Day 8: McCall ID - Battle Mountain NV

Even travelling despondently is better than arriving here - Douglas Adams

In spite of what has been written about Battle Mountain, the above is not true.

So another lovely sunny day with another cold start; real Philly Soul weather¹ at one point.  Although it's been California that's had most of the publicity about wildfires, Idaho seems to have had its share too; at one point I passed a "Fire Camp" which looked rather like a small-scale festival except for the fire engines.

That was in the forested bit, though, which eventually disappeared in favour of the same old grassland and scrub familiar from yesterday.  I stopped for "gas" in Payette (which, incidentally, smells of mint humbugs); at the next pump a woman is filling her motor-car while her offspring are Playing the Goat in the back seat.

"Want some kids?" she asked.

I declined, saying there wasn't enough room in the car.

Once I'd talked Emily out of going straight to Boise rather than taking US-95 she concurred that the best route was via Mountain Home and Elko.  It hit 34 degrees.  When it is that warm, and you are about six thousand feet above sea level, you do not want to be opening a bottle of Fizzy Pop while driving at 70 mph.  Oh.

Rocked up to the Super 8 at about 3 pm; Todd Reichert and Victor Ragusila were the first people I met, polishing bits of a revamped Eta in the porch.  The team from Turin Polytechnic are here too, as are the Mid-West mob, and over the course of the afternoon many of the Usual Suspects roll in: Team Cygnus, Larry Lem² & Tom Amick, Brad Teubner & Rocky and doubtless some others I've forgotten.  Al'n'Alice Krause have been here since Thursday night so all the hard fetching and carrying has been done and the "borrowing" of a few cones on the way back from dinner was just a coincidence.  Delft and The Scousers (aka The Liverpooligans) are at the Big Chief across town.

PulsaR: Turin Polytechnic's machine.  Enough aLready w1th the ranDom capitaL leTters.

Team Aerovelo & Eta have already monopolised the Super 8 conference room

Not much has happened since arriving as due to last night's notwork bobbins I have been stuck at the keyboard most of the afternoon.  I have a few photos up on Flickr but there will be more opportunity tomorrow coz everyone has to have their machines passed fit for human consumption.

Speling fale

This was in the "Welcome to the Super 8" folder in my room.  If you live in a town whose name contains the word "Mountain" I don't think you have any excuse for getting it wrong; with your Junior Pocket Microscope (Model 3a) you will notice that the word is spelt wrongly twice.  Durrr....

1. Three Degrees.
2. And, perhaps more importantly, Larry's truck, which has just come out of hospital after an altercation with a palm tree.