Day 3: LaPlace LA -> Natchez MS

The story so far: You have learned from bitter experience that some motor-cars understand the concept of a .m3u playlist file while others do not.  Yes, Chrysler Corporation, I surely do mean you, with your making me spend an entire evening in Calgary renaming files because of that Shitbox Dodge.  Thus preparing one's holibobs listening has already involved:

• generating a playlist of the Stuffs I want to listen to, in the order I want them presented
• using this to copy the music files to a temporary location, where
• SCIENCE can be applied to rename each one with a four-digit prefix to its file name, such that the correct playing order is preserved, before
• copying them to a USB wossname

Which, as we have already seen, does not play nicely with the POB's stereo.  Reformatting the USB wossname and repopulating it didn't work either.  So the next task is this:

• copy all the music files to one's portable telephone; fortunately I had a copy on my laptop
• discover that Android apparently doesn't have a music player built in
• install VLC

VLC finds the music files and helpfully lists them in alphabetical order.  By song title, not by file name.  This is not what I want, but I know that VLC does understand playlists, ergo:

• use mp3tag to generate a playlist with all the tracks in the right order
• copy the playlist to the phone
• persuade the POB to register the presence of the VLC-equipped phone and the associated playlist, and actually start playing the damn' tunes
• but Soft!  Why does the playlist only show 17 songs instead of 1976?
• open the playlist file in notepad++ on the laptop, observe that the 18th song is Ljubav Se Ne Trži by Croatian purveyors of post-rock excellence Daliborovo Granje. Could it be that VLC doesn't like that beastly FOREIGN "ž"?
• move offending title to the end of the playlist
• save it
• copy it to the phone
• poke "refresh" until it shows the revised playlist, which now has 76 tracks
• repeat the above exercise removing:
• another "ž" (Laibach)
• … ellipses (Red Sparowes, Biffy Clyro)
• Japanese characters (Ningen Isu)
• Anything with "#" in the file name (Michael Nyman, Herbal Mixture, The Handsome Family, The Bevis Frond, Iggy & The Stooges)
• Creedence Clearwater Revival's version of Ninety-Nine And A Half.  No idea why this one causes indigestion
• until the phone finally concedes that the playlist contains 1957 songs

This takes many hours and put me in a bad mood, but…

This morning, success!  Bangin' choons ooze from the POB's Harman Kardons as intended.  No more being earwormed by John Fogerty banging on about having been born on the bayou which, as any fule know, he wasn't.  No bayous in Berkeley.  Let us away!

Back onto I-10 eastbound, there to get caught in the tail end of the New Orleans rush hour.  Escape onto LA-23, the Road to Nowhere, which runs parallel to the Mississippi some seventy miles south from Noo Awlins to almost, but not quite, the Gulf of America Mexico.  Not the most exciting road in the world - a mixture of petrochemical plant, trailer homes and RV parks catering to fishing types - but just beyond Venice we find:

A billboard plastered with stickers, Louisiana, Friday

That's the POB in the background, BTW.  It's the southernmost point in Louisiana that can be reached by road and, if you look around, you will not see the Mississippi, because they keep it hidden behind a levee.  In order to see it you must drive your Chevy^[1] to the levee, get out and walk.

Oh look! There it is!

They have to keep it there, y'see, because the area is flatter than a flat thing that's been recently ironed and thus prone to flooding.  Smart locals build their houses on stilts:

Even some of the trailer homes are twenty feet above ground level.  What it was like in these parts when Katrina came to call doesn't bear thinking about.

Because this is a dead end, there's no option but to retrace back to I-10 in New Orleans, and because the river is totally invisible, even from the bridge across it, retrace on I-10 back to Baton Rouge.  I-10 west of New Orleans is also on stilts, which makes the traveller ponder the logic of building a city on a patch of dirt mostly below sea level between an inlet of the Gulf of America Mexico and the continent's largest river.

I left I-10 at Baton Rouge and after some inconsequential other roads reached the Blues Highway.  US-61.  No sign of God, Abraham or Louis the King, but because it runs all the way to Duluth MN^[2], maybe they're up that end.  Down here it's a very quiet dual carriageway through the woods and after the summer we BRITONS have had all this greenery is a bit unexpected.

And so to Natchez, which rhymes with "matches" so as not to be mistaken for a Mexican or something.  It hav a very interesting history if you ae interested in hist. wich few boys are, but we shall go into that tomorrow because I'm here two nights and I'm tired.

1. Other vehicles are available
2. His Bobness was born there; back then Highway 61 went all the way to the Canadian border

Day 2: Fort Worth TX -> LaPlace LA

 Mr Larrington done have a genius in the middle of the night and, after some prodding of Teh Intarwebs, discovers that yes, it *is* possible to download the errant North America maps from Garmin and overwrite the Europe map currently installed in Emily's little head-branez.  It's probably no cheaper than buying a whole new gadget but it does avoid having to find my way to Walmart and persuading them to allow me to purchase the thing, since click'n'collect in these parts requires a credit card with a USAnian billing address which in my case I have not got.  Clicky, clicky, hand over money, downloading, installing...  This had better work...

Power on device, poke "Favourites", tell Emily to take me to the Battle Mountain Super 8. She calculates the route.  Hurrah!

So the next task for the POB's little elektronik brane is to play the tunes which I have lovingly copied to a USB stick.  This is not rocket surgery.  Even Transit vans can do it these days.  Snag.  Everything is USB-C these days and that includes the USB 'oles in the POB.  Is my USB stick USB-C?  Why, no!  No, it is not.  But I have anna dapter.  Plug stick into one end and other end into car.  Result?  Nothing.  Which meant driving the thick end of five hundred miles with no music, because USAnian radio is too ghastly to contemplate.  Bah!

Little to report today.  The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is enormous and even with the aid of freeways takes an age to escape but eventually I-20 and I found each other and east I did go.  Almost, but not quite as far as Shreveport LA, because you can bypass Shreveport and get to I-49 southbound with little fuss or bother.  Following I-49 to its logical conclusion would have you emerge on I-10 but Emily decided to take a shortcut across the Louisiana equivalent of The Fens, which differ from the East Anglian version in that the principle crops are (I think) sugar cane and billboards for personal injury lawyers instead of turnips.

This carries US-190 over the Atchafalaya River at Krotz Springs LA

The bridge that carries I-10 over the Mighty Mississippi is better than this one but I had to go over it.  At 4 mph.  Happily the stau cleared for the last 50 miles to here.  This evening's tasks include copying the music files onto my phone, that it can send them to the POB's stereo via the medium of the Devil's Lesser Radio ^[1] and, as suggested by Teh Intarwebs, reformatting the offending USB stick as NTFS instead of FAT32 and copying the music files over again.  Which takes ages.  Still, at least I have Tea.

1. Bluetooth, obv.

Day 1: Larrington Towers -> Fort Worth TX

As you can probably deduce from the post heading I have successfully infiltrated USAnia.  And as you can probably deduce from the date of this post I am here well ahead of the WHPSC in Battle Mountain.  Putting two and two together: road trip.  This year the intention is to follow the Great River Road, which tracks the Mighty Mississippi, and a swift glance at the Mappe will shew that the middle of Texas is bloody miles away from the aforementioned river.  However, BRITISH Airways' direct flight to New Orleans is scheduled to arrive at eleven o'clock at night.  This is sub-optimal.  Houston is nearer, but there are good climate-related reasons why my chum Danny Guthrie chooses to absent himself from Houston every summer.  Not that this bit of TX is much better.  So...

My usual method of getting to LHR, viz. bus to 'stow Central, Queen Vic line, change at Finsbury Park and twiddle my thumbs for a million stops on the Piccallili Line out to Thiefrow was banjaxed this year by Transport for London closing the latter for three days this week as part of their scheme to introduce the long-overdue new rolling stock.  But soft!  The Weaver Line - part of the Overground of London's famous London, also goes from 'stow Central to Liverpool Street, where one can get that Elizabeth Line, that they have now, to Heathrow instead.  And with low cunning I timed things to get on the Lizzy Line after 9 am so could use my Old Git Oyster Card.  Not all Heathrow trains go to T5 but you can bail out at T2/3 and hop the Heathrow Express the rest of the way.  Which is nice.

Uneventful check-in, security, little clockwork train and sitting around at Gate C64 until The Man permits me to board the Shiny Metal Birb, another of those double-decker A380 contraptions.  World Traveller Plus cabin half-empty, but I CBA to move one row forward because there's quite enough legroom as it is.  Went to sleep somewhere west of Ireland and woke up crossing the Canada/US border above Sault St Marie.

Did the MPC app thing as recommended by my grate frend Arnold Ligtvoet last year only to discover that the lane, MPC users for the use of, was closed so had to queue with the uninitiated and other riff-raff.  Relative painless compared with SFO in 2022 thobut.  Bus to the Rental Car Center, pick up shiny motorcar, hereinafter referred to as The Pikey Old Beemer or POB for short, plug in Emily the TwatNav, exit the car park and got told in no uncertain terms that route calculation was not on the agenda.  Subsequent faffage indicates that she's lost interest in reading the expensive North America map on the SD card that plugs into her tummy, so I had to persuade my phone to shake hands with the POB's internal electronic wizardry and direct me here.  Doing this for the rest of the trip is not an option because data roaming costs an assortment of marketable limbs so the first item on tomorrow's agenda is to pop down to the Walmart a mile or so away and buy a replacement TwatNav chiz.

Day The Rest Of It: SFO -> Larrington Towers

For completeness sake: foul dinner, fitful sleep, missed breakfast.  First recognisable landmark on final approach the London Eye, followed by Buck House, the Albert Hall, Hammersmith Odeon and Brentford Community Stadium.

But soft! what is this writ upon a TfL noticeboard at the entrance to the tube station?  "Victoria Line: severe delays".  Changing at Finsbury Park the first three or four trains on the Queen Vic Line to 'stow Central were so rammed that I didn't even try to board.  And on arriving at 'stow Central it very much appeared that the useless workshy twats employed by Thames Water to dig up Selborne Road did not finish the job by September 5th as promised, no, there is still a big 'ole in the road and consequently no access for buses.  Traipse round the corner and praise be! A W15 empty and waiting because driver change.  Hurrah.

Larrington Towers was exactly where and how I left it save that Big Spiders have moved mob-handed into the front yard.  Swift foray up the road for emergency milk and Indian takeaway, that I might blast the cold germs with chicken tikka mirchi wala and garlic fried pilau rice while watching the Italian Grand Prix highlights.

Except that the berks at Channel 4 have 1. b0rked Series Link on the F1 Stuffs so the Magic Memory Boxes didn't record it and c) highlights aren't available on their poxy webshite either.  Ten minutes of YouTube video is a piss-poor substitute sort it out u muppets 😠

Day 15: Paso Robles CA -> SFO

 Paso Robles lies on US-101.  San Francisco International Airport also lies on US-101, a tad under two hundred miles to the north.  Ergo navigation is not an issue.  However, thee Nissan ov Doom told me I had two hundred miles of petril to empty and, because I didn’t wish to fanny about hunting for a petril station not operated by robdogs anywhere near the airport I did that “pay upfront to bring it back empty” thing.  Eight miles-worth of petril seemed a bit of a small margin.

US-101 is a multi-lane highway, thobut, and rarely came to a complete standstill and because I was not in any great hurry I deposited thee Nissan ov Doom back with Mr Hertz with 48 miles to empty.  Said vehicle also has a feature whereby you can save the petril consumption figure from the last bit of driving you did.  The saved one reads 99.9 mpg, this being the descent from Whitney Portal back to Lone Pine yesterday 🤣

With US-101 suffering a dearth of rest areas at which to waste time I got back to SFO two hours before thee Nissan ov Doom was due to be returned to its owner of record.  And seven hours before Mr Branson’s Shiny Plastic Birb is due to waft me back over the Stormy North Atlantic to the land where roundabouts live in fear of Gam-gams with tins of paint.  Though I know from experience that there's a bench under the little clockwork train station at the Rental Car Center (sic) where you can sit in the sun all afternoon if need be.

So that’s what I did.  Now sitting at Gate A2 where there is, as yet, no æroplane parked.  Hopefully the driver will keep his foot down again because changing at Finsbury Park will not be fun if the Queen Vic is jammed to the rafters…

Day 14: Lone Pine CA -> Paso Robles CA

 One of these Lofty Peaks is Mount Whitney.  Most likely the highest one.

Thee Nissan ov Doom is the one on the right

If you drive back into Lone Pine a bit and then turn right you will find yourself on Whitney Portal Road which - unsurprisingly - goes to Whitney Portal.  This being the trailhead for going to the summit of - yep - Mount Whitney.  The road climbs approximately four and a half thousand feet in ten miles and would make a wik summit finish for a bike race if there was room at the top for all the Stuffs that traditionally accompany such events.  Which there isn't.  Instead there's all this lot:

This 'ere is the Los Angeles Aqueduct, of which we spoke yesterday

On descending I returned to US-395, intending to feed the motor-car with petril at the Chevron on the way out of town, but it didn't like my cards so sod 'em.  So I decided that the Mobil in Olancha would get my custom.  The problem here being that Caltrans has bypassed Olancha with a new bit of the 395 which the satnav doesn't know about and on which the aforementioned Caltrans has utterly failed to put any signs point to, well, Olancha.  Just DETH Valley, which is a hundred miles away.  Anyway, I found it.

On down 395 until there's a fork in the road.  395 wanders off into the desert towards San Bernardino while CA-14 heads right towards LA.  I do not wish to go to LA, but fortunately CA-178 saves me from such a fate and heads over Walker Pass, past loads of Joshua trees and the odd coyote, into the valley of the Kern River towards Bakersfield, past Lake Isabella.

Oh, wait!  Wrong Isabella.  That one is Toby Lee's grilf Isabella Coulstock.

Unfortunately The Man had closed the 178 about 13 miles past the end of said lake, requiring a U-turn and a diversion onto CA-155.  Now CA-155 west of Wofford Heights has more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing, as well as some steep climbs and equally steep descents.  Which confused thee Nissan ov Doom no end, because instead of a regular automatic gearbox it has a continuously-variable transmission programmed by the pencil-necked desk jockeys at Nissan to imitate regular automatic gearbox.  Which works OK on city streets and motorways but is spectacularly hopeless on a road like CA-155.  Sort it out u muppets!

Finally I got directed onto a different and less twisty-turny road which eventually turned into CA-46, leading straight across the flatlands of California's Central Valley.  This is mostly devoted to agribiz, albeit that large chunks of it seem to be devoted to raising healthy crops of dirt, with a side order of oil.

Nodding donkeys in the Central Valley

And it was stinking hot - like 38 Celsius - and thee Nissan ov Doom unilaterally decided that the speed limit was 85 mph.  Which it isn't.  Nowhere in USAnia save one toll road in Texas has a speed limit that high.  Anyway, I am now in Paso Robles, which is at the centre of a wine-making region and consequently has no milk for sale in containers of less that four pints.  Bah!

Day 13: Battle Mountain NV -> Lone Pine CA

Most of the holdouts at the Super 8 had departed by the time I emerged yawning and blinking from my pit this morning: Larry, Peter & John J, Bill and Niklas.  Jun and Danny then interrupted my meagre breakfast as they too departed, which left just me and Joyce.  She had event busines to attend to in town; I did not and took off southwards in the general direction of south.  NV-305, US-50, NV-361, US-95, NV-360 and US-6 with scarcely any traffic and passing handful of settlements that make Battle Mountain look like New York City: Cold Springs, Middlegate, Gabbs, Luning, Mina, Benton and Chalfant.  Through scenery identical to that around Battle Mountain, viz. mountains and valleys.  With added stroopwafels, for I had been hoarding the packet given to me by the estimable Ligtvoets for just this occasion; my biscuity needs in Battle Mountain having been largely filled by the cookies that are a near 24/7 feature of the Super 8 lobby.

Breakfast Elevenses of Champions, Nevada, Monday

Entering California nothing very much changes except being waved through the Agricultural Inspection Station on the state line.

Crossing into California on US-6

Until, that is, I reached US-395 at Bishop.  Dual carriageway.  Traffic lights and - gasp - traffic.  US-395 in this part of the world runs down the Owens Valley between the White Mountains to the east and the lofty, though not SNO-capped, peaks of the Sierra Nevada to the west.

Lofty peaks of the Sierra Nevada

Rare bit of Owens Valley water that hasn't been diverted to LA

The Owens Valley hav a very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are.  The white man moved in and displaced the locals around 1870 and turned the place into a prosperous agricultural region thanks to the Owens River.  Until the opening overs of the twentieth century, that is, when the burgeoning city of Los Angeles decided that the Owens River would make a perfect water supply, the facts of a 200 mile separation and a GBFO mountain range notwithstanding.  Thus was built the Los Angeles Aqueduct and by divers more or less snidey means LA collared the water rights in the valley and turned the endorheic Owens Lake into

the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States, and has been known since at least the 1990s as a pervasive source of fine alkaline dust containing harmful levels of particulates and chemicals

This, and much more, is covered in Marc Reisner's book Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water which this Unit commends to anyone interested in why much of the western USA looks the way it does.

Lone Pine lies sixty-odd miles south of Bishop and is at the foot of Mount Whitney, which is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States.  Not much else to add really, except that

1. there are small bats doing Bat Stuffs above the motel car park, and
2. my four-port USB hub inexplicably stopped working when I unplugged the camera from it this afternoon, and
3. the local horriblemarket charges $2.79 for a 12 fl. oz. bottle of milk, the next size up is 4 US pints and I didn't bring my vacuum flask this year because:

• I wasn't doing much travelling, and
• I couldn't find the lid

Day 12: Battle Mountain NV

Things wot we haz doned today:

• Retrieved the straw bales from the course
• Retrieved most of the boards from the bridge
• Eaten a shedload of leftover pizza
• Retrieved the rest of the boards from the bridge
• Retrieved the missing "STOP" sign left behind by flagger ["Redacted" - Ed.] last night
• Put in my expenses claim for petril burned while charging up and down the 305. $117 received with thanks.
• Finished yesterday's Automatic Diary entry
• Had dinner at the Mexican restaurant with everyone from the event who hadn't left town already
• Put some stickers on my new laptop
• Took two whole photos
• Drunk tea

That there ^^^^ is Seiran, originally built some years ago by Mark Anderson and Eric Ware for local gal Teagan Patterson, which has been languishing in a storeroom in the Civic Center ever since.  The plan, as I understand it, is for Larry to cart it home to LA and make it raceworthy again - new wheels and tyres plus bringing it up to the new safety standards introduced since it last turned a wheel on the 305.

Mr Google reckons five and a half hours to tomorrow's resting place so the main reason to get up at anything like early o'clock is that the Super 8 stops providing breakfast at 09:00. 

Day 11 Part 2: Battle Mountain NV

Off we shogged to the five mile start for one final burst of hurtling in the desert.  No fresh roadkill to clear up, just a few small bits of gravel from the first few yards of the road.  Hans van Vugt did the starting honours as Calvin and his fatbike were still somewhere on the vertiginous slopes of Mount Lewis at the scheduled start time.  François had elected to cross his fingers, pray for low wind and run in the first heat but alas 'twas not to be and he stopped the clock with 74.98 mph; positively pedestrian by his elevated standards.  The fickle wind decided to play nice again and Niklas earned himself a new Hat with a 58.06 mph run in the Milan.  Then the wind stopped playing nice and prevented Claire from ticking the wind-legal checkbox next to her 54.82.  Peter was the final runner in the first heat; his 52.11 was also not wind-legal.  He reckons his Milan to be slower than his old DF, which suffered mightily at the hands of a moton in a Cadillac Escalade - a fight in which there can only be one winner.

François about to not break the world record

A quick turnaround for IUT Annecy was supposed to allow team boss Guillaume to run in the second heat but it seems someone had forgotten to extract his breathing apparatus from the van; the rider needing a dedicated supply of fresh air as the machine is pretty sealed internally.  Russell was first off and got his second V > 75 mph run of the day with a wind-legal 75.01 mph and a Hat upgrade.  The wind then picked up for Ellen's run at 63.89 mph, which someone with way to0 much time on their hands has calculated to be her 93rd since first competing way back in 2002.  Erin closed out the heat with further transmission woes in Cyclone, coasting through at 28.80 mph.

Calvin's fatbike has a nice lie down

Barney reinvents himself as a catwalk model

In the year's closing heat the wind ect and, moreover...  David's 75.57 was the best yet by Orange Bullet but the wind was still too high.  Adam, who spent much of the week prior to the event working his socks off to get things set up to the detriment of his peace of mind, got off to a decent enough start but he'd barely passed the five mile marker when his electronics shut down due to lack of electricity and Millennium toppled gracefully onto its side at low speed.  Bike and rider were swiftly cleared from the path of Guillaume and Altaïr; Wild Bill having sportingly handed his starting slot to the French team.  A gesture duly repaid with a stonking, and wind-legal, 76.85 mph pass.  Relegating Russ to third place overall chiz.  The very last run of the week fell to the indefatigable Slash, who has run in every available session since Sunday.  After my having hyped him and Twed as the best in the business on Friday, the Beano promptly fell over at launch but was swiftly righted and sent down the road for a wind-legal 63.58 mph.  Not too shabby for a circuit racer with a big chainring.

Guillaume, shortly before depriving Russ of second place overall

We hauled the mile markers back to town with devastating skill and then repaired to divers caravanserais to wash the desert out of our hair, get our DJs out of the dry cleaning bags and, in Arnold's case, apparently trade Marieke in for this here purdy cowgal:

What have you done with the real Marieke?

I didn't take a whole bunch of pictures because my elderly camera hates the Civic Center and refuses to play nicely there, but among the usual festivities were Office Aten dispensing tickets to divers crims: Adam, Nathan, Ellen and Ethan for failure to maintain their travel lane and Russ, David, Guillaume and François for speeding.  Pwners of new or upgraded Hats were then ritually humiliated announced:

(L-R: Guillaume de France (75), Russell Bridge (75), Steve Slade(60), Harrison Walker (55), Claire Nolet (50), Wiebke Magers (50), Niklas Bostelmann (55)

And so to the Prizes

Collegiate: the team that got closest to the world record in their category:

1. IUT Annecy
2. University of Liverpool
3. University of Toronto

Arms-Only:

• Men: Ken Talbot
• Women: Karen Darke

Multitrack Men:

1. Bill Thornton
2. Niklas Bostelmann
3. Peter Borenstadt

Multitrack Women:

1. Wiebke Magers - who got a spiffy engraved water bottle due to being a late entry after the rest of the trophies had been delivered

Overall Women:

1. Ellen van Vugt
2. Claire Nolet
3. Erin Price

Overall Men:

1. François Pervis
2. Guillaume de France
3. Russell Bridge

It only remains to thank the Politburo - Adam Hari, Arnold Ligtvoet, Marieke Ligtvoet, Jun Nogami, Calvin Moes, Joyce Lem and Larry Lem - for taking on the organising of the event, Al and Alice Krause for running the thing for so many years, the good folk of Battle Mountain for all their help in getting the show on the road and keeping it there, the volunteers without whom ect &, moreover, etc and the teams who come here to go fast, have fun and not be ["Redacted" - Ed.]

Day 11 Part 1: Battle Mountain NV

The Caly Poly PSOs are demanding to read about this morning's exploits today¹ so here's the morning Stuffs.  I'll add the rest of Saturday as and when, or something.

Usually weathery nonsense this morning, viz. cold and breezy.  And a freshly roadkilled antelope at the five mile marker.  Dealing with dead ruminants is above my pay grade², but Calvin, Larry and John J dragged it off into the brush for the circling vautour to have for lunch.  The antelopes were out in force this morning, crossing the road with neither due care nor attention to snack on the alfalfa growing on the west side of the 305.  No near misses, thankfully.  The horseys were back too, and volunteer Colette thought she saw a hedgehog in the road during one of the sweep runs but since North America has lacked hedgepigs for about five million years this seems unlikely.  So, what happened?

No qualifying runs, for starters.  First heat comprised Erin in Cyclone and Ken in ARION 8, resulting in 49.06 and 42.66 mph respectively.  Non-legal wind.  ARION 8 sported a hastily-confected extended tail which was so effective that it was removed when Karen ran later.  One of my Sinister Agents tells me there's a plan to make a bigger one from "big-ass quantities of cardboard" for this evening.  We will see...

Assorted types mooching at the start: Larry, Calvin, Adam, Eric

Tail extension for ARION 8

The second heat had Bill, Claire, Peter and Nathan.  Bill in the Milan RS reached 58.24 and Claire 53.99 in Cyclone.  Not legal wind.  Peter opened the vent hole in the front of his Milan, got cramp and went slower.  47.93 mph, non-legal wind.  It is most pleasing to report that Nathan got Woohoo under way without damaging the bike's paintwork, albeit not within the stipulated 15 metres.  Like he cares.  His fastest run of the week with 50.03 but again not wind-legal.

Nathan & Woohoo, rubber side down

Three more willing victims in the the third heat and yet again the wind conspired against Slash upgrading to a 60 mph Hat.  62.53 mph or a smidge over 100 km/h.  Niklas' 57.19 and Karen's 41.43 were similarly wind-afflicted; the weather seems to be picking on Niklas in particular.

The Beanery, mooching

Adam was first off in heat 4 and reached a genuine 69.11 mph.  Not wind-legal.  FFS.  There is a rumour that he might try Bill's Milan this evening.  We will see.  Erin drove Adam's truck as his chase vehicle; I swear she was grinning more as she set off than she was after finishing a run in Cyclone.  Another best speed of the week for Ellen and Orange Bullet with 60.90 but, well, you can probably guess what the wind thought about that.  Finally it relented and Harrison got a wind-legal run in Cyclone; 57.34 mph and a 55 mph Hat.

Harrison heads for Hat City

Less wind, more warmth for the final heat and François increased his personal best and European record to 88.07 mph.  He was followed down the course by Russell, who upgraded himself to a 75 mph with a new PB at 76.11 mph, but just short of his hoped-for BRITISH record.  Another PB followed, this one for David with 72.94 mph but the bastard wind had done the dirty again.  Wiebke brought the morning's proceedings to a close and grabbed herself a Hat with a wind-legal 50.42 in the Milan RS.

Perfect launches for François...

...Russell...

...David...

... and Wiebke

The morning debrief was somewhat delayed.  This was because a cow had become stuck in the muddy pond that lies behind the catch area parking lot.  While attempting to rescue said cow, Battle Mountain Mike Engle's truck fell in a ditch and got stuck. Determined efforts to rescue him by Arnold, Cobus and their trucks came to naught, though it is pleasing to note that both Mike and the cow were eventually able to go about their business once more.

The delay was a bit much for Professor Admiral Baron Timelord Jun

The Ligtvoets are lording it over us peasants in this mobile monstrosity

Group photo time outside the Civic Center.  Normally at this stage of proceedings Officer Aten rocks up in his patrol car and hauls some recidivist off to the hoosegow in handcuffs but it very much appeared that he was late this year - presumably doing Actual Policing - and everyone had dispersed to polish bikes or tit about in front of the hospital.

Vehicles & riders

Yay!

Liverpool's Responsible Adults, titting about

Team Northern Monkey

I shall shortly be heading out for the final session of racing so cross your thumbs, press your lucky rabbit's foot and stroke your fingers for a miracle to occur and the wind to bog off to Humboldt County and stay there.

1. Lie
2. But I did remove an almost-empty plastic bottle of A&W Root BEER from the course after I ran it over

Day 10: Battle Mountain NV

Sunny but cold again this morning, with the wind actually behaving more or less as expected, viz. low first thing, picking up in the middle of the session and then dropping again towards the end.  Only one heat on the 2.5 mile course, contested by two bike and one sk8r d00d.  Claire Nolet in Cyclone may not have been unduly hampered by leaving her shoes¹ in the locked Civic Center but definitely was by Cyclone unshipping a chain at the 1.5 mile mark and coasting through at 36.7 mph.  She was followed by Karen in ARION 8, with 35.45.  After she'd passed by we let drone pilot Nik "Nik Runner" Vatin do a run on roller blades starting at Badger Ranch Road.  His 18.97 mph run was probably not the slowest ever, because of the time Andrew Sourk got out and pushed Triage while in the traps, but Jun switched off the box of tricks halfway through that particular run.

🎵The sun rises slowly on another day🎶

Sartorial elegance #28948: Liverpool supervisor Steve Bode's socks

Out to the five mile start for four heats.  Harrison Walker was a DNS in Cyclone due to feeling unwell but team-mate Ethan Elbaz got off to a good start and was running some way north of 65 mph at the 1.5 mile marker when Eta Prime decked and slid off the road and into the boonies.  Ethan undamaged but the fate of the bike is less certain with damage to the cameras and body.  I don't know if it can be fixed to a safe standard in time for the final day.  Behind him Nathan had a shaky time at start but managed to get down the road with a 46.92.

Eta Prime before it all went Horribly Wrong

Also we had a further Horsey visitation, but didn't have to dive-bomb them with Calvin's drone to keep them off the road.

Horseys. Nevada. Friday.

In the next heat Slash continued to enhance his reputation for running in every available session with a 61.42 mph run.  Wind non-legal.  Bah!  His starts, with Twed doing the business outside the bike, are a joy to behold.  Niklas ran the Milan RS to 57.70 and Erin closed proceedings with a 51.89 run in Cyclone.  No wind-legal runs in this heat...

Twed & Slash: best launch team in the business

...but it decided to behave a little better for the next one.  Ellen pushed Orange Bullet to a legal 59.85.  Some special pleading by Toronto saw Claire getting a chance to run the full course in spite of not achieving the 45 mph qualifying mark, a concession she repaid with a 53.81 mph run and a 50 mph Hat.  Ken closed the heat with a 40.61.

Claire in Cyclone

All runs were wind legal in the final heat too.  Adam had something go amiss with Millennium's internals and coasted from the 3.5 mile mark at 55.40.  David managed 69.21 and Wiebke again missed out on the elusive 50 mph Hat, with a 49.84 mph run.  Bah encore!

Back to town with the adaptive cruise control set to 75 mph, letting thee Nissan ov Doom take its speed from that of Arnold's outsize GMC lorry ahead as the speed limit decreases into town.  Until he turned off to drop Marieke at the coffee shop.  Whereupon thee Nissan ov Doom tried to accelerate back to 75 mph again.  In a 25 mph zone.  Oops.  Still, it proved its worth by providing voles to jump-start the truck of one of our flaggers stranded on the wrong side of the fence at Filippini Ranch Road.

Al fresco lunch at the golf club.  a Several of Kudoses to Arnold for sneaking inside and paying for the whole party while we were scoffing Marieke's leftover chips.  Further good news in the shape of a returning Danny Guthrie, which mean thee Nissan ov Doom is no longer required for hauling timing kit out and back, which in turn means:

• I don't have to get up quite so early tomorrow, and
• I don't have to detour via Reno on Monday to deliver Jun to his Shiny Metal Birb back to That Canada, that they have now

So, the penultimate pip-emma.  Might the wind play nice and allow François to break the record?  Obv I'm not going to tell you straight away, because Dramatic Tension must be maintained.  So the first rider to brave the elements was Claire, who kept Cyclone rubber side down for a 53.36.  More launch woes for Nathan and Woohoo; they were unable to get the bike started at all in the available time before we had to send Ken off on his 35.56 mph run.  No legal wind in this heat.

Claire heads off towards the Weather

Natch Slash was unfazed by the conditions and went through the traps at 57.76 followed by the Milans - Niklas in the RS with 54.77 and Peter in the SL with 49.42. Erin seemed a tad nervous at the alarming squeaking noises emanating from Cyclone's innards but Calvin applied some headology and she did a 47.66.  No legal wind in this heat either.

Once again we help off the final heat until 18:40 in the hope that with the sun dropping behind the mountains the wind would go with it.  Adam was sceptical and decided not to go even before thee Nissan ov Doom had started its sweep run.  François was in his bike, with breathing mask attached and the lid just about to go on, when he too decided not to run.  Which left Russell and David to score 74.63 and 70.32 mph respectively.  Another PB for Seventy-Seven; Orange Bullet clocked exactly the same speed last year on its ill-fated final run.  No legal wind in this heat either.  Bollocks!  At least we managed to get packed up before the looming weather decided to soak us again.

Calvin says this scene should be next year's poster

Weather. Nevada. Friday.

After the debrief back in town we were about to go our separate ways when the IUT Annecy team collared the Politburo and refused to let them escape before they'd each been presented with a bottle of le bon vin de Fitou.  The awkward problem of the team's desire to present a bottle to local machinist Jon for his help in the care and feeding of Altaïr but having only seven bottles and eight recipients was neatly solved when Calvin revealed that he doesn't drink.

DRINK!!1!

Last day tomoz.  FFS, weather, get it right for once!  Depending on the duration and celebration level of tomorrow's awards bash the next Automatic Diary entry may be delayed until Sunday evening local time or, as it were, Monday a.m. for BRITONS.

1. "High Class In Borrowed Shoes" was the title track of Canadian rockers Max Webster's² 1977 album
2. And "Max Webster" is second only to "Eric Blake" on Mr Larrington's Great Big List Of Daft Names For Rock Bands Not Named After An Actual Person In Spite Of Looking Like They Were