Day 11: Battle Mountain NV

You know when you make a rubbish joke about having a lie-in and pretending your alarm clock didn't go off?  Yes, exactly like that.  Happily I was just in time to fill the mug with Brown Drink, inhale a Cinnamon Thing and get out to the course before Team Cygnus turned up in their three-tonne lorry to haul me off to the short course start.  Mindful of the fact that in spite of it being fitted with a plethora of huge mirrors AND a reversing camera with an eight-inch screen I had almost backed it into another car while turning round, #1 driver Sjaak Bloemberg carefully pointed it towards the road before letting me behind the wheel to chase Jan-Marcel.

Lorry.  Usania.  Tuesday.

"Hello!" says a disembodied voice from the third row of seats as I bung my bag into the Thing before firing it up.  'tis Joyce, Larry Lem's sister, who is our designated Official in the car.  I though that was me.  Oh well.  J-M did over 57 mph in spite of the chain coming off.  The other chain, for the bike has a primary drive from cranks to high mounted gears and a final drive one to the front wheel on the left.  The latter was the one which went walkies today.  Some trackside fettling of the tensioner ensued.

Jan-Marcel does some fettling.  In braille.

Ellen did 51.92 mph for a women's multi-track world record in Garrie Hill's trike CO2, which is a replica of Completely Overzealous, run here variously by Gareth Hanks and Greg Thomas.  Unlike the machine's other rider Florian Kowalik, Ellen didn't rub her thighs on the front wheel, but rather her knees on the top of the shell.  There are ways around this, some of which do not involve surgery to either vehicle or rider:

Ceci Kowalik decked the Micro-Moby but was righted and got down the course sans windscreen.  And the prize for the most ill-considered helmet design goes to:

BRAAANES!

Not wise considering the number of zombies around here in the morning.

Then out to the five mile start for the first proper runs of the week.  Dave in ARION1 lost his chain and coasted through at just under 40; this meant that Larry caught him in the timing traps and didn't get a time.  Jun muttered "66" which, if accurate, is most heartening.  I again drove the Cygnus chase lorry and was holding station on the bike with the cruise control set to 75 mph.  76.02 is also heartening as the wind was uncooperative and the rider reckons himself still a bit jet-lagged.  The big news was that Todd Reichert did 81.66 in Eta, albeit with something of a following wind, which helps confirm our suspicions that the bike is a cut above the ordinary.  Liz ran her unfaired handcycle over the five-mile course and was 6 mph quicker than she'd managed in the fully-faired machine.  More testing to follow.

Last night's storm meant a fair amount of muck on the road around the start area, but this can be dealt with if you have a PSO keen to practice his curling technique:

Fig 5: Keep Nevada tidy

Fig 6: Oh!  Poor Chris!

The b0rked bit is being retained for use as a Pointed Stick for certain riders to use in "encouraging" their team members to make the machine go better.

The Scousers have acquired a number of supernumerary supporters.  Some of them are travelling in a large camper which, for the benefit of Dr Larrington, has this picture on the door:

Sausages!

WAY less creepy than the two kidnapped girls that Bram and Annette had on theirs last year.

If it's Tuesday it must be the Show'n'Wossname at the Civic Center.  This traditionally make most of me hurt from prolonged standing around so I wolfed down the free lunch, took a few pictures, wolfed down the free lunch and returned to the Super 8 to watch fifty pictures uploading in slomo.  Erika was a bit overwhelmed too:

See me?  I'm overwhelmed, I am!

I left before the Tinies showed up as they do not need my autograph.  Meanwhile, the fettling in the car park continues:

Steve Nash about to hand-graunch the left crank

Teagan made hopeful noises about having the bike ready to qualify tomorrow morning, but got a one-word answer.  With two letters.

It was still windy and only about twenty degrees when we trooped out to the course for the evening runs, and there appeared to be Big Weather on the way including, though not limited to, heavy rain and thunderbolts and lightning very very frightening MEEEEEEE!  It arrived.  We waited a while for it to go away.  It didn't.  Game over for today.  Bah!

I am reluctantly dragged to the Ming Dynasty for dinner by the rest of Team Cygnus.  We were joined by Liz, Barclay Henry, Jonathan Woolrich and Sherri Donaldson.  ["This sentence removed on the advice of our legal team" - Ed.]  And Erika hits me when I try to pay my share of the bill.  Although they didn't know it until tonight the name of the Ming Dynasty has been spread across Europe following this piece of redecoration, courtesy of Messrs Lem & Amick, in 2013:

Picture by J-MvD.  I'll ask permish in the morning.  Honest.

I do not dare look for a weather forecast for tomorrow online and I aten't even turned on the anbaric distascope™ since I've been in Leftpondia.  Tea and an early night beckon. 

Day 10: Battle Mountain NV

Oh noes!  Last night I counted the different years’ event posters for sale in the Civic Center.  There are ten.  Why then, have I only got eight, plus a space for one more, on the Grand Escalier of Larrington Towers?

Because, clot, you do not have one for 2006.  This means that not only do I have to do one of my least favourite things, viz. working up a ladder to rearrange them, and find more wall space, but also that I have to go to fucking IKEA to buy another frame.  Arseburgers.

Today is Monday, and Monday means qualifying runs over the short course, starting 2.5 miles out.  It’s way warmer than usual – 23 degrees as opposed to about 8 – but briskly windy.   Things go mostly according to plan and even get finished on time, which is something of a first for the initial skirmishes.  Among the casualties of war were Genevieve Kowalik in the Micro-Moby, on which the steering was pulling to one side and whose rider ignored the admonitions of her father to steer in the other direction, and the new Amsterdam/Delft bike Velox V, with two launch fails for Lieske Yntema and one underway-but-then-fell-over incident for Robert Braam – a late substitute for last year’s fastest rider, the injured Rik Houwers.

Whoopsie...

Liz McTernan had to abort her run in the Beluga (confused?) handcycle from Plymouth University as the team had left the parking brake securely, er, secured, with a cable tie, but this mattered less as she had already done a run on Red Lightning, her unfaired Top End handcycle, resulting in a legally-winded 24.72 mph and hence a new World Record for BRITAIN.  Hurrah!

Liz on the start line

Florian Kowalik’s 53.41 mph is Junior Multitrack record, as the event seems to be generating classes faster than anyone save perhaps Mike “Statto” Mowett can comprehend.

Florian tuning the radio to Radio 4 Long Wave

His progress, however, was not at all improved by the trike's owner, Mr G Hill of Ohio, yelling encouragement into altogether the wrong radio handset.

BRITONS will be pleased to know that both Ken Buckley and Dave Collins ran successfully in ARION1, the Liverpool Uni machine, though Natasha Morrison won’t be riding it after all as she can’t balance it enough to get it moving.  Bluenose, the more potent of the two University of Toronto machines, also pulled out after the chainguard fell to bits.

Ben the sk8ter d00d launching Ken Buckley in ARION1

Former Bluenose pilot and all-round Intrepid Birdman^tm Todd Reichert was fastest of all at 72 mph in the revamped Eta; honourable mention to Larry Lem for his 61.97 mph, albeit with a massive tailwind.  Jan-Marcel van Dijken had his traditional visitation from the Chain Gremlin, but this time couldn't get it back on while still riding so coasted through the traps.  I got to drive Team Cygnus’ monstrous Ford Explosion SUV.  Which was, er, big.  Jun Nogami has the full results on his blog, because he is excellent.

Meeting, late breakfast/early lunch, Intertubing ect. ect. while Mark Anderson and Steve Nash work flat out putting Teagan’s bike together.  Mark in particular is not happy unless he’s got something to take apart and put together again.  Nobody, as far as I know, has yet said “You hear that, Mr. Anderson?  That is the sound of inevitability”, because he has a selection of sturdy and/or sharp tools within easy reach.

Assorted fettlers, gongoozlers, oiks, loafers ect. ect. gather under my window

 By setting-off time this afternoon it was windy but ever the optimists we went out to the course anyway.  The weather can be completely different out there to how it is in town.  Brief but torrential showers on the way out and the wind picking up by the minute.  Robert and Linda Barnett arrived at catch to report similar conditions all the way from Las Vegas.  Up at the start, where a full-blown sandstorm was raging, the riders were asked whether anyone wanted to run.

No-one did, so we all trooped back to town again.  Because of the reprehensible behaviours of some of the Penniless Student Oaves last year the Civic Center is off-limits as a workshop, but the Chamber of Commerce folks kindly had erected a large marquee next door to the building.  It is now a heap of canvas on the floor, and if this keeps up will be across the Oregon state line by morning.

Edit: tent has been Disciplined by Mr Krause and a big hammer.  And Paula at the Civic Center is starting to feel sorry for the PSOs and is letting them into the building after hours again, as the marquee was infested with goathead thorns.

Forecast not good.  Organisators to make a decision at stupid o’clock tomorrow.  Note to self: arrange alarm clock malfunction.  I may not have to as if the huge Super 8 on its four-storey high pole elects to fall over it will land squarely on my bed chiz.

Edit again: wind has dropped but it's still raining.

Day 9: Battle Mountain NV

Good gentlemen, and ladies, of England now abed, or having just got up at any rate: it is just after 23:00 here and I have just got back in from dinner on account of the first meeting for world+dog always dragging on somewhat. And I have to be up at audax o'clock tomorrow. So you will have to content yourselves with looking at the pictures for now.

Hank the English Mastiff contemplates his dinner

Although the only thing that travels faster than light is bad news, in this case the fact that Mark Anderson's trailer was relieved of a large number of bits of the bike Teagan Patterson was going to ride, the good news is that the Salt Lake City police have recovered the stolen bits, which will be united with the not-stolen bits once the small matter of the six hundred mile round trip to fetch them has been taken care of. Further newses of Sunday here after tomorrow morning's business.

Actually, there probably isn't a while lot more to report.  I spent the afternoon pretending to help George Leone with the scrutineering, which all went according to plan save for the odd bolt here and uncapped bar-end there.  Wine corks are recommended for the latter, as it was the Italians.  The Leones - George and Carole - are also the inconsiderate arrogant bastards start officials this year as Usual Suspect Chris Broome was unable to come.  Or was he?

Jan-Marcel van Dijken, who is a Very Bad Man, has taken to calling the above "Chris"

The general briefing meeting followed in the evening; as usual this dragged on for a while as there's reams of paperwork to be completed, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.  We didn't sit down to dinner until ten pm and that only because the Chinese restaurant loves us and wants to be friends with us.  And our money.  They have a drinkohol licence this year too, so people don't have to sneak BEER in under the table.

Hiding place for Bluenose's cameras and maple syrup

So the Beagle, the latest machine to emerge from the Sheds of the prolific Larry Lem is built and Larry wonders what finish to apply to make it Shiny.  Tom Amick helpfully writes a couple of paragraphs detailing the eighty hours of work that Larry will be required to do in the three days prior to leaving for the event.  Larry utters a Several of Rude Words and paints it white.

The Beagle has landed, and appears to be sniffing, well, never mind.

Day 8: McCall ID - Battle Mountain NV

Even travelling despondently is better than arriving here - Douglas Adams

In spite of what has been written about Battle Mountain, the above is not true.

So another lovely sunny day with another cold start; real Philly Soul weather¹ at one point.  Although it's been California that's had most of the publicity about wildfires, Idaho seems to have had its share too; at one point I passed a "Fire Camp" which looked rather like a small-scale festival except for the fire engines.

That was in the forested bit, though, which eventually disappeared in favour of the same old grassland and scrub familiar from yesterday.  I stopped for "gas" in Payette (which, incidentally, smells of mint humbugs); at the next pump a woman is filling her motor-car while her offspring are Playing the Goat in the back seat.

"Want some kids?" she asked.

I declined, saying there wasn't enough room in the car.

Once I'd talked Emily out of going straight to Boise rather than taking US-95 she concurred that the best route was via Mountain Home and Elko.  It hit 34 degrees.  When it is that warm, and you are about six thousand feet above sea level, you do not want to be opening a bottle of Fizzy Pop while driving at 70 mph.  Oh.

Rocked up to the Super 8 at about 3 pm; Todd Reichert and Victor Ragusila were the first people I met, polishing bits of a revamped Eta in the porch.  The team from Turin Polytechnic are here too, as are the Mid-West mob, and over the course of the afternoon many of the Usual Suspects roll in: Team Cygnus, Larry Lem² & Tom Amick, Brad Teubner & Rocky and doubtless some others I've forgotten.  Al'n'Alice Krause have been here since Thursday night so all the hard fetching and carrying has been done and the "borrowing" of a few cones on the way back from dinner was just a coincidence.  Delft and The Scousers (aka The Liverpooligans) are at the Big Chief across town.

PulsaR: Turin Polytechnic's machine.  Enough aLready w1th the ranDom capitaL leTters.

Team Aerovelo & Eta have already monopolised the Super 8 conference room

Not much has happened since arriving as due to last night's notwork bobbins I have been stuck at the keyboard most of the afternoon.  I have a few photos up on Flickr but there will be more opportunity tomorrow coz everyone has to have their machines passed fit for human consumption.

Speling fale

This was in the "Welcome to the Super 8" folder in my room.  If you live in a town whose name contains the word "Mountain" I don't think you have any excuse for getting it wrong; with your Junior Pocket Microscope (Model 3a) you will notice that the word is spelt wrongly twice.  Durrr....

1. Three Degrees.
2. And, perhaps more importantly, Larry's truck, which has just come out of hospital after an altercation with a palm tree.

Day 7: Cranbrook BC - McCall ID

Edit:  There are now photos available from Day 7 but I had to wait until arriving in Battle Mountain to upload them, because The Mgt here know that if they do not provide an adequate service for an establishment full of bloggers, photographers, techies, nerds, spods, ect. ect. they will be killed utterly to DETH.  Though why the Flickr upload last night kept crapping out only for me to discover all the photos had actually uploaded after all is a total wossname.

Something of a contrast in the climate between most of the last Several of days and today.  For starters there was wall-to-wall sunshine.  All.  Day.  Admittedly it was down to four degrees in the shady bits of the Moyie valley this morning, but on the other hand it was thirty-seven in the not-shady bits of the Salmon River gorge this afternoon. And the Man with a Gun at the USAnian border was a jolly fellow too, especially considering the date.  He fell about laughing when I said I'd been to Hyder.  "That's not Alaska" he said between guffaws.  "They even use Canadian money!"  I allowed as how it would do until an opportunity to visit Alaska Proper came along and he wished me a good day.  Hurrah!

Unsurprisingly the northern end of the Idaho Panhandle is almost indistinguishable from the southern end of British Columbia, which is hardly surprising given that from Vancouver to the Great Lakes the border is just an arbitrary line on the map.  Which give rise to sillinesses like Point Roberts.  Unfortunately Flickr is being arsey at the moment and I aten't been able to upload any photos yet.

Fig 3: Canada

Fig 4: USAnia

South of Coeur d'Alene the forests more or less disappear, replaced with grassland for the most part.  All the brown looks alien after a week of nowt but trees (and rain).  When you reach the edge of the valley in which Lewiston¹ nestles the view would be quite spectacular if Flickr were not still being arsey and causing the photos to remain firmly on my lapdancer rather than floating around the stratocumulus.  I do not think the network here is much cop.  I took the old road down into Lewiston as Ford have finally listened and fitted paddle shifters to the steering wheel.  Merry tunes are played; I think Sport mode Does Things to the exhaust to make it louder too.

Looking down at Lewiston

US-95 continues its merry way south to Grangeville, where it drops off the edge of the world, or at least the edge of the White Bird Summit.  I came down here in 2009, and back up in 2010 (though on the latter occasion it was so foggy I could barely see the end of the "hood", never mind the scenery).  The old road (White Bird Grade) had about forty hairpins and bits of it are still visible; the new one, dating from 1975, is known as Seven Mile Hill and would be a blast on a bicycle.  I'd show you some pictures if Flickr wasn't being arsey ect. ect.

View from White Bird Summit.  Seven Mile Hill at R; bits of old White Bird Grade visible lower down the slope

In the Salmon River gorge the forests take over again and US-95 turns sharp left to bring the weary traveller to McCall.  And he is pretty weary because although he gained an hour from crossing back into the Pacific Time Zone, he promptly lost it again as the edge of the Pacific/Mountain divide goes smack across the middle of this bit of Idaho.  A few years ago I stayed in Ontario ID, where the boundary goes through the town, with the hotel in one zone and dinner in the other.

Eight miles to go and there is a dot-matrix sign at the roadside.  "Road work².  Single lane traffic. Delays of 20-30 minutes".  They do not mess around in this country.  Happily I was stopped for but a couple of minutes before creeping through the 8/10 of a mile of cones and back onto a Proper Road.  And I need to go that way tomorrow morning no matter whether I go down towards Boise and pick up I-80 east of Elko or divert into Oregon and approach Battle Mountain from the west.  Arse.

McCall is titchy and on the edge of the picturesque Payette Lake, but for once I cannot blame Flickr being arsey for the lack of photos of this, but rather the lateness of the hour and the hungriness of Mr Larrington.  I shall point the camera at the lake tomorrow.

Payette Lake first thing Saturday morning and yes, it was bloody freezing

And I will try again to bung in some photos.  I snapped nine bridges today, so CrinklyLion will be having withdrawal symptoms.  Especially as Bill Plumtree has temporarily abandoned his snapping of the bridges on the Lancaster Canal to go on holibobs.

Pick of Friday's bridges, between Lewiston and Grangeville

1. Unsurprisingly, there is a Clarkston on the other side of the river, but that's in Oregon Washington where We Will Not Go³.
2. Always singular in USAnia.
3. Not today, anyway.

Day 6: Jasper AB - Cranbrook BC

Here are some more reasons to decry the utter ponciness of Chateau Jasper, the overpriced ponce-hole I stayed in last night¹:

• It has a deeply poncy name.
• The breakfast buffet is fifteen dollars.  Plus tax.  And 15% "gratuity".  Says "sod that for a lark" and walks down the road to Tim Horton's².
• In common with many places, the "in-room tea/coffee making facilities" include but two wossnames of coffee.  One of which was decaf, which is a Work of Stan.
• I had to mend the valve in the toilet cistern.
• The fridge was in the fucking wardrobe!
• The light switches were umop-ap!sdn.  Actually, all Leftpondian light switches are umop-ap!sdn, but it's my Automatic Diary so bolshie great yarblockoes to the lot of you.

On the plus side, the Esso petrol station down the road accepted my plastic without my having to go inside and plead my case to the cashier.  And it wasn't raining when I left.  Not that this state of affairs lasted long.

Athabasca Pass

Note black clouds as a prelude to more rain.  Also it was about 8 degrees.

That's Mount Hardisty, possibly the only mountain in Canada named after a Newcastle bike shop³ (Hardisty Cycles, Home of the Mountain Bike, Top of the Fosse Way, Byker).  And here is a BRITON examining a bush:

So, rivers and mountains, yes, but what of lakes?  I had been advised to visit Lake Louise, but so had 95% of the population of Canada so you had to park in a different country and my leg hurts.  Here instead is the Bow Glacier, with a bit of Bow Lake visible with a Junior Pocket Microscope (Model 3a):

Glacial lakes and rivers are that peculiar greenish colour because glaciers are composed of a mixture of ice and Fairy Liquid⁴.

Not pictured in this shot:

Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes...

is the dickhead coach driver who had pulled out of a nearby lay-by right in front of me and grumbled up the hill at 30 km/h in his stinky old bus.  Harsh words are said about Brewsters, the employers of dickheads, and the dickheads who drive their vehicles.

Eventually the Icefields Parkway heads south-east to Banff and Calgary, but Mr Larrington turns right and goes back into British Columbia (though not into the Pacific Time Zone).  The sun comes out.  It gets warm.  The roof comes down and stays thus all the way here.  Hurrah and, moreover, huzzah!

Tomorrow I shall head back into USAnia but Canada is triff so I shall probably return.  In about ten days time.  Because I have a surfeit of Canadian dollars in my wallet.  Oh noes!  Alas I shall have to miss the Lolo Pass and its accompanying funs:

Foot of Lolo Pass in 2010

as it is too far east, but I'll be able to take in Seven Mile Hill again, which should have Emily cowering in the footwell.

1. The next cheapest place was in Hinton, which is an hour's drive away in the wrong direction.
2. Godspeed You! Black Emperor drummer Aidan Girt, wearing his other hat as 1-Speed Bike, recorded a track entitled "Tim Horton’s As A Gateway Drug To The Canadian Army".  I don't think they'd have me, and not just because I'm not Canadian.
3. Lie.
4. Lie.

Day 5: Granisle BC - Jasper AB

I had hoped to avoid all that tedious mucking around with time zones this year, but I have failed because I am in Alberta.  Alberta is in the Mountain Time chiz so in addition to all the catching up I have had to do after yesterday's tubes-free overnight I have lost an hour at the end of an already long day.

There is not much excitement to report from today at all.  It was 700 km, and thus about one junction per 100.  Of them.  Most of which were in Prince George, for the first half of the route here was a retrace to that august town before pushing east towards the Proper Mountains i.e. the Rockies.  Highway 16 takes fright when it sees them, though, and plunges south-east for quite a long way before biting the bullet and diving headlong up the Fraser River valley into them thar hills.  Natch it rained all day, so I could barely see the mountains, but some of them are big enough and close enough to the road that they are hard to miss.

It's raining

That's supposedly Mount Robson in the middle, which is about four thousand metres big.  Sadly neither of the flanking peaks is Mount Jerome.

So, Jasper.  As the name suggests, Jasper is pretty poncy.  It probably has a twin town called Poppy¹.  In Surrey.  It is smack in the middle of a National Park, so you have to pay to get in, and being a tourist trap charges through the nose for everything.  This room is costing about two and a half times last night's, and the view out of the window is of a flat roof and some air-conditioning equipment.  Also it is full of BRITONS, loudly demanding fish and chips, Watneys Red Barrel and the Daily Mail².  Also I went out to buy milk earlier and I could see the mountains, which can only mean one thing:

It is, however, a good deal warmer than of late.

Now, Anbarickal Devices have been conspiring to annoy lately.  After yesterday's notwork nonsense we have, in no particular order:

• The reversing camera on the motor-car.  It was fine this morning but after a long day of overtaking logging trucks in the rain it appears to have developed a cataract.  If this is FoMoCo's idea of "self-cleaning" it is this: crap.  Also it has the usual complement of mirrors anyway, so why?  You could have retained the Emily-tray on top of the dashboard, and the cover over the cup-holders, and had the little cable cut-out in the armrest cubby coming out of the front like it used to instead of in the space already reserved for a passenger's elbow instead of spending all that development cash on something useless.
• And you don't need to keep telling me you can't talk to my phone.  Once will do.
• And if you copy files from a Babbage-Engine onto a USB memory wossname and plug the latter in the motor-car's USB port it complains "Device not supported".  How hard can it be?  So I still have not listened to "The Lore of the Land" because I'd prefer to do so through better squeakers than the tinny ones on the laptop.  But this will require either the purchase of blank CDs or the installation of iTunes which will take half the bloody night.
• Leftpondian mains anbarism is so feeble that it takes about a week to boil my ickle travel kettle.  Considering Thomas Edison is widely, if inaccurately, credited with inventing mains anbarism you lot are remarkably rubbish at using it.  Although Edison did maintain that AC current would kill you utterly to DETH if you spilled its pint or looked at its girlfriend, hence the toning down of the stuff until it is barely fit for purpose.  You should have listened to Nikola Tesla, then you'd be able to boil a kettle wirelessly and the countryside would be littered with masts with GBFO sparks coming out of them.

Bah!

PS: Can anyone identify this:

Edit: One Austin M Bassador³ over on sniffpetrol.com says it's a Lloyd LS600, built in Bremen between 1955 and 1960.  How it came to be impersonating a tank in a far-flung corner of BC remains a mystery.

1. "Poppy, of course, is the Demon of Very Bad Things, and you shouldn't upset her" - ian on yacf
2. Lie.  The bit of the sentence after the comma, anyway.
3. Not, in all likelihood, his real name

Day 4: Terrace BC – Granisle BC

Yes, I know this instalment is late.  This is because the Granisle Resort’s network connection is flakier than a crumbly flaky chocolate bar wrapped up in a stale croissant, playing that Small Faces album.  I could not even warn serial fussbudget Miss von Brandenburg by e-mail.  Nor by text, because my steam-powered Nokia can’t get a signal west of Prince George.  Soz.

Praise Jah!  It was not raining this morning, no, but this being British Columbia and not that far from the coast, this state of affairs cannot be guaranteed to remain stable.

Anyway, today is a Big Day, because we are going to visit another country viz. USAnia.  There are many ways to get to USAnia from Terrace, of which the simplest is to hop in one’s private jet and fly south, but I let the under-gardener use the Citation while I’m away so had to opt for Plan B N X, which involves driving to Alaska.  Most of Alaska is both Very Big¹ and Very Far Away but there are bits of it which are not so far away.  The downside being that these are mostly not accessible by road.  But Hyder AK is, so we will go there.

Emily, natch, wants me to retrace along Highway 16 and then head north, and squeals like an electronic supergrass when I head in the opposite direction and off up BC-113 a.k.a. the Nisga’a Highway, named for the local First Nation.  This passes lots of mountains and rivers and lakes but they are mostly invisible because:

• It is raining, or
• There is an abundance of mist, or fog, or the exhalations of the earth, or
• There is a tree in the way, or
• All of the above

Remember, if you can see the mountains...

There are also the Nisga’a Lava Beds, which do not look very comfortable.

After the lava beds the Highway becomes noticeably less, er, high.  Let us just say that BC muck is a pale imitation of Colorado muck when it comes to adhering to the flanks of a motor-car, which is why we do not (yet) have a Mudstang II.  Also see Fig. 1, as for most of the way up Highway 37 I couldn’t see the mountains so it probably got washed off.

Highway 37 turns right at Meziadin Junction and bogs off to the Yukon and, eventually, Alaska Proper.  Turn left and you get Highway 37A, which goes to Stewart BC and Alaska Minor.  There are BEARs here, and I know because I saw one cantering across the road.  At Stewart you also meet the Pacific Ocean, which I aten’t seen since 2010 because I couldn’t see out of the plane window on the approach to Sea-Tac.  Here is a The Pacific Ocean:

Drive past the ship and go round the corner and there is a sign saying “Welcome to Hyder AK”.  You can actually go quite a long way into Alaska and see glaciers, and BEARs, but the roads are terrible and I have a long way to drive yet.  So here is a Post Office.  In Alaska².

Woo-hoo!  State #49!

Back into Canada and a Man with a Gun interrogates travellers in case they are smuggling whiskey, tobacco, guns, explosives or BEARs across the border.  I am not.  Back through Stewart and Meziadin Junction.  I stopped to look at some scenery:

Glacier.  Canada.  Tuesday.

Now, over on yacf there is a long-running topic called “Today’s Motorised Moron”.  I scored three today:

In third place, the muppet who stopped in the middle of the road to take a photo of the Hyder border crossing.  It will still be there if you nip round the corner, park somewhere safe and walk back, clot.

In second place, the numbskull who stopped just past the crest of a hill to look at… a glacier.  Very slow things are described as “glacial” for a reason.  If you go two hundred yards down the hill there is plenty of space to pull off the road and the glacier will not have moved a distance discernible by the naked eye.

But the winner is the dunderhead with the caravan.  The southernmost forty-odd km of Highway 37 have been recently given a coat of fresh chip-seal or, put another way, small rocks.  DwC has been following a motorhome over the new chip-seal for exactly quite a long way, but has not tried to overtake.  Instead he sits right on the motorhome’s rear bumper, but with his rig straddling the centre of the two-lane road so as not to be in the firing line.  And as I start to overtake both, he starts to drift further left.  I do not think he is trying to overtake at long last because his shitty pickup would need the entire Province to pick up the required extra speed.

The horn going off under his elbow appeared to wake him up.

So now I am at Granisle.  Well, I was.  To get here you turn off Highway 16 at Topley and drive 50 km into the wilderness, where you meet Babine Lake, which is 180 km long and very wet.  Here I have what is essentially a one bedroom flat, with full kitchen, bathroom, lounge ect. ect. and a view out of the French windows which makes the lack of a working Intertube connection a mere trifle.

For fifty quid.  Read it and weep…

P.S: Just been out for a fag.  It’s raining.  Bum-grapes!
P.P.S: Day 5 to follow after I have bought some milk.

1. And Texas can get stuffed…
2. Hyder is actually slightly less far north than Edinburgh.

Day 3: Prince George BC - Terrace BC

Poo ur gosh it did not rain overnight this time, no, it was just thirteen degrees all day.  And it rained.  I did see some lunatic in a Dodge Viper with the top down but he was bundled up like someone walking to the East North Pole and was in any case from Québec, where they are all mad.  Plus it rained all afternoon instead.  It's because it's a Bank Holibob.  I had hoped that by sneaking into Canada I might avoid Labor Day but they have it here too, just spelled differently.  But can Safeway Canada's webby SCIENCE tell me the opening hours of the Terrace branch?  Why, no!  No, it cannot!  And ICBA to walk down the street to check, because it's raining.  Again.  No tea on the Terrace for me then, ha ha.

Here is today's drive inna-Audax-route-sheet-stylee:

• R from control
• 1st L @ T
• In 1.2 km, R @ TL
• In 571 km, R @ TL
• In 2 km, R to control

Didn't overtax Emily, anyway.  I did once get "In 863 miles exit right" from her, somewhere in Nebraska, but that was cheating.

So today was much like yesterday with a massive quantity of trees, quite a lot of lakes and the odd river:

River.  Canada.  Monday.

And BEARs:

Bear with me a second...

No woods¹ around here...

And the world's largest fly-fishing rod.  No, come back!

Paging JR Hartley!  JR Hartley to the yellow courtesy phone...

And (possibly) the World's Ponciest Tap:

Woo!  Poncery!

You push the lever at the top towards the mirror and the water flows down an open channel at its base.  It could only be more poncy if it was in Prince Rupert instead of Terrace, but Prince Rupert (the great ponce) is ninety minutes drive / thataway.

New phrase or saying heard today: Whup-ass with fifty shades of hillbilly - term used by Nice Lady in hotel parking lot to describe treatment meted out to drunk/stoned 17 year old daughter i.e. throwing her out of the house clad only in a bath towel.

And finally, now would also be a good time to plug The Lore of the Land which is Dead Good² and has Dr Larrington.  In it.

1. Lie.  But they do look as though they're, well, never mind...
2. Caveat: I downloaded it while having breakfast this morning but aten't listened to it yet.  But it is Dead Good.

Day 2: Chilliwack BC - Prince George BC

Poo ur gosh it rained overnight chiz and the heating - yes, heating - in my room woke me up at audax o'clock.  This part of the world appears to enjoy, if that's the right word, summer weather similar to BRITAIN i.e. partly cloudy with a chance of rain, but my Sinister Agents tell me that the long-term forecast for Battle Mountain is rather better.

So.  Breakfast.  Included pancakes.  I managed not to drown them in maple syrup by hiding them behind the menu.  As purveyors of greasy fry-ups go, though, IHOP has a lot to learn.  Insufficiently greasy for starters, also no FOREIGNS have yet grasped the idea of BACON as BRITONS know it.  I saw a sign today advertising BRITISH-stylee fish'n'chips but did not investigate further for fear of massive disappointment, and also doing 68 mph 110 km/h on the other side of the road.

For yes, I have made the motor-car's cruise control grok metric!  However this also turns the fuel consumption into litres per 100 km, which I don't understand at all.  It's bad enough with silly USAnian gallons.  I think lower numbers are better.

Now for today's grump about Anbaric Stuffs.  While Emily is now behaving herself, the motor-car's stereo is not.  It has not one but two USB ports, so you can plug in your iPod and control it via the buttons strewn about the place; on the steering wheel, on the front of the radio, under the boot floor¹ ect. ect.  So I can use it to tell our old friend DJ Random to do his Stuffs, si?

No.  No, I can't.  The system is called "SYNC" and was co-developed by Ford and Microsith, and it wants to make an index of all content on my iPod. But this overtaxes its little anbarickal brane, as it cannot count beyond 15,000, which is slightly under 60% of the number of tracks on the iThing.  So I have to pipe tunes out of the headphone socket and into the car's "LINE IN" instead.  Silly hooters.  Here is the motor-car as it appears now:

We'll soon 'ave some proper dirt on that...

I still had the roof up because weather but was shamed into lowering it later after a drophead Nissan 370Z went past in a state of undress.

Today was the thick end of 700 km, and most of it was covered in trees.  British Columbia goes on for about another 1200 before it runs out and there's still an awful lot of Canada between there and the North Pole.  USAnia is titchy in comparison.  The bits that aren't trees are lakes.

Lake.  Canada. Sunday.

To get here you come up the Fraser and Thompson rivers, which were named after Fraser "The Cat" Thompson, goalkeeper for Holbein House FC in the 1982-83 season².

According to an overhead gantry sign thing seen today it is "Motorcycle Season".  Leftpondians are famous for hunting anything which moves but I didn't think they actually went after bikers.  How do you tie a Tractor Harley to the fender of your truck anyway?  How do you cook a Pasadena orthodontist and his Gold Wing?  Do you need a special permit?  And what if you go after a One Percenter and he shoots back?

Enough.  I'm hungry.

1. Lie.
2. Lie.

Days 0 & 1: Larrington Towers - Chilliwack BC

As is the norm these days I took the easy option, viz. dump my motor-car at Fort Larrington and get a taxi to Heathrow.  This avoids having to wrestle The Luggage onto buses and tubes and.  And things.  Which includes the ridiculous sums extorted from people who don't wish to grow old on the Piccadilly Line for the use of the Thiefrow [Express|Connect] service.  Ha!

Last year I was wafted to the airport in a luxuriously-appointed Volvo.  This year I got a VW Sharan, which the cunning engineers of Wolfsburg had contrived to make sound like an air-cooled Beetle, unless there was a hole in the exhaust.  It got me to LHR T5 on time and in budget, which is the best you can hope for.

Now, People Who Run LHR T5 And Its Bountiful Retail Opportunities: how about a map of the shops to show the weary traveller where he may purchase duty-free cigarettes.  Yes, cigarettes are horrid and nasty and DETHy and their consumption leads to heroin addiction, paedophilia and suicide bombing, but not being able to find them causes the same thing only worse.  Much worse.  Exactly much worse.  But they have to be hidden from view in a manner almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the sex shop at Frankfurt airport.  Allegedly.  I found them, though, so poo to the Safety Nazis who would have me smoke foul Leftpondian fags and accrue no benefit to HM Treasury as a result.

They have hidden the Big Metal Bird somewhere on the ærodrome so far away that you actually have to reach it by bus.  No matter.  It takes off.  I fall asleep.  I wake up for lunch.  I fall asleep again.  I wake up for pre-landing snack.  I lose my glasses case (though happily not my glasses).  I do not complain about the foul coffee because, after all, I myself will also be old and weak one day.  Probably tomorrow.  I arrive in Sea-Tac and steel myself for the annual battle with the collection of miserable, but heavily-armed, fuckers who control access to USAnia.

But what is this?  Homeland-Secur-o-bots!  A Thing looking like the unholy offspring of an ATM and a Dalek reads your passport, takes your dabs, snaps your picture and produces a receipt.  You hand the receipt to the very much more cheerful chap at the gate who stamps your passport and welcomes you to USAnia.  This means that you get to spend an extra half an hour waiting for The Luggage.  Oh.

To the Rental Car Center (sic).  The queue here is longer than the one to get into the country.  Finally a Nice Man pokes his Babbage-Engine.  But wait!  He is not a Nice Man at all, no, he is one of Stan's Imps in disguise.  I know this because the first thing he does is offer me an "upgrade" to a Dodge Challenger.  "V8 muscle car" he says.  "Not a convertible, though is it?" I reply.  "No.  No, it is not" he admits, crestfallen.  Then he makes another bid for my Soul.  "Or a Corvette?"  Now you can take the central roof panel off a 'vette, but you shouldn't if you plan on travelling at more than 40 mph.  I made that mistake once and still have earache.  "Begone, foul tempter!" I cry.  "Give me the Mustang and my soul!".  Thwarted by Common Sense, he presses the button and directs me to level two of Heck.

Yes, you read that right.  Mr Larrington passed up the 190 mph ground-based missile...

The motor-car awaiting me looks pretty much the same as that one up there ^^^^ except that it's silver.  And lacks the little hollow on top of the dash in which to place Emily the TwatNav's base, that she might stay put when going round corners.  But it does have a button to start the engine instead of a boring old key, so that's alright then.

Praise be, Emily makes contact with with NASA.  "Where to, Master?" she asks.  I feed her the address.  "Calculating" she says.  For the next eighty-five miles.  Fortunately these are straight up I-5 so getting lost would be tricky.  Finally I pull over, disconnect her from everything, tell her that if she doesn't behave I will be finding the nearest branch of the Canadian equivalent of Halfords tomorrow and switch her back on.

"In sixteen miles exit right" she says.  I subsequently instructed her to Go Metric, though I'm not sure the motor-car's cruise control can be similarly jibbled.  No matter, I am now in Metric Canada in spite of the best efforts of the grumpy fucker at the border.  Here is a picture of a Canadian mountain:

Mountain.  Canada.  Saturday.

"IHOP" is short for "International House Of Pancakes" so I suspect pancakes may be on tomorrow's list of breakfast options; moreover if you don't drench them in maple syrup you are immediately deported without the right of appeal.  Oh...

The Glorious Twelfth

Old General Coote was a fine old feller
He often was found laid down in a cellar
So on the Glorious Twelfth, while some people do shoot
We go a-drinkin', to honour Old Coote

- The Kipper Family

Today it is one year and one half since I eschewed drinkohol.  It is also Everyone Ignore Samfast Day but since the FLJS¹ remains incommunicado in Captain Cook's Mistake this hasn't been so much of a chore.  As is customary at such anniversaries, I have a new Shiny Thing.

Shiny Thing #8

Since the actual Shiny Thing is actually that actual colour anyway I have been messing about with the toys available in paint.net.  Which is why it:

• is barely visible, and
• looks like a Rubbish

If you look closely you will note that the background is the numeric keypad of an IBM Model M keyboard, and those who do not see the irony of using a 2 kg keyboard to control a 1 kg laptop have only themselves to blame.  The little wossname next to the "Scroll Lock" light is one of the stickers given away by the very wonderful purveyors of guitar-based rock Amplifier with their magnum opus "The Octopus²", an example of which adorns almost every piece of anbaric apparatus in Larrington Towers.  The sticker, not the album, clot.

Come February next I will complete the set of Shiny Things and will celebrate with the finest champagne Mr Sainsbury's House of Toothy Comestibles has to offer³.  The regular Automatic Diary will, subject to the vagaries of Homeland Security and the gun-tooting goondom running the Canada-USAnia frontier, resume on September 5th.  Yes, the Automatic Diary is to visit Canada, where the BEARs come from.  I will take an extra jumper.

1. Filthy Lying Journalist Scum.
2. Go and buy a copy immediately. Other Amplifier albums are available. Go and buy them all. And a T-shaped shirt...
3. Lie.