Day 20: Battle Mountain NV

Monday morning was teh Suxx0r.  Cold.  I put a jumper on.  And only two bikes made it as far as timing and only one of those got all the way to catch, wot is where I was all day today, with Bill being more than happy to cane the spaceship on his own.  Take a bow, Ethan^[1] Todd of Toronto, sole finisher in Typhoon with a wind-legal 38.87 mph.  Erin Price in Eta Prime was the other finisher; she did 41.15 mph, also with legal wind but drifted off the road while slowing down after the bridge and went down in the vegetation.  She also said her main camera system went down during the run.  Sub-optimal.  The bike wasn't too badly hurt, albeit that it'll need some fettling before the evening runs, and Erin was OK.

Perfect landing by Ethan. Note rufty-tufty Canadians in Arctic survival gear.
"The wrong sort of cold", apparently.

Cal Poly and Team Hermus (Sherbrooke) both had launch issues while Typhoon later developed chain-retentionitis when Justin^[2] Tangpongprush was a mile or so from timing.  Not really a classic morning, that.

But we all cheered up when we got back to the Civic Center, for Lo! There was Swag:

Swag!

Stickers, postcards, a water bottle, a multi-talented USB cable thing, coffee table book, pen, festival-stylee wristband^[3] and more.  Thanks to the Lander County Convention & Tourism Authority, the Battle Mountain Chamber of Commerce and the Civic Center, who have really pushed the boat out to look after the teams and volunteers this year.

Late breakfast/early lunch with Admiral Sir Duke Timelord Jun Nogami and his indispensable timing assistant Danny Guthrie, followed by some advanced loafing back at the Super 8.  Enlivened by the passage of a pair of ridiculously oversized loads on the I-80 entry slip road.  A brace of gigantic cylinders which we think have something to do with processing the output of lithium mining, on ten-steerable-axle lowboy trailers and with a heavy-duty Kenworth truck at each end.  Larry and/or John Jackson have has pictures which I will try to blag off them later, coz at the time of writing they've bogged off to the Ming Dynasty restaurant he sent me via FB messenger thos afternoon and which I've only just seen.

In previous years we haven't had qualifying heats in the evening session but with the dearth of qualified bike/rider combinations so far it seemed the sensible thing to do; two of them followed by a single heat on the long course.  Both WooHoo Two and Beluga scratched.  Typhoon had more chain issues.  Did Eta Prime even try to launch?  Communications were a bit flaky too, thus we only learned that Titan, with Ellen in the stoker's chair, had launched when the headlights of the chase vehicle became clearly visible.  A quick shufti through Nik's binoculars... wait, WHAT?  They're almost at timing!

It seems that SOP for Titan is to come in fast and brake hard and the inexperienced and short-handed catch crew weren't quite able to arrest the vehicle's progress before it toppled over onto its right side.  Extracting two riders from a supine tandem isn't easy but both wriggled out just in time before the road reopened.  Kudos to Team Hermus for lending a couple of bodies to HPT North to crew their chase truck.  A longer break to shift officials out to the long course, during which I discovered, while ferrying Joyce and the two borrowed Sherbrooke PSOs up to the start, that for all its "Sport" badging and paddle shifters, the Honda maxes out at a feeble 125 mph so it's only getting used for sweep if Bill's spaceship runs out of voles.  Bad Swears on the way back when the thing announced low tyre pressure on the right rear.  Checked it with Bill's track pump.  OK.  Reset the monitoring system and so far the warning hasn't come back.

E'en as Bill was whooshing up the closed road, this:

Knob'ead, Nevada, Monday

To be fair to the driver, they did stop fairly sharpish and back up.  Probably on the phone or under the influence of ["Begins with 'M'" - The Invigilator].  Anyway, the honour of being the first rider on the long course fell to Adam.  51.84 mph and a nice easy catch.

He was followed by Calvin and Ethan Elbaz in Titan. 52.28 mph and this time we managed to keep the bike upright at the finish.  Neither had a legal wind chiz.

Shortly before your intrepid reporter jumped smartly out of the way...

So we do at least have one more qualified bike/rider combo in Calvin and Ellen.  Hopefully things will be a bit less crap tomorrow.

I'd forgotten how uncomfortable the "office" chairs are here, so I'm going to have a nice sit lie down with a cup of tea.

1. We have two Ethans riding this year
2. We have two Justins riding this year
3. Will not allow me to meet Howard Marks^[4], because he's dead
4. In-joke for Half Man Half Biscuit fans