meant five runs for me and the Kia, burning half a tank of petril in the process chis.  Almost everyone had legal wind speeds and David is now starting to get the hang of the Orange² Bullet.  His 62.62 mph was the quickest of the day and indeed the whole weeks so far.  This earns him An Improved Hat, as did Daniel's 60.29 in Cyclone.

Ellen and Larry launch David

Brigadier-Admiral Earl Archbishop Captain Of Industry Timelord Jun also earned himself a shiny titfer with a 51.67 in Peter's DF and, it seems, he's now well and truly bitten to the extent of signing up for another go tomorrow morning.

Loading Jun into the Tardis DF

Diego already has a 50 mph Hat but today he went one better as he now holds the Men's Arms-Only World Record with a 51.75 mph run, beating Ken Talbot's five year old mark.  This was his second run of the day too, having been one of the two unfortunates³ to get a non-legal wind speed on his first attempt, plus he was promoted up the start order of Heat 4 at short notice after MQ2 had some issues on the start line.

Team Policumbent: World Record holders

Lizanne subsequently reached 54.41.  My notes say there was a timing FAIL for Christopher in Tempest though the onboard GPS says V > 50 mph which is enough to permit him into the evening runs.  Nice to see Sven Jorgensen pop by on a flying visit this morning too.

I had been asked to confirm whether Apple Maps spake the truth concerning the existence of a certain street in town.  My SatNav denied it, but Lo!

Goodbye! ~ E. John, yesterday

It exists!  Although there's a bunch of fire hydrants and electrical connection boxes along its disappointingly black length there's a paucity of actual dwellings.  We did the Dorothy & Toto gag in Tulsa in 2016, and it can stay there.

I was about to head out to the course this afternoon when my attention was drawn to an Unusual Object parked behind the Super 8.  Thanks, Peter!

This also meant that by the time I got out to the course John Jackson had again set up most of the distance marker signs.  Having been so benevolent this morning the wind had turned not so much fickle as downright hostile in the evening and there were no wind-legal runs.  At all.  I counted them.  Twice.  There was, however, a Cow.  On the course, apparently.  When I passed by on the sweep run: Cow = 0.  As the bikes were lining up on the start line: Cow = 1.  By the time a team of cowboys from Team Policumbent had reached the location of the alleged Cow: Cow = 0.  Spaghetti Western joke goes here ==>  Passing Fedex Van Lady said she knew how to deal with errant Cows but this only works if you can find the Cow in question.  Having followed the advice of Bart Simpson⁴ we were able to get on with the main business of the evening.  The Orange Bullet - now at least partly orange - was the fastest again with David doing 58.65 into a screaming headwind.

Shiny thing make it all better, say Clever SCIENCE Man

Drama behind him on the road as the Toronto team went to the aid of their stranded machine at the 3.5 mile marker, causing Diego to anchor up Cerberus and abandon his run.  I'm told that there were many two-handed words in the Policumbent van on the way back to the start.  Because divers people declining to run for little or no reward he did get another chance but his 48.15 into - yes, you guessed it - a screaming headwind was a bit of an anti-climax after this morning.

Resident clairvoyant Jun says tomorrow morning will be much like today's version but even less windy and colder.  I didn't take my jumper today purely to show up Team Northern Monkey as a pack of soft jessies⁵.

1. 9-hole, very green in comparison with most of the rest of the county, very good food in the clubhouse.
2. Now in white primer.
3. Ellen being the other.
4. Don't have a cow, man.  Obv.
5. Lie.

Day 7: Battle Mountain NV

It's 9/11, which means Happy Birthday to Tom Amick!  Also my water bottle has leaked all over my notebook.  Shittens!  Anyway, as an antidote to pictures of bikes, here is a picture of a bike:

Wednesday morning was, as forecast, Bastard Windy and thus but a few hardy souls chose to brave the elements and actually run.  No-one was anywhere close to legal wind speeds but with it blowing almost, but not quite, directly down the course speeds were respectable.  We ran a single heat on the 2.5 mile course first; Professor Admiral Sir Viscount Ambassador Timelord Nogami-san did 49.24 mph and Pillbug 42.99.  Then we upped sticks and moved out to the five mile start where only Lizanne in MQ2 and divers Toronto PSO's elected to play.  Daniel ran the repaired Cyclone to 49.05 mph after we'd fished him out of the ditch when his first attempt went a little awry immediately after launch.  He was followed by Lizanne at 52.10.  Heats two and three just contained Cyclone, piloted by first Ethan and then Lincoln, to 57.44 and 58.52 mph respectively.  With the paucity of runs we were actually back back at the Civic Center by 10:00, in spite of Macquarie temporarily getting their Transit stuck in the ditch opposite the timers' desk.

Oopsie...
Bike and rider unhurt, BTW

Mid-afternoon and the senior The Mgt decided to call off the evening runs as the wind had been picking up steadily all day and is now blowing big clouds of Nevada across town.  A properly early night beckons.  And the 2020 posters have arrived.  Those with long memories will recall that the 2020 event was called off because of Teh Plague, but Calvin decided it needed a poster anyway.  This is it:

There's a design for a 2021 version too, but this was deemed a bit too political.  Ask Calvin nicely though and he might send you the artwork to print yourself.

Tomorrow's forecast is for a lot less wind but also a lot less warmth.  I may even have to take my jumper out to the course for the morning setup Stuffs 😨

Edit: weather at ~18:00