Wednesday, Sept. 17/08
Battle Mountain NV

Speeds continue to creep upwards at the Human Powered Speed Challenge, but so did the wind velocity during the Tuesday evening runs, wreaking havoc on expectations for the most speed-friendly weather of the week. Sam Whittingham and Fred Markham are still the two fastest riders at the event. “Fast” Freddy clocked the higest speed of the night, posting a 72.05 mph run despite the cross winds buffeting the course and bedevilling the riders’ efforts. In fact, Freddy was too fast for my camera work, blowing by my position well ahead of the chase car I was using as a reference point to try to spot his sleek black Easy Varna during its run. I talked to Freddy just before the afternoon session however, to get a sense of what it’s like to chase the title of word’s fastest self-propelled human.

“Fast” Freddy Markham

Whittingham remains fast, but a timing malfunction left him without an official time for his second run of the event. He’s reported to have been above 70 mph again. At this point Sam’s record-setting 81 mph run from 2002 still stands, but there’s little doubt that he’d love to claim the $25,000 deciMach prize by officially exceeding the 82 mph mark.

Whittingham signs kids’ drawings of HPVs at the Battle Mountain civic center on Tuesday afternoon.

Orion Speedtrike’s record-setting run on Tuesday

Can Chuck and bike designer Raymond Gage hold on to this accomplishment? Georgi Georgiev has an unearthly-looking camera trike waiting in the wings and it would be no surprise to see it perform a little of that Varna magic if and when it hits the course.

The latest Georgi Georgiev creation

Warren Beauchamp gets a little help from his friends as Georgi and Steve Nash assist him to put a smaller rear cog on his bike — to achieve a higher top speed without over-revving at the pedals. Beauchamp ups his top speed, recording a 61.80 run.

Warren Beauchamp’s Tuesday effort

Ellen Van Vugt is still the fastest woman at this year’s event with a 62.92 run on Tuesday, while Jason Erickson’s first run in yet another Varna clone, the Varnator, delivers a 60-plus mph run as well.

photo: Chris Keam

One of my favourite films is the Spencer Tracy classic Bad Day At Black Rock. It’s not about someone taking the brown acid at Burning Man. It’s set in a tiny town in the Arizona desert. In the opening scene, Tracy disembarks with just a suitcase, at a small train station in the middle of nowhere. Luckily for him, he isn’t going to Battle Mountain, Nevada and bringing a bike, a laptop, a couple of cameras, camping gear, clothes for two weeks on the road, extra water bottles, bike tools, etc, etc. Because if he was, he’d have to disembark at Reno. As will I. 168 miles from where I’m going, rather than the 50-ish miles I’d be riding if the nearby town of Winnemucca had a train station.

In planning my trip I sought advice from the Washington Bike Alliance. Mark Canizaro helped me figure out which bus I could take from Everett to downtown Seattle (Thanks Mark!)… but it was his offhand remark about boxing my bike for the Coast Starlight train trip from Seattle to Sacramento that sent me scrambling to the Amtrak website. In reserving my tickets, the agent told me airily I could put my bike on the train as “checked baggage”. I imagined the delightfully convenient experience of rolling my bike onto some special freight car, (a service they do offer on some trains) racking it, and marveling at the forward-thinking nature and 21st century-ishness of such an experience. Alas, it is not to be. I’ll be pulling off pedals, loosening handlebars, turning down bar-ends, and generally monkey-wrenching to get my machine box-ready for the trip. Which is a drag, but so it goes. The real hassle is the lack of train station at Winnemucca, which means if you want to get off there, all you can take with you is two pieces of carry-on luggage. Cue the extra hundred miles of riding. With what seems like a hundred pounds of bike and gear. Nevada is pretty flat right? How hard can self-propelled, online reporting from obscure places on the high plains of the continental U.S. be anyway? Let’s find out.