Day 19: Battle Mountain NV

Some sterling work by Larry means that our distance marker signs are now metric and count down on the full course from 8 to 2 km, followed by 1000 and 500 m as before.  This is mightily confusing for old-skool members of Officialdom.  Even ones from metric Canada😈

With only two machines have passed tech inspection yesterday the first road closure was pushed back an hour, to hours 08:00 of the clock, but early rising still advisable before the breakfast area gets rammed with Canadian PSO^[1]s.  Nice Man Bill Thornton let me drive his Tesla Model S Plaid out to the start.  Waited until we'd got round the corner and out of the view of the lurking deputy sheriff on the road out of town.# before pressing the loud pedal.  There's fast, and then there's this.

Bill's spaceship

There ensued some hanging-around practice and coffee drinking before the first road closure.  We have a fancy viewing platform down at catch this year:

Built by Nik Runner & Battle Mountain Mike, with pegs

MC Hans

Nice Man Bill let me drive for the first sweep run, since he's only been here as a competitor before.  Took it up to ~100 mph until we'd passed timing, then nailed it.  Hit the limiter at 204 mph.  Eeep!  Bill has a plug-in module in the post which, when fitted, will add another 100-odd horespowers.  Double Eeep!

Only one machine in the first heat, viz. Calvin Moes & Ethan Elbaz in Titan.  Loading the beast is a lengthy process and more practice is required for when the heats get a little more crowded, but they got away OK with Larry performing launch duties and ran 46.43 mph, hindered a little by a loose crank for stoker Ethan.

Bill drove the spaceship for the second sweep run. 204 mph again.  Alas I hadn't figured out which button to press to get my shiny new camera to do these new-fangled Moving Pictures rather than stills.  First away was Adam in Dark Star, with Niklas performing launch duties:

43.49 mph.  Calvin was back for another go, this time with Ellen in the back, but the brute fell over at launch and they decided not to try again.

Calvin still strapped into a burning bike

This perforce concluded the morning's activities out on the 305, so back to town, this time with Adam driving the Tesla.  He was very restrained and spent most of the trip with the thing on autopilot.

All remaining machines are expected to pass inspection this afternoon, but with tonight having:

• only two bike/crew combinations qualified, and
• a red alert for high winds

we're skipping tonight's runs on the long course and will instead have a full programme of runs tomorrow morning.  Starting at the usual time i.e. 07:00 hours würg kotz.

1. PSO = Penniless Student Oaf, as any fule kno