Day 3: Battle Mountain NV

Still being jetlagged to ["Heck" - The Invigilator] I did not get up in time to be pressganged into going out to the course at Stupid O'Clock, no, that pleasure awaits on the morrow.  Instead I wandered over to the Civic Center where there wa very little going on save a bunch of Italians prodding their bikes and a smaller bunch of Dutchmen prodding radios.

One of said Dutchmen is lording it over us peasants in this Prunkwagen

For we have New! IMPROVED!!1! radios this year thanks to the generosity of the Sprocket Rocket team, who sponsored the event to the tune of $5k.  Yes, you read that right.  Thanks, chaps!  Neither process would have benefitted from my input so I went out to the course, discovering on the way that the playlist wot I had set up on the USB stick of Musical Tunes was being ignored and instead the Blackstang was playing them in alphabetical order of title.  And I probably don't have time to edit the said playlist for the rest of the week.  Bah!

Anyway, out in the desert there wasn't a lot going on either, save that our local fixer and Doer of Good Deeds Paula Tomera had laid on some strapping high school kids to do the straw bale wrangling and similar, while cursing the Department of Transportation.

Heavy lifting crew, Nevada, Saturday

Who had told us earlier that yes, we put some fresh seal on the road but absolutely no gravel embedded in it, honest guv.  The thick layer of gravel on the roadside just downstream of Badger Ranch Road gave the lie to their assertions, and there was much sweeping and shovelling of the wretched stuff. Edit: Definitely no gravel in our work, say NDOT.  That lot must’ve fallen out of someone’s truck…

Mike Sova and Al Krause doing archaeology on NV-305

As well as assembling the giant flegs that mark the start and end of the timed 200 metres and the point at which anyone who hasn't started slowing down for catch is going to crash and burn.  Very leisurely lunch at the the Hideway and then back to the motel for what should have been a siesta but wasn't.

By the time of the 7pm introductory briefing all the teams and riders were actually present and correct and only a small quantity of shouting and cat-herding was required to get the rabble in order.  This being the seventeenth one of these wot I have attended - well, they don't get any more interesting.

Peter Borenstadt draws the first number out of Alice's hat to determine start positions on the qualibobs tomorrow morning.  Or tomorrow evening, if you're reading this in BRITAIN

Having only a minimal amount of paperwork to fill in personally, and having done this e'en before setting foot in USAnia, I made my excuses and disappeared back to the Super 8 for tea, biscuits, typing and trying to discover why this wretched laptop no longer disables its trackpad when there's an external mouse plugged in even though it says it has.  Hence the cursor keeps flying off to unexpected points of the compass because my stubby peasant fingers keep hitting the wretched thing.