October 1stWell I'm sitting here in the van at the start area as the rain comes down and the wind howls across the desert. Oh, and it snowed lastnight. Yes you read that correctly, we came to the nice warm desert in Nevada and it snowed. The mountains look quite cool with snow on top though..... So it seems unlikely we will run tonight - we figured we might as well come out and have a look on the off chance of a window of opportunity but it doesn't look very promising. Still, with the laptop I can at least accomplish something. This morning was fun. I went for a spin with the Varna posse of Sam, Andrea and Neil before everyone took their bikes to the Civic Centre to display to the local school kids. It was great to see so many fast bikes in one place, and fun explaining to the kids just how I fit into Mango..... And so without further ado, onto the pictures: Kids peer at Mango; and Sam and I expound the virtues of hpvs to third graders.  ........ Sam tries out the Mango.....  ........ And I try out the Diablo.....  ........ Shiny shiny bikes: Coslinger Special, Kingcycle Mango, Varna Diablo.  ........ Steve Delair's extradionary device, and strolling past a Virtual Rush.  ............... Perhaps the largest collection of speedbikes in one place since....?  My favourite question from one of the kids: "Are you Scotland? You sound like Scotland"..... As well as Sam trying Mango, we tried to put Jan van Eijden in the bike. He just fit in the bottom, but his shoulders are so well muscled that there was no way we could get the top on - and yet for me we added foam to the lid today to stop me rattling around in there! Incredibly, after heavy rain, the evening actually cleared up and was pretty nice, with almost no wind. Very cold, but amazing since we almost didn't bother going out there at all. The first batch of five all launched okay, and the rest of us were warming up and getting ready when we heard bad news from the course; three riders had crashed, the course being wet and slippery further down. We didn't know if they were cancelling the rest of the runs for a while, so I stayed spinning on the turbo to keep warm, but eventually it was called off for the night - I wouldn't want to run on a dodgy surface anyway. Thankfully, none of the crashees - Jan and Ellen in the WhiteHawks and Macky in the Virtual Rush were hurt. The only rider to get a proper timed run was Warren, who bettered yesterdays run with 46mph. The weather forecast for tomorrow is even colder, so doesn't look too promising. We'll see..... |
