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Pictures and wordage by
Warren Beauchamp & Dave Larrington |
| Today's
weather was virtually a repeat of yesterday. Very cool.
Temps were in the lower 50s or upper 40s during the
runs.
The show and tell at the
Civic Center was this afternoon and almost everyone
brought their bikes for the 3rd grade kids to check out.
Apparently they have a whole chapter on HPVs in their
science book! They all drew pictures of streamliners and
wanted our signatures. I think I must have signed
50 pictures...
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Phil Know
came by Battle Mountain for a couple of days with his aero
truck named "Poco Loco" after the boat hull used as an
aero mod on the back (we note that the original
"fastback" moulding was destroyed by an errant goat -
FLJS). It had a full belly pan, and got
great mileage. More at the
maxmpg group site |
| Larry Lem gooning around in his
hand-cranked, er, Thing. This was a huge
hit with the kids; had he brought a truckload of them up
from LA he could have retired a rich man... |
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The Blue
Devil camera bike from Central Connecticut
State University. This machine had a hard time
getting to Battle Mountain at all, having been briefly
spotted at Reno airport before vanishing into the Nevada
outback. The team managed to trace it to Elko on
Monday. They've been having a few problems getting
it up to speed in testing, and may yet modify the
scarcely-visible "training wheels". Sinister Agent
"B" tells me that Thom Ollinger is itching to have a go
in this machine too. |
| Dennis and
Lisa of the Varna II team (note spiffy T-shaped shirts)
examine the Blue Devil. |
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Larry Lem
demonstrates the art of bike-surfing with the
newly-repainted and very very shiny Varna Mephisto.
We are not, of course, suggesting that Larry is
incapable of being serious... |
| Mr.
Webmaster Shrimpboat's Cuda-W. He's too modest to
mention it himself, but Warren and the Cuda-W clocked
58.231 mph into a headwind on Tuesday night; only
slightly down on his best run in the old Barracuda in
2002. |
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Assorted
Small People investigate the innards of Robert Barnett's
Alligator. Later the assembled masses were called
upon to sing "Happy Birthday" to Robert, who then proved
that the seeing of fifty summers does not prevent one
from turning a cartwheel in the middle of the room. |
| Craig
Johnson (L) and Thom Ollinger contemplate the former's
ICE Trice X2R. |
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Blue Devil's
crossover drive. Final drive is to a four speed
Shimano Nexus hub gear. |
| Weather was cool and
windy, so speeds were low, except for Slovenian Damjan
Zabovnik,
who set a new European record of 72.101 MPH (facing backwards!)
in the very tiny Eivie II. |
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Freddy
Markham comes into the catch area after a great 70.711
MPH run. |
| Dave Kennedy
gives Freddy a hand as he recovers after being extracted
from the Varna Mephisto. |
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It's getting
really dark now. Andrea has a great 61.71 MPH run in the
Varna Diablo. |
| Ellen has
some tire rubbing issues and runs down the course slowly
to prevent a blowout. She still did 53.39 MPH through
the traps. |
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Lisa was
right behind Ellen, and the launch crew had to run to
catch her before Ellen was even untaped. Unfortunately
there was not time to reset the HPVA timing system for
Lisa, and the HPRA system had run out of batteries due
to being demoed to the kids for hours in the afternoon,
so the was no speed recorded for her run. |
| Lisa catches
her breath, while Al Krause holds up the Varna II.
Shortly after this
picture was taken, everybody skedaddled off the road to
let the irate motorists who had been patiently(?!)
waiting for the funny bikes to get out of the way,
roared past. |
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|
Those puzzled, and perchance worried, by the absence of
Georgi Georgiev from the event this year need fret no
more. We are reliably informed that he has gone to
the dentist.
In Bulgaria. |
