Day 9: Battle Mountain, NV

This is likely to be a short post, on account of my not having done anything all day.  I was excused course setting-up duties on account of my ankle being extremely swollen and itchy.   This afternoon Vicky Johnsen gave me some ointment which she reckons might help but it'll probably take a while for any effect to be noticeable.  The day was basically spent watching people fettle their bikes.  It's a very international event this year; in addition to the home-grown entries there's the Franco-Canadian Varna effort and the University of Toronto boys, three teams from the Netherlands, the IUT Annecy team from France, Sergei from Russia and the Trisled team from Captain Cook's Mistake Australia.

This evening we had the usual initial briefing, in which about a hundred people are crammed into a room only slightly larger than the average suburban sitting room.  The air conditioning couldn't cope.  I ran away, very very slowly.  Jonathan Woolrich and I ended up having dinner with the Annecy lads.  I'm expecting them to go pretty well this year; Yannick Lutz did over 73 mph the last time he was here while new rider Aurélien Bonneteau is a formidible powerhouse with a Several of records on unfaired recumbents under his belt.

I can't be bothered to add any photos to this post, mostly because my feet hurt.  Go over to the flickr site if you want to see Funny Bicycles in various states of undress.  Also I have to be up at stupid o'clock in the morning and fill the Crappy Chrysler with motor-spirit before going out to the course.  This event was so much more relaxing when we didn't have these new-fangled morning runs as well.