Day 20: Battle Mountain NV

The calm before a weekend of late nights, early mornings and swearing.  Civilised breakfast followed by a trip out to the course to finish setting Stuffs up - mostly the boards zip-tied to the Armco on the bridge just after the finish line to prevent errant bikes getting caught in the gap 'twixt barrier and road.  The good news is than we have a spiffy new parking area right at the measured 200 metres.

The bad news is that the access road was built smack where one of the tripods holding the timing apparatus has to stand.  Mr Professor Sir Generalissmo Timelord Jun Nogami has noted that anyone knocking the tripod over will be executed and buried in the desert, where "there is plenty of room".

Back to town in Arnold's highly growly Mustang.  I'm sure it makes more noise than mine did last year.  Many of The Usual Suspects have been arriving at the Super 8 and jumping to the obvious, and wrong, conclusion.  For comparison:

Which one looks like it's been to Alaska and back, eh?  EH??  I then spent a lot of time doing not much over at the Civic Center while Arnold and Hans van Vugt conducted technical inspections of everyone who was ready i.e. everyone except IUT Annecy (rider not yet able to make the thing stay upright) Universidad la Salle (bike apparently not ready yet) and London South Bank University¹(bike still 2/3 of a continent away).

Hang around trash-talking outside the motel.  Sample dialogue:

Volunteer X²: I have a girlfriend now.
Volunteer Y: Did you build her?

Naughty Mr Jackson oops what a giveaway.  Thence back to the Civic Center for the pre-event introductions and pep-talk.  Organisators Al'n'Alice Krause have got this down to a fine art by now, so it only took an hour and a quarter if you exclude the additional form-filling, which we veterans had done earlier in the day so as to stand a sporting chance of actually getting to eat before bedtime.  Though the cunning Frenchies had gone one better by phoning in their order in advance.

In the absence of Danny Guthrie at least for the start of the week - sidelined by a serious forest fire threatening his father's neighbourhood in northern California, I have wangled myself a place in timing for now.  This is good because it means I get to see the machines running flat-out, but bad because Jun say we have to leave at 06:00 tomorrow to make sure everything it A-OK before anyone actually starts riding.  Oh.  Time for bed.

1: Hereinafter referred to as LSBU, to save electrons
2: Names omitted to protect innocent and guilty alike