Day 9: Battle Mountain, NV

Jan-Marcel van Dijken testing his periscope

 

Those semis sounded like thunder as they went past my window with their right-side wheels on the rumble strip.  For most of the night.  My room is at the Interstate side of the building and, being right at the eastern end, is closest to the main road.  Most of the expected teams have now arrived, though the whereabouts and/or intentions of the ALTAÏR 3 team, from I.U.T Annecy, is still something of a mystery.  As it is now quite late, and we have to get up at stupid o'clock in the morning, I will update this page further after the qualifying runs.  In the meantime, perhaps someone could tell me why the door into my bathroom appears to have a boot-shaped hole halfway through it?

Front sub-frame from Vortex (University of Toronto)

I managed to spend much of the day successfully dodging work but got nobbled in the late afternoon to help attach plywood boards to the guard rails at the bridge, and applying straw bales to Hard Things.  Fortunately the Human Power Team Delft has thirteen people supporting two riders, so they were co-opted to help with the fetching and carrying.  This made life a lot easier than last year.  While we were out on the course, Jonathan Woolrich showed up in his take on the retro-muscle-car, a Dodge Challenger.  This apes the styling of the '71 version made famous by Barry Newman in Vanishing Point, but like my Mustang it's only got a V6.  We await with interest to see whether it too is speed-limited - the Mustang will accelerate pretty smartly up to 113 mph before abruptly changing up about three gears and going into cruise mode.  The day concluded with more hanging around in the motel car park and an all-hands-on-deck meeting.