Day 6: Battle Mountain NV

A crazy mixed-up morning with highlights including Will Bill having to dash back to town to fetch his bike computer, Tempest shedding its left crank mid-course and another numpty running the road closure, albeit from stupidity rather than malice.

In the first short course heat the winds were favourable and David got a good one in with 40.61 and Lizanne a solid 46.31.  Pillbug had some technical issues with stuff like power readouts but the Morris twins still did 39.19 with legal wind.  There having not previously been a record in the Junior (12-14) Multirider Multitrack class this is perforce a World Record.  Yay!  Diego rounded of proceedings with a 40.46.

Calvin launching David

Two competitors in the second heat: Professor Sir Admiral Viscount Timelord Jun Nogami in Peter's DF ran 45.54 and Kai Zabitsky in Tempest with 43.82, but the wind had picked up to non-legal levels by then chiz.

May contain traces of Jun...

A pause to move people up to the five mile start before Diego ran again, this time with a non-legal 43.31.  By heat two the wind had dropped again and both Peter and David were well over 50 mph.  David's 53.82 earned the first Hat of the year while Peter's 54.24 is an unofficial record for riders aged 70+.  As noted above, Tempest started an unscheduled disassembly on the way down the route.  The team almost caught the bike but while it was being held from the left, it toppled gracefully over onto its right side while at a standstill, so no damage done.  Christopher eventually crawled out and hopped away with pedal and crank still firmly attached to his foot.  In the third heat Bill - now reunited with his computer - did 56.43 and the irrepressible Diego a rather slow 31.05 for no reason that I have been able to ascertain.

Thence back to town for a free lunch before the jammy-fingered germ sneezers of the third grade came over to poke the assembled machinery and - occasionally - people.  I made my excuses and left...

Larry Lem tinkering with the internals of his latest record-breaker

The wretched wind returned with a vengeance for the evening sessions and brought with it a small but determined bush which did its level best to pull the front bumper off Lynn's Camaro as he was backing it up prior to sweeping the course.  So we had to use the Kia instead.  And then no-one ran in heat one, so I drove all the way back to catch, turned round and came back.  Only Christopher ran it heat two, but pulled up with yet another mechanical after less than a mile, so I drove all the way back to catch, turned round and came back.  I now know that with a long enough stretch of clear road the Kia tops out at 135 mph.  For heat 3 the wind had dropped considerably, though not enough for any actually wind-legal runs.  Peter did 51.52 and Diego 48.11.  And Lizanne made a massive improvement to 56.48 mph which would have been a Women's Multitrack World Record had the wind been nice.

Lizanne's legal launch

Meanwhile, BRITAIN'S Yasmin Tredell¹ is busy sticking pins into a small wax model of MQ2².  Here endeth the Tuesday.  Tomorrow's weather forecast is officially Teh Suxx0r but it's been wrong before...

1. 56.42 mph in ARION5 in 2019
2. This statement may contain traces of Lie