Day 12: Battle Mountain NV

'kinell, this morning seems like a lifetime ago.  My Sinister Agents told me that the LSBU team have decided the current steering/transmission arrangement is beyond redemption and they are planning to embark on a major rebuild involving making Velociraptor rear-wheel drive and fitting a pair of stereo forks.  There was talk of butchering their Optima Baron training/warm-up bike, but instead they've been shopping in Elko and bought a bike to cut up.  They hope to have something running by Thursday morning.

Out on 305, and Tokyo yet again failed to get Haruka 2019 started on the short course.  Andrew Sourk, having fixed the damage incurred in transit from Michigan, started Triage OK, what with it being a trike an' t'ing, but pulled up on the course as the smell of rubbery burny badness was threatening to make him vom.  Toronto finally made it to the course and the Calvin Moes/Evan Bennewies crew got Titan down the course with a respectable 58.06.  Ken Buckley in ARION5 and Josh Gieschen in Ambition made successful short course runs, as did Todd Reichert in the DF velomobile, into which he fitted without adjustment being needed, though he says he's not yet quite on speaking terms with the steering.

Triage rear wheel fairing

Return of the Todi

Trefor Evans about to launch Titan

It got a bit blowy while we were moving out to the 5 mile start, but the wind relented enough for Yasmin to edge a little closer to the Women's Multitrack record of 54.45 mph set by Ellen in 2015.  She did a legal 52.92 mph.  For once the highest speed of the session was not put up by Andrea, but instead went to Fabien Canal in Altaïr 6, who earned himself the 80 mph hat which narrowly eluded him last year.  80.63 to Andrea's 67.48, though the Italians did not appear to be intending a serious challenge as Taurus ran with the "Bull" front fairing, rather than the faster plain white one.  Drama for the timing crew as ARION5 blew its rear tyre in the traps, flipping Ken into a roll at about 55 mph and breaking off the camera pod.  Ken unhurt and repairs to the trike carried out in time for the evening runs.

The steady hand of Barclay Henry bringing VeloX S to a safe stop

In-car wifi in HPT's chase vehicle

Which sucked, because Wind.  Early on it was breezy rather than outright horrible, but still only two of the four machines actually ran.  Josh did 63.99 mph in Ambition; ARION5 ate another rear tyre, this time with Yasmin at the helm.  It only flipped onto its side this time.  Something has been causing the sidewall to make contact with some sharp carbon inside the fairing, and tyres don't like that.  Wind.

Patched-up ARION5 before going into self-digest mod again

No starters at all in heat two, because wind.  Horrible headwind by now.  Heat three attracted two contenders; Andrea had a leisurely ride in the country cruising at 40 mph for most of the course before slowing to trigger the beam at 33 mph.  Wind.  Ishtey Amminger in the VeloX S pushed a bit harder and did 51.29.  Wind.

Andrea not travelling very fast

Wind.  It blew the wind meter over.

We also had a mardy trucker threatening to run the road closure,  Frank Lem reprising his role as the Evil One by pretending that Yasmin's start was illegal and Al Krause, in the face of the radio transmissions breaking up, trying to contact the start via the medium of interpretive dance.  We should have extended our afternoon naps to five or six hours.

The Return of Evil Bill Frank¹

We did also have the Show'n'Shine for the local Tinies to smear jam all over the machines and, in some cases, the riders, but I wolfed the free lunch, went back for seconds, tried to make sense of the Sprocket Rocket's miles of intestinal chain and came back to the Super 8 to do internet stuffs.  The connection is less awful this year, probably because it's been so awful before that everyone else is using their phone as a hotspot.

1: Clinic reference for Miss von Brandenburg's benefit...