Day 9: Battle Mountain NV

A late start to the day made later, at least in terms of breakfast, by someone having opened a catering-sized tin of Dutch PSOs and sprayed the contents liberally around the lobby of the Super 8.  And then camera issues.  It won't switch on, even though it hasn't done anything since Thursday night except sit in the car or on the table here.  Problem eventually traced to bat flatteries, of which no warning was given chiz.  Anyway, I was able to snap this picture of the University of Toronto's new tandem being readied for a low speed tryout in the Super 8 parking lot.

DERP

Apparently the machine is officially called "Titan" but since Calvin Moes claimed on Farcebok that it was called "Double Eta Reverse Prime", DERP is probably what it will end up being known as.  I wandered over to the Civic Center just in time to avoid being press-ganged into going out to the course to life Heavy Things, and instead hung around taking photos of bikes and not much else, while Arnold Ligtvoet and Hans van Vugt did the technical inspections.  Seems I wasn't the only one to suffer camera problems: the Tokyo University of Science team failed their inspection as their machine, Haruka 2019, only has a single camera and screen, with no backup in case of system failure.  It was suggested they try the local car accessory outfit for a reversing camera and screen which, although not ideal, would at least allow them to stop without crashing but instead they returned from the hardware store bearing a hacksaw, cut a hole in the fairing and installed one of Hans' spare windscreens.

N-1 from Team Falcon of Australia

A Corner of a FOREIGN field Civic Center that is forever Delft & Amsterdam

Haruka 2019 before they started cutting holes in it

To alleviate the boredom of long periods of nothing much happening some of us moseyed over to the Big Chief motel, there to gaze in awe and wonder at the extraordinary Sprocket Rocket.  This is not only the first quadricycle to appear here, but also the first machine with more than two riders.  Five, to be precise.  Three 406 tyres on each rear wheel and two on the fronts.  Brake discs from a Mighty Kawasaki sports bike.  Radio from a light aircraft.  Transported on a custom trailer containing more engineering that many competing bikes.  Eighteen Mr Larrington-paces long.  And weighing in at 390 kg before adding the riders.  Everyone who saw it on Farcebok was anxious to see how it got on, but seeing the thing in the metal is another thing entirely.

The rear 40% of Sprocket Rocket, minus tail cone and outer skin

Triple-tyred rear wheel

Back to the Civic Center for further prodding, inspecting and milling around.  We have been joined by HPV Royalty in the shape of Todd Reichert, wife Jenny and numbawan pikinini Milo.  Figuring Todd is already used to no sleep, he was immediately roped in to help Arnold in the cat-herding duties at the start.

Jenny, Milo, Todd and Bas

And then the introductory meeting.  What with this being the 20th running of the event, the Governor of Nevada has recognised us with an Official Proclamation, as have the Lander County Commissioners, so let's have a little MOAR rispek from you riff-raff in future.

The usual introductions, rundown of procedures and allocation of duties for the morning qualifying runs.  Almost everyone here is going to have a go, so five heats with four riders each.  This will entail a fair amount of to-ing and fro-ing since many teams have two or more riders running the same bike - only Team Policumbent having the luxury of a multi-rider team with a bike each as they have built Taurus-X for Vittoria Spada (improbably, she's even smaller than Andrea Gallo).  For those watching in balck and white, Taurus-X has a red tail and Taurus a green one.  Such is their attention to detail that, well, have a look at the full-size version of this picture:

It only took about 70 minutes this year, though there was the inevitable scrum of team members filling in forms in triplicate, burying them in soft peat for three months and recycling them as firelighters¹.  I escaped early to the Colt, there to feast upon what the incumbent of the Awful Office would call "hamberders" in the company of the van Vugts and the Ligtvoets.  I have managed to upload some photos without too many bad swears and will shortly post this and bog off to bed, hoping that the heavy downpours, thunderbolts and lightning² we've beeg having for the last four hours get bored and bog off towards Utah before morning.  Night, all!

1: May contain traces of Lie
2: Very very frightening meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Day 8: Cedar City UT - Battle Mountain NV

The breakfast room today was full of elks.  No, Elks.  Members of The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, in fact.  I have no idea what they are doing in Cedar City, but it needed a lot of them.

Nothing really to say about the journey today.  400 miles, just over six hours, stopped twice at traffic lights in Ely and once at roadworks just west of same.  It rained a bit, but if you keep the speed up it just blows over the top, so no need to put the lid up even when the wipers were working pretty hard.  A new bit of road; NV-278, which joins US-50 near Eureka to I-80 at Carlin and smelled disturbingly like the back room at the Wol Club - stale fag smoke and slot machines.  I do not know why.

Greeted on arrival by a horde of Lems and various Toronto PSOs.  The latter have managed to bagsy the Super 8 conference room before Team Policumbent got here.  The Italians have been advised to send a one-man advance party next year to plant the tricolore in the doorway and claim the room for Italia.  I have not yet seen many other bikes, or riders save Denise Mueller-Koronek, who is the current World Motor-Paced Record holder and now trying the unpaced version in Larry Lem's bike, Wahoo.  She set the record - 183.9 mph - last year at Bonneville, on the day after Battle Mountain ended.  Idiot Boy here drove past the place, saw something was going on and decided not to bother to find out what.

So nothing else to report.  I did not take any photos today and am just back from dinner.  Mexican, with the Lems, Paul Gracey, Denise and her husband Chris.  And nothing much to do tomorrow either except avoid heavy lifting.  That is what Penniless Student Oaves are for.

Edit: I have discovered that you can turn off the Gracenote so-called "database" on the car stereo, so hopefully there will be no more misidentification of Seattle drone gods Sun O))) as some pop band called "The Sun".

Day 7: La Verkin UT - Cedar City UT

In marked contrast to yesterday, today was short on miles but long on Places to Go and See.  As noted yesterday, first port of call was Zion National Park and you need to get there early before the car park fills up.  This is because the place is shaped like an inverted "T" and if you want to go up the leg of the said "T" you have to park at the Visitor Center and take the shuttle bus up the canyon.  Failure to find somewhere to park means you have to go back to Springdale and get the bus from there.  This makes the natives of Springdale very happy, as they charge anything up to $15 for parking.  This Unit actually got his act together and found a spot inside the park.  Huzzah!

The buses are frequent, free and bendy, consisting as they do of a bus and a trailer of bus-like functionality, and if you're in the back half you can spend the trip up to the far end gazing at a huge picture of a suppurating wound on the back of someone's hand.  This is actually a warning not to feed the sqirls as they tend not to know the difference between a handful of trail mix and the hand that feeds them.  And if The Man catches you feeding the sqirls he will charge you $100 not including medical fees, so don't do it.

There are three sorts of passengers making the trip up to the Temple of Sinawava, viz.

• Old gits like me
• Dangerously athletic-looking twenty-somethings with carbon-fibre hiking poles
• Goths

Actually, there was only one Goth; I think she was Australian.  I decided to go all the way up to the far end of the canyon and then work my way back, as you can leap on and off the bus at nine stops, or you could if Weeping Rock hadn't been closed because a big chunk of Utah detached itself from the rest of Utah and flattened the bus stop.  Though happily not any visitors, park staff or sqirls¹.  From the Temple of Sinawava² you can get off and walk a ways upstream on the North Fork of the Virgin River until the path stops.  If you are a dangerously athletic-looking twenty-somethings with carbon-fibre hiking poles you can carry on to a slot canyon yclept "The Narrows" but this entails proper footwear and walking in the river a lot of the time and is unsuitable for old gits carrying their Stuffs in a plastic bag from the duty-free shop at Calgary airport.  So I didn't, and nor did Ms. The-Birthday-Party.  The views are stunning enough as it is.

Court of the Patriarchs.  And what should we do with the Patriarchy?

Definitely worth the early start as I'm told it can get unpleasantly warm in the canyon later in the day.  Back at the Visitor Center there are more sqirls and also deer.  And motor-ists circling the car park like Californian Condors waiting to pounce on the space vacated by anyone who's leaving.

Deer with a gammy leg

From here I retraced yesterday's route up UT-9, wot is the horizontal bit of the "T".  Far less traffic then yesterday and only one person afflicted with National Park Disease, which presents in the form of stopping dead in the middle of the road because you have seen a deer/unusual tree/funny-coloured rock.  Of which latter there are many.

After which the road goes through a mile-long tunnel, which is best not shared withe a phalanx of Harley-Fergusons³ and out into more park with more bonkers rocks.

Checkerboard Mesa

Finally I ran out of park, coninued to US-89, headed north and then back west on UT-14.  With check-in here being at 4pm there appeared to be Time to be Wasted so I headed off-piste to Navajo Lake - the road having been paved since the last time I was here - and sat back to Defile the Wilderness With Rock'n'Roll while continuing to read Graham Hurley's "Raid 42".

Thence to Cedar Breaks National Monument, for the third or fourth time.  Just because.

Fire in Chessman Canyon; started this morning by a lightning strike

Natch my time-wasting exercise was rendered, well, a waste of time, as there were a couple of sets of temporary traffic lights on the way back down Cedar Canyon.  Final port of call was the Little Free Library in a Cedar City back street, to drop off one of Will's Travelling Books.  Will Walton aka Mr Sunshine, died last year leaving Miss von Brandenburg the unenviable task of disposing of many of his worldly goods.  In the words of the Founder:

Will died on 12 November 2018.  I have inherited most of his books.  I’m sending them on a journey.  Each book will have a note inside it telling the new reader who the book used to belong to.  The note will include a link to this page.  I’m hoping the new readers will visit this page and write about the book they have chosen.

You may learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/willstravellingbooks

1: Actually, I'm not sure about the sqirls
2: Sinawava, I'm told, plays a prominent role in the Creation Myth of the Paiute Indians
3: Fortunately there were none.

Day 6: Monticello UT - La Verkin UT

No internet.  Again.  FFS!  Oh, they've fixed it.  In time for me to wish Professor Larrington a very happy Significant Birthday!

So today was a Travelling Day rather than a "Going To Look At Things Day" and since I already knew the route Emily was kept on mostly 4 teh LULZ0RZ.  No, I do not wish to head forty miles in the opposite direction to Green River and do the rest of the trip on the Interstate system, no matter how much quicker it might be.  Nor am I going all the way back to Kayenta and US-89.  No, I am taking the scenic route and that is an end to it.

The main difference between northern Arizona down the road and southern Utah is that the rocks here are completely hatstand.  See?

After a cross-country blast UT-95 crosses the Mighty Colorado and what is supposed to be the upper end of Lake Powell but didn't have enough water in it to qualify for "lake" status.  Better photo of the bridge taken this year; it also attracted the attention of a couple of burly chaps in a South Carolina-based Volvo VNL - though I suspect their original homeland lies far to the east of the River Bug.  Funny how no tot-handed tangerine terrorists are calling for them to be sent "home".

BRIDGE!!1!

More insane rocks, heat and occasional showers on UT-95, UT-24 and UT-12.  and resurfacing on the former.  What a terrible place to be sitting in a queueueueueueue.

Idiots on US-89.  Look, I know it's a speed limit, not a target, but if you keep randomly varying your speed between 40 and 60 mph you achieve nothing save to confound and confusticate following motor-ists.  So stop it.

I should have listened to Emily after I got on US-89.  She advised me to go via Cedar City, but I told her "no" and went further south and through Zion National Park.  Even though I know that using National Parks as through routes is a mug's game.  And doubly so since I'm planning to go back for a proper visit tomorrow anyway.  I went there all the way back in 2003, but didn't see it properly.

And finally.  Ford Motor Company, please tell your otherwise inestimable motor-car stereo system not to overrule the tags I spent weeks getting right on my mp3 files.  That track you just played was by Hawkwind frontman Dave Brock, not jazz piano legend Dave Brubeck.

Day 5: Kayenta AZ - Monticello UT

More scenery to visit today, and Emily is being mostly cooperative.  Not that the navigation was difficult.  Back up US-160 for a while then off into the wilderness on BIA¹-59.  Emily pronounces "BIA" to rhyme with "via".  I am not sure that this is correct.  South on US-191 to Chinle, turn left and shortly come to the Canyon de Chelly National Monument.  I haven't been in this bit of Arizona at all before, and was unaware of the place's existence until tipped off by Professor Larrington last week.

Anyhoo, although it's spelled "Chelly" this is a Spaignish version of the Navajo word "Tséyiʼ", meaning "canyon".  So, Canyon of Canyon, then.  And it's pronounced "Che", like the stadium.  It has a South Rim and a North Rim and I went up the former first, because why not?  You can also go up the middle, but only if accompanied by a Navajo guide.  The first overlook or two were frankly a bit Meh! in comparison with some of the bonkers scenery to be seen in this part of the country but the views get steadily more Wowsa! the further up you go, culminating in Spider Rock.  It looks nowt like a spider, but was supposed to be the home of the Spider Grandmother, who probably pops up in a Neil Gaiman novel.  Does she?  Anyway, a selection of pixtures and as per ushual you are encouraged to look at the full-sized versions on Flickr, preferably on a Proper Computer and not a bloody telephone.

Tunnel Canyon Overlook.  Meh.

Junction Overlook.  Better.

Sliding House Overlook.  Approved.

Spider Rock.  OK, I'm impressed...

After Spider Rock you can carry on up the road, but the tarmac doesn't, so I hightailed it back down to the entrance and went up the other side.  Only three viewing points on this rim, but they're all good uns:

Antelope House Overlook

Ruins at Antelope House Overlook

Mummy Cave Overlook

Massacre Cave Overlook

By going via BIAs and various other road-type things I ended up in Utah, there to visit another hitherto unsuspected Thing of Miracle and Wonder, namely Goosenecks State Park.  This is near Mexican Hat, but not near enough that you can see the rock formation that gave the place its name, so I still don't have a picture.  Of it.  I do have pictures from Goosenecks, though.

San Juan River at Goosenecks State Park

Monument Valley from quite a long way away

This is what happens when the San Jaun river decides that flowing straight into the Mighty Colorado a few miles downstream would be altogether a bit dull.  Retracing my wheeltracks back to the main road would also be a bit dull, but if you turn left, the line on the map representing UT-261 is all wiggly.  This, I discovered, is because it turns to gravel and goes straight up a vertical cliff in a series of hairpins.  I also realised that I came down it a few years ago.  I hope the guy towing a Jeep on an A-frame behind his bus-sized motorhome was not planning on doing the same thing.

Halfway up a cliff, Utah, Tuesday

At the end of 261 is UT-95, and also the Bear's Ears.  Apparently there is uranium under the ground hereabouts and guess which apricot hellbeast is doing his utmost to ensure it doesn't stay there?

The BEAR's Ears, either side of that bush.
Keep your tiny hands off them, you tangerine twatwaffle!

And so back to the main road anyway, to Blanding and then Monticello.  Why didn't I stay in Blanding, on the other side of the roadworks, where I have to go back through in the morning anyway?  Search me...

1: Bureau of Indian Affairs

Day 4: Cortez CO - Kayenta AZ

Still no internet Monday morning, but then you knew that because you'll already have read the belated Day 3 entry.  What do you mean, you haven't?  Stop reading this, read that and don't come back until you've redeemed yourself!  Anyway, the view out the back of the hotel is much the same as it was in 2014 only this time I managed to get a picture without lots of construction machinery in the way:

If you go a few miles up the road towards those mountain-like objects and then turn right you will find yourself in Mesa Verde Natioanl Park.  I have driven past the entrance more than once and never even noticed it was there, partly because it's right where a bunch of pages in the road atlas meet.  This lot - this year's obligatory truck-based European-registered 4x4 camper - found it though, and I wish they'd done so after me, because their vehicle only does 15 mph up the hills.  The moral here being "never join the queue with the motorcyclists in it".

Austrian-registered Mercedes camper, Intrepid Travellers for the use of

The Mesa Verde is a gert big mountain thing and various bits of it were inhabited from about 550 AD until about 1300, when the inhabitants strolled off southwards for no known reason.  Unless they had a hankering to visit the Scorching Plains™ of New Mexico, obv.  They are sometimes known as the Anasazi, a term which X-Files fans will imediately recognise from that episode when Mulder, chased by baddies through a quarry outside Vancouver painted red to resemble this part of the world, found himself in a railway wagon full of dead alieds.  There are various relics of their period of residence in the park, as well as the usual jaw-dropping scenery.  Go and look at the photos, of which but a small selection are presented here:

Use your Junior Pocket Microscope (model 3a) to spot the Shiprock
at top dead centre and 70+ km distance

Step House site - contains early pit houses and masonry ones from a Several of centuries later

Pit house.  The line across the picture is a chain to stop idiots from falling in

Later stone houses at the Step House site

So-called "Sun Temple", because no-one knows what it was really for

Cliff Canyon.  Must have taken them, oooh, seconds to come up with that name...

Even an inspection as cursory as mine took a Several of hours, because the place stretches out for about forty of your Earth kilometres, but quite a fair few sites within are only accessible by guided tour and/or involve lots of walking, steps, ladders and getting very hot and sticky because you left that bottle of iced water in the car like a great big feckin' eejit.

At departure time it was also Emily time.  Clearly she was sulking due to not being required all morning.  "1000 Main Street, Kayenta, if it pleaseth you!"  She does not know of Main Street, Kayenta.  "US-163 in Kayenta, then!"  She decides that Kayenta starts about twenty miles north of where it is actually located and tries to take me that way.  I gave up, since all you have to do is turn left out of the park and follow US-160 until you get here then, as instructed by the Wetherill Inn's helpful billboard, turn right at the lights and drive a mile up, er, Main Street aka US-163.  She spent the next 140 miles rebooting herself.

Kayenta is not big enough to support a Walmart, Target or similar Vendor of All Things, because if it did I would be taking advantage of the current piss-poor exchange rate and buying a new TwatNav.  You have been warned, young Emily.

Day 3: Grants NM - Cortez CO

I expect you are wondering about the non-appearance of this entry at the expected time. This is because the connection to the Intertubes went down at about ten o'clock Sunday night, just after I had uploaded the day's photos. I did try using my phone as a hotspot, but because its grasp of USAnian mobile networks is shakier than Shakin' Stevens with the DTs, that proved impractical. Not to mention expensive had it worked. Anyway, don't complain. If you are Miss von Brandenburg you would have had to wait a Several of days for a postcard and if you are not Miss von Brandenburg you wouldn't have had anything at all.  Anyway, I am now elsewhere, with Interwebs access, so as soon I've faffed about with photos, gone foraging for toothy comestibles, decided where I'm going tomorrow and booked a room for same and all the other tedious administrative bobbins that goes with being an Automatic Diarist, you can have Day 4 as well.

I do not know what it is about sitting inside Shiny Metal Birbs for half a day that can accurately reproduce the symptoms of a sprained ankle, but it did it to me AGAIN ouch hobble and hurty.  With this in mind let us have a nice unstressed day, right?  The first order of business was to vandalise my motor-car in the absence of feral Dutchmen to do the job themselves:

Sadly this afternoon's heavy rain means that I will probably have to do it all over again once it's had time to collect some more muck.

The second order of business was to visit Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument which, thanks to a Mr Danny Guthrie, I have now heard of.  Blat east on I-40, switch to I-25 at Albuquerque and north for a bit, then off into the countryside and join the tail of a very long queue.  The place operates a one-in one-out policy so unless you rock up at opening time you will have to wait.  They have - helpfully - put up boards along the access road telling you how long you can expect to roast under the broiling sun of New Mexico, but having come all this way I was in no mood to turn around and bog off, unlike some of my faithless companions of the line.  And I had my Kindle to hand to pass the time.  "Estocada", the third volume of Graham Hurley's "Wars Within" series, whether you're interested or not.

Tent Rocks is worth the wait.  There are two trail options, one of which involves a lot of walking uphill in broiling temperatures and one which offers the same, but in lesser quantities.  Mindful of my not-sprained ankle I opted for the latter, ycelpt the "Cave Trail" because there is a cave.  On it.  Just look at the pictures:

Tent Rocks.  How did they think up the name?

Ex-tree at Tent Rocks

Cave, New Mexico, Sunday

All this year's travel photos may be found here: clicky for daguerrotype Goodness

Next I tell Emily to take me to the southern end of NM-4, wot is a scenic route towards Los Alamos.  Natch she wanted to take me via Los Alamos, so I had to ignore her and take the sensible route there.  My fading-memory branes are suggesting that I actually went up here in 2005, but it was dark that time so lacked familiarity today.  And it rained, bigly.  Eventually you got to Los Alamos aka "The Hill" wot hav a very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are.  It was basically put there to invent atomic weapons in, and much of it still is, so if you turn left at the bottom of the hill instead of right to the town itself, you have to go through a checkpoint where a scrupulously polite but heavily armed fellow checks your ID to ensure that you are not a North Korean spy.

OK, Emily, take me to Cortez!  Looking at ye actual paper mappe would suggest the sensible route would be west to US-550 then northwest on that to Bloomfield and Durango, but we didn't do that at all, which suggests that I should have turned off NM-4 somewhere up the Jemez Valley and not gone all the way to Los Alamos.  Whatever the cause, I am not displeased, because US-550 appears to go straight across them Scorching Plains™ of New Mexico instead of sneaking into the southern end of the Colorado Rockies at Pagosa Springs.  The only snag was the 250 miles, which meant arriving in Cortez after:

• dark, and
• thirty miles behind a pair of very loud Harley-Fergusons

My ankle does not hurt any more though, which is confusing because I keep expecting it to and limp even when it is uncalled for.

Day 2: Phoenix AZ - Grants NM

Ho! for the country and away down I-10 we go.  If you keep going down I-10 across most of Arizona and the Scorching Plains™ of New Mexico you will get to El Paso, wot is in Texas.  Go some way beyond here and you will find the junction where I-20 starts.  I-20 will takes Lost Boys to Fort Worth.  I did not go that far, and instead left the big smelly road at Apache Junction, and headed sort-of north-east up AZ-88.  There are saguaros:

Cactus, Arizona, Saturday

AZ-88 is fab and wiggly until you get to Tortilla Flat.  Here there is a big signed reading "ROAD CLOSED 2 MILES AHEAD".  I continued the two miles and Lo! there were a couple of big concrete barriers not closing the road.  A couple of chaps in SUVs carried on and didn't come back after five minutes, and another chap told me it had just reopened, so I decided to chance it.  This was a good idea, as the road was indeed open and there's some wik scenery and Apache Lake, which looks like this:

Unfortunately it's a destination for people with boat trailers and huge fifth-wheel campers and other repellent things, who like nothing better than to force Flash Harry in his sports car into the ditch.  Almost.  Eventually you get to Roosevelt Dam, which is shaped like one of these:

And after than you get back on proper roads without lots of dicks on them, like AZ-188.  Instead it's Emily the TwatNav who is behaving dickishly, withe constant reboots for no apparent reason.  She's been doing it since she got updated before we went to Shetland in June.  Dodgy firmware update, I reckon, or droid rot.  And it got hot.  Peaked at 103 of your old-skool Fahrenheits or about forty Celsius.  Phoenix last night was warmer, mind.

After heading southeast down US-70 I turned off onto US-191.  "Emily", I said, "take me to US-191 in Alpine!"  You'd think the best way to achieve this would be to follow US-191 to Alpine, but she thought otherwise, and there were a lot of Bad Swears until well the other side of Clifton.  Which is on US-191 and had a "gas" station which didn't fanny about with any of the "ZIP Code" nonsense.  US-191 climbs up into the mountains behind the huge Morenci copper mine and if that  sounds familiar it's because I came down the same road from Alpine to Clifton two years ago, which in turn is why there are no pictures of Big Yellow Things hauling rocks to be turned into, er, copper.  But there was weather brewing up in the background:

That is not SNO, BTW...

191 is mostly tremendously wiggly, and thus I can now confirm that this year's Mustang does indeed have a TEN-speed autobox.  It was also full of pickups, mostly driven by blokes wearing camouflage gear and with the kind of decorum that suggests a hitherto-undiscovered offshoot of the Mormons live in them thar hills.  Or, with this being a Bank Holiday weekend, that the drivers were drunk.  The weather arrived, the roof went up and the temperature dropped to 16 degrees because Rain and Altitude.

Reprogrammed Emily in Alpine.  Onoz!  There are still 150 miles to go.  And most of them are over the Scorching Plains™ of New Mexico, which are in a different time zone.  Which is why I ended up arriving in Grants well after dark.  Terrific sunset though:

If you are ever in Grants, do not stay at the "Sure Stay by Best Western" unless all you want to do is sleep.  The room in nice enough now it's cooled down (they hadn't switched the aircon on) but there is nowhere to plug in the spiffy table lamp nor the coffee machine and if you want to run your laptop off the mains you'd better have a 12' extension lead like wot I have, or else you will have to sit on the floor.  The chair is terrible and the internet connection worse.  Bah!

Best singalong of the day: The Day The Nazi Died ~ Chumbawamba

Worst singalong of the day: West ~ Tribes Of Neurot.  73 minutes of mostly inaudible droning.

Days 0-1: Larrington Towers - Phoenix AZ

O hai and welcome to the (counts on fingers) eleventh annual instalment of Thee Automatick Diary, which this year is taking a more conventional approach to Battle Mountain by arriving in a state that at least borders on Nevada.  Most time up till now has been spent sitting in cars, airports or at the back of a Big Shiny Metal Birb mostly full of French types.  And Phoenix has not yet installed Immigration Daleks to process your passport, take your dabs, photograph you and print the arrest warrant, or at least not for FOREIGNS chiz.  Which at least meant that by the time I and Mr and Mrs Hairy Biker had been admitted to USAnia our bags were all but alone on the carousel.

Nice Man Sergio at Alamo motor-car rentals has given me a convertible Mustang, for which praise be, and didn't try to tempt me with growly V8s, Corvettes or any similar works of Stan that might persuade a young lad off the Path of Righteousness and into the world of Huge Fuel Bills.  "Do you want a GPS?" he asked.  "No, ha ha, I have brought my own!"

Emily the TwatNav promptly went into a prolonged sulk and claimed all the satellites had been shut down by the Russians.  Pausing in a parking lot to reboot and threaten violence seemed to wake her up and as a result I only got lost by a couple of miles.  Unlike the dude who waltzed into this hotel just before me, to ask for directions, as his phone appeared to him to be steering him wrong.  The words "Fort" and "Worth" were mentioned, along with a plaintive cry of "Dumbass phone thinks I'm in Phoenix!"

Nice Reception Lady pointed out that yes, you are in Phoenix.  Mr Larrington noted that Forth Worth is approximately 1,000 miles east of here.  I do not think he is likely to pass The Knowledge any time soon.