Day 14: Battle Mountain, NV

Here is a Lovely story.  Last night Tiffany and Mike Underwood - whom I have erroneously called "Mark" these two years past - were awakened by a scratching noise, sounding as though it was coming from inside their trailer (this being what we BRITONS would call a "caravan").  Fearlessly, Tiff sent Mike out to investigate with a torch.  Fearfully, Mike determined that the noise came from a small skunk trapped in the rubbish bin outside.  Fearlessly, he was the equipped with a broom.  Open door, push bin over from safe distance, slam door shut.  What japes the Wild West can throw up, eh?

And so to the Friday morning runs.  Mike Mowett had earlier blown his rear tyre and had no spare.  And his bike uses the less common 451 variety of "twenty inch" tyre.  O noes!  Larry decided to run totally unfaired and actually qualified faster than, er, some others.  Jay had another run to see whether he had sorted his chain management issues.

He hadn't.

A fiercely determined Whittney tried again to run Miner Details with the full fairing in place, but both attempts were unsuccessful.  And so to the full course.  Amanda and Victor both made good runs in the Ace, though Amanda's wind was Bad and Victor's time got lost as the timing team have been having Issues with their printer.  Thomas fell over at launch and decided to call it a day; Jay snapped the weld conjoining his bottom bracket and the rest of his bike, so it was left to Eric to save the day with a 69+ run.  Sadly with  Bad Wind.

Back to base for results, a mercifully truncated IHPVA members' meeting and Todd describing how he became the first person in the history of all things evvah to achieve sustained flight - 19.3 seconds - in a human-powered ornithopter.  Utterly mind-blowing...

Loafing, BEER, recording video messages for Alice, watching Thomas repairing his morning's work and the drag races which I did not attend due to laziness.

More Stuffs either later this evening or tomorrow depending on food, BEER and.  And things.

Mike Mowett won the drags from John Pocock, Scott Wilson and Whittney Metcalf.  And my shoulder feels as though it's been knifecrimed, and if my feet swell up any further, one of two things could happen:

1. The straps of my Intrepid Sandals will no longer be sufficiently lengthy, or
2. They will explode like overcooked sausages

Neither is desirable, so I will rest them in cold water and then go to bed.  Watch for further updates at this spot in twelve hours time.

Sam Whittingham being our Guru, when he said we'd run too late on Thursday night, foolishly we believed him, and thus traipsed out to the course in a howling gale.  Sort of.  Fortunately no-one had seen fit to inform our flaggers - the people whose job it is to stabnd at the roadside and enforce the road closure - so we ended up back on the usual schedule.  The wind refused to co-operate, though, and only four riders chose to run.  Dan and Damjan both got times, though the wind was well in excess of the permitted maximum, but the first two runs rapidly descended into farce.  James was intending to run the Arrow Hawk up to ~ 55 mph to test that everything was in order after the afternoon's extensive repairs, but Barclay was going for a time as the Henry boys had to leave prior to the end of the event.  Now James likes to ramp up his speed steadily, while Barclay cruises before sprinting hard at the end.

You can probably guess what's going to happen here.

Yep, James overtakes due to his mistaken notion that Barclay has a problem.  James is in the measured 200 when Barclay enters the traps and re-passes.  Mayhem.  Police cars.

Photo shamelessly stolen from Jeff Wills

With the weather like that, there's not much to do except hope things go better on the morrow...  Also it was difficult to keep the 'vette on the road during the sweep before the second evening session, as Amanda Chu's legs are very distracting. 

Curious thing seen on the road: that ^^^^