Day 3: Battle Mountain NV

Before we get on to the activities of the day, let us pause a while and consider the latest addition to YACF's Shite Courier Thread, namely the utter nozzle who delivered Cerberus, the Italian handcycle, on Thursday afternoon.  I know not where it was supposed to be delivered but Captain Braincell took it to the high school, coöpted their forklift to unload the outsize crate it was shipped in, got a random member of staff to sign for it and buggered off.  This was right at close of business on Thursday too, and with Friday not being a skool day in these parts there was every possibility that the machine being marooned until Monday.  Fortunately the team was able to track it down and rescue it in the nick of time.

Another thing I discovered yesterday was that if one is making tea in a cup that holds half a litre of the Cup That Soothes, one only needs to boil half a litre of water which perforce takes half as long as boiling a full litre in one's ickle travel kettle.  This makes a significant difference when said kettle is energised by puny USAnian voles rather than the rufty-tufty hairy-arsed ones we are used to in Europe.  That Thomas Edison has a lot to answer for.  If people had listened to Nikolai Tesla we'd have kettles using 10,000 V and boiling a gallon of water would take five milliseconds¹.

And finally, I wish to reiterate that it was not me who, when assisting Russian rider Sergei Dashevsky to book a flight here a few years ago, inadvertently sent him to the Panama City next to the big canal in Central America rather than the one in Florida.  Because our tame drone pilot Nik seems to think it was me wot dun it.  Bah!

Anyway, a certain amount of heavy lifting, notably of the boards we use to prevent errant machines from slicing themselves in half under the guard rails on the bridge in the slow-down zone had already been done but this morning it was placing straw bales in front of things we would prefer crashing bikes not to hit, such as mail boxes, culverts and road signs.  For no readily apparent reason, mile posts have sprung up on the highways of Nevada, gert big metal ones atop equally gert big sturdy posts about ten feet high.  This was not as onerous as we had feared with six people on the job and took only a couple of hours.  Big ups to local lad Austin (whose father supplied the bales and drove the truck to haul 'em out there), volunteers Minnesota Eric and John Jackson, Julius from the Macquarie team, Mr Organisator Al and ur author for putting the bales where they were needed and to Alice for telling us where these spots are, since the culverts are invisible from the road even if you're paying attention.

Before...

and after

Very late breakfast or as it were lunch at the Colt with Al'n'Alice and the 2D version of Mikey Sova:

before some loafing practice, punctuated by the need to drape a tarp over Pillbug when it threatened to rain.  Pillbug is Larry Lem's old back-to-back tandem Goliath converted to a quadricycle with the wheels in diamond formation and being piloted by teenage sisters GG and Bella Morris.  There will be pictures tomorrow, hopefully.

Final item on today's agenda the introductory meeting which actually went through in only just over an hour in spite of the high proportion of n00bs this year.  Although we have an acute shortage of volunteers this year with the Ligtvoets having a proper holiday, Mikey absenting himself for health reasons and Evil Frank Lem doing Bad Deeds elsewhere.  Fortunately Calvin Moes has stepped up to the role of Chief Starter as there was the dire possibility that I might have had to do it - I'd even received comprehensive instructions from Arnold Ligtvoet both via e-mail and in person at the Worlds last month.  With competitor numbers being somewhat down on last year we do at least get an unexpected extra half hour in bed in the morning, so it's not all doom and gloom.

Half of Thee Mobb

Competitor numbers should be well up next year, assuming people can be found to take over from the retiring Al'n'Alice, because in addition to the Usual Suspects and the four or five BRITISH teams who have expressed an interest we got some surprise news this afternoon:

Bonjour everybody,

On the award cermony of the whpsc 2023, I said IUT Annecy will stop doing the Altaïr bicycle project, in order to start a human powered seaplane project.

Soon after, a little voice sounded in my mind and said : …17 years of world record quest…Altaïr 7 never falls and is ready to go…just inflate the tires…François would like to continue…never been so close of this f****** record…calculations say we could break it with excellent wheater conditions…

Sometimes in life we decide to stop something, and our mind says we have to continue.

Maybe it is because this thing is very important in our life.

And we just have one.

So we will be back in 2025 !

We wish all the best to all whpsc 2024 crew and teams.

Guillaume

IUT Annecy Altaïr Team Manager

To which one can only say "w00t!"

1. This statement may contain traces of Lie.