| Monday morning was the racers meeting.
Garrie Hill explained the rules to the competitors and volunteers, and everyone got a
chance to get their questions answered. It was decided that racers should be at the start
line at 4:30pm for the races. The Smithsonian group, who will be in Battle Mountain all
week to film a documentary on the race for a kids oriented PBS show, had everyone sign
releases. The show will focus mostly on Tanya Markham, for the kids angle. These pictures can all be clicked on for a higher resolution image. |
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Back at the hotel, Larry Lem simulates
pedaling at 100MPH on Steve Delair's streamliner test mule bike. The dual 700C bike was
actually quite low. |
| Also in the hotel lot, Steve Delair put some
finishing touches on his new streamliner. This is a 12 foot long bike with a tunnel
between the riders knees. Steve built this bike to be able to use 406mm or 700C wheels. |
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Here's the FWD
drive-train on Steve's Monocouque
streamliner. Steve used only the finest recycled aerospace materials in this bike's
construction. |
| After the meeting and the quick trip back to
the hotel, it was time to perform tech inspection. Here, Garrie and Bill Murphy
inspect the Bearacuda tandem streamliner. Yeah, it's big. No sharp objects? Helmets OK?
Brakes? OK! good to go! |
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Here's another shot of the Bearacuda. This
bike is 14 feet long, and a couple feet wide, but hey, it's a tandem! |
| On the other side of the spectrum,
there's the Mango, built by Miles Kingsbury and Rob English. It's less than 8 feet long,
and very cool. Here, it sits on the bed in the hotel room. This bike from the UK is
the antithesis of the blue yonder. |
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Here's a close up of the Mango's handlebars,
brakes, and shifters. The shifting is unique in that the chains don't move, but the gear
cluster does. The shifters just move the cluster. Rob sits hunched way over. Not too
comfortable, but very compact and fast. |
| Sean Costin was hard at work finishing
off the Coslinger Special. He still needed to install all the side windows. Things looked
good until he discovered that his video monitor wasn't working. Time for a trip to Radio
Shack! |
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The latest Varna streamliner, the Diablo II,
is actually just the the Diablo, having undergone a few nips and tucks. George Georgiev
and Sam Whittingham narrowed the top, and shrunk the canopy significantly. They had to
shrink Sam's head too... Andrea Blaiseke will be racing the Mephisto (on the right).
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| Here's the Diablo chassis. This bike is
deceptively simple. No suspension, an unsealed inner wheel fairing only on the rear wheel,
and very tight wheel openings. The rear inner fairing has a hose the comes off of it which
goes to Sam's air mask. the spinning wheel forces air into the mask, as well as road
debris. Fortunately they are using an air filter to screen out the big chunks... |
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Here's the Diablo in the foreground, and the
Mephisto in the background. George told us that the bikes were actually named after their
dogs, who were all black and named accordingly. He also mentioned that while Varna,
Bulgaria is where he was born, the Varna company was named after a dog too. I see a
pattern developing here... |
| George and Garrie discuss the rear
suspension on the Mephisto. Garrie will soon be building a posse of Varna bodied
streamliners. The White Hawk team arrived with two
massive shipping crates containing their two streamliners. They did not get tech inspected
because the bikes were not unpacked. Matt Weaver was busily putting the Kyle Edge together
and did not get tech inspected either. Rumor has it that he had a brand new streamliner
nearly completed, but ran out of time and was convinced to bring the Kyle Edge instead. |
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Out to Sr 305! At the launch area, Andrea
warms up on a trainer, while Jeff Caswell hams it up giving her a massage. Andreas
significant other, Sam grins and bears it in the truck. Notice the coats? Temps were in
the mid 50s, and the wind was gusting to about 25MPH. |
| Steve Delair seals Fast Freddy Markham
into Steve's new streamliner. After setting hm up on the course it was found that Freddy
could see the mountains but not the road. Oops! Most
of the racers chose not to race because of the wind. Warren Beauchamp (me) raced first in
the Barracuda streamliner as all the other teams in my group declined to race due to the
wind. It was so windy I got up to 40MPH and decided that was fast enough. I sailed the
bike down the road at 36MPH for 2 miles without pedaling. Though I could have gone faster,
some shred of sanity kept my speed down to 42.7 MPH thorough the traps. This was in a
non-legal 5 M/sec head wind. |
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Sam Whittingham was the first bike in the of
the second set of racers. The wind had died down some, and Sam turned in a legal 57MPH
run. Sorry for the crummy pictures, it was getting
pretty dark... |
| Rob English, in the Mango turned in a
47MPH run. Rob said he was soft pedaling the whole was due to the wind. The bike really is
that short, it's not an optical illusion. |
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The Bearacuda team had a rough time
with the wind, but they showed a great deal of gumption just to run in the adverse
conditions. They were the fourth and last racer of the night, and ran the 200 Meters at
29MPH. |
