Day 11: Battle Mountain NV

Monday morning was subject to a certain amount of first-night nerves, if that makes sense,as well as the local birbs doning three Giant Economy-size poos on the Mustang's bonnet.  Members of a Several of different operations are mucking in to help the Tokyo team get a run in but again they failed to launch successfully

Launch FAIL for Kazuhiro

 Adam Hari got under way successfully but stacked N-1 some way down the road; the lid came off and the desert came in.  I think one of the wheels got damaged as well, but whatever the damage he subsequently said he won't be trying to qualify tomorrow.  Both Yasmin and Ken got ARION5 down the road OK this time, and Yas' 47.34 mph is a BRITISH women's multitrack record if we've done our research right.  If we haven't we'll blame Statto Mowett...  Toronto were again a no-show as they wrestled with difficult low-speed handling, with a scurrilous rumour doing the rounds that stoker Evan Bennewies had been replace with a sack of spuds until Captain Calvin could get to grips with the machine.

Adam still rubber side down at this point

A longer inter-heat pause while we moved kit and kaboodle out to the 5 mile start for more mishaps.  Cal Poly took the crash panels off Ambition this morning, which natch led to Josh Gieschen falling three times at launch and running out of time.

Josh at right-angles to reality

Russell also dropped the Velociraptor at the start, falling to the right when the landing wheel is on the left.  He got going at the second attempt only to bin it at speed a couple of miles down the road.  Seems the peculiar nature of the steering means he has to hang on like grim death just to keep the thing from being thrown off-line by any minor bumps in the road, which makes correcting for the wind well-nigh impossible.  The team has been Consulting Experts, though I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done while working in the parking lot of the Big Chief motel.

Russ shakes a leg

Jennifer apparently had an issue with VeloX 9's gears and was slow enough that the team were obliged to perform a mid-course catch, while Denise and Ilona made it down the course OK and arrived in catch only a few yards apart. Denise's 67.84 mph is a new US Women's record.  Peter Borenstadt got out to the course to discover he'd left his shoes and helmet back at the motel.  "I'm the one who uses marijuana!" exclaimed his brothe/crew chief Mike.  Fortunately there was time enough for him to fetch them before his alotted start time.

Of the other successful riders Andrea was on top again with 75.47 mph.  It was not very warm.  Wild Bill Thornton set an unofficial record for a production velomobile, clocking 59.83 mph in his Milan SL.

Bill starts his record-breaking run

Rosa Bas did 73.73 with a non-legal wind, which boded well for the evening session.  On the down side we had an errant moton who managed to ignore all the warning signs, change lanes to overtake a bunch of stationary cars and an articulated truck, almost run over the flagger with a "STOP" sign and only get halted when Organisator-in-Chief Al Krause practically threw himself in front of her car.  "I didn't see them!" she said, somewhat unconvincingly.  Almost as daft was the one who thought it would be OK to park a full-size pickup truck on the side of the road at the 1.5 mile mark to watch the bikes go past.  Aaaaaarrrrrgggggh!!1!

Back to town for meetings, food, internets and sleeping, sometimes at the same time, before heading back out for what proved to be a slightly *too* early start in an attempt to compensate for last night's late finish.  The sun was still well above the mountains when Denise - the final rider of the evening - was sent off down the road.  Heat one was too windy for legal runs and speeds were unspectacular.  For heats two and three all riders had legal wind except for Vittoria, who blew a tyre on Taurus-X a mile or so from timing and went off into the bushes.  I haven't seen the bike, but the rider is undamaged.

Vittoria surveys the start of heat 3

Andrea's 82.01 was the fastest run of the evening and Denise upped her own national record to 69.98 mph.  Does anyone know what happened to the "Almost 70 mph" hat constructed by 3D Thomas van Schaik a few years back?

Frank Lem signals another faultless start from the Koroneks

But the big news of the night was that Rosa Bas' 75.88 mph run in VeloX 9 is a new world record, just edging Barbara Buatois' 75.69 performance from 2010.  And there was great rejoicing from everyone except Watts the Timing Dog¹, who seemed unsure what to make of it all.

HPT's army of Oaves prepare VeloX 9 for Rosa's record run

My Sinister Agents tell me that some bloke called "Reichert" is going to have a trial fitting in Peter's DF and, assuming he can make it go at all, try to wrestle the Fastest Velomobile crown back from the upstart Milan operation.

1: Watts is a large, hairy and very well-behaved Alsatian belonging to new timing assistant Gordon.