Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary: Day 17: Battle Mountain NV

First item on the agenda: do some washing. I have been religiously saving my quarters all trip, that I might feed the washing machine and the drier. Now I can go out in public with a clean T-shaped shirt. Yay! Go me!

Item 2: Coffee. Oh look, here is Joyce Lem eating breakfast and relating a tale of software-related woe involving her wee anbaric Chevy, which required a tow to the dealer in Boise ID to be reset after it suddenly refused to play nicely with one of Space Karen's charging stations.

Item 3: Contact National to sort out the business with the POB wanting its ~~tummy tickling~~ oil attending to. The instructions on the phone in my room are clear and straightforward. Press 8-1 and then the 800 number. Pressing "8" causes a nasty noise. More than once. I go to make enquiries at the front desk. "Did you press 9 first?" Why, no! No, I did not, because it clearly states "8" on the phone in large friendly letters. Try with 9-1-800 and shortly thereafter have made arrangements to take the POB to Elko airport, there to swap it for, well, something else. They are expecting me between 1 and 2 pm, thus allowing me to hang around the Civic Center with Joyce, arranging T-shaped shirts into neat piles and tracking down errant boxes full of Useful Stuffs.

Seiran, formerly ridden by Teagan Patterson and reworked over the past year by Larry Lem for donation to the High School, if the can find a rider small enough to fit in it...

Dark Star, Adam Hari's new bike none the worse for having
had an unscheduled two-day stopover in Fiji on the way to LAX

Then away to Elko, after first restoring the POB to factory settings in case it dobs me in to Homeland Security or sells my data to Peter Thiel. Elko airport is not a major transportation hub and thus the choice of replacement vehicle is somewhat limited. I can have a Jeep Wagoneer, an SUV only slightly smaller than Basingstoke. Or a Honda Odyssey, which is a 7-seat van with windows. Or a Honda Civic, which is at least an actual car, has the word "Sport" written on the back and a set of fairly spiffy alloys.

A whole new licence plate to try to remember...

Back to Battle Mountain to spend some of my Copious Free Time delving into the depths of the new motor-car's setup menus and trying to get it to talk to something - ANYTHING - with tunes on. It wouldn't initiate a conversation with my phone via Android Auto unless the phone was plugged into the car's USB port with the cable that was on the desk seventy miles away, so no music on the way back chiz. I got it to talk to the phone, then tried the USB stick. "Unsupported!", it said. Reformat said USB stick in FAT32 instead of NTFS, start copying files back again and twiddle my thumbs until it finishes. Out to the car park, plug in, prod buttons... Yay! Sonic Youth! No more fannying around with Android fucking Auto!

It also has fair bit more space in the back than the POB did, but Bill Thornton is not racing this year due to injury and has instead brought his Tesla Model S which:

is even more spacious and
has all the bells and whistles that allow it to hit 60 only slightly slower than an F1 car and go on to 203 mph

So I expect that will be doing the lion's share of sweep duties this year.

The Nice People of Lander County have laid on dinner for all us early arrivals. Burgers, salads, top-quality chorizo and about seven different type of CAEK. This is why I am struggling to keep my eyes open rather than lying on my bed digesting my own body weight in sossidges.