Time to start cranking up towards the main event.  I fly to SFO on the 6th for Battle Mountain 2013. Here are links to the sites. http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/whpsc2013/speedchallenge.htm 

http://www.recumbents.com/forums/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=6 

I have been a bit more organised than usual. Everything booked including an overnight in SFO.

I’ve been having trouble with claustrophobia on long flights. I can do 8 hours, just, but after that my guts are churning. I can’t sleep and have to keep dashing to the loo. Alcohol is pretty scarce on flights these days so that way to get relaxed and sleep isn’t always available. My wonderful doctor Fiona Munroe Wilson (a Scot perhaps?) has given me a prescription for some ‘Valium’. I had some experience of this a few weeks ago when I had a gastroscopy. I have been taking drugs for acid reflux, which wasn’t full controlled. My skinny Dad had a hiatus hernia. Now I know I do too, but quite a small one. The surgeon told me to increase the drug dose and lose weight. There is surgery but not usually for milder cases. Doh! To bring the digression back, It was given IV Diazepam as a sedative. I told the surgeon I drink a fair bit. He said the dose would be a bit higher. They gave me 5mg and I was out like a light for a few hours. I woke feeling fine after the best sleep I’ve had for ages. If the Oxazepam tabs do the same on the flight I should be fine.

At least at first, I will be working with Graeme Obree and ‘The Beastie’. I’m not sure if we will be ‘Beastie Boys’ or ‘Wee sleekit cowering timorous beasties’. Usually when asked ‘man or mouse?’, I squeek when I’m squoken to. You can look up Graeme’s fantastic history. You may be familiar with the movie ‘The Flying Scotsman’. His prone bike is not very sophisticated aerodynamically, but it has a small frontal area and is small overall, which is a good start. At first attempt Graeme would like to be the fastest Brit. That record stands at about 67mph set by Rob English (no, really..)  in Dave Balfour’s Varna in Colorado. That seems like a reasonable aim.  

I contributed some money to help Damjan and the new ‘Eivie’ get to the event. There are quite a few competitors, including a new ‘stacked’ tandem. The top rider is fairly normally recombent. The other rider lies beneath him. The Toronto team have a bike called Bluenose after the famous schooner. The tandem might be call Brownnose. Excuse my bit of humour. It is a very good and fast machine which has a high chance  of setting record. This year will be really interesting, to me at least!

I bought a Kestrel 4000 portable weather station. About the size of a cell phone, it records wind speed, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure.  It has a data logger with intervals that can be set and it downloads by bluetooth to my laptop. I will post the results here and/or the Battle Mountain website.  I hope it will give us more idea why one night is better than another. 

For me, the problem will be coming home. Battle Mountain is hard work, but enjoyable and satisfying. My usual life does not have much of the last 2. I do have a plan. I hope to adopt another cat. I gather black cats are hard to home, which is good for me as I wouldn’t have anything else. Black cats seem to be a bit different, in good ways. Maybe that is why the black cat is good/bad luck.

I had planned to get the house cleared up before adopting cat. I make some progress then fall back each time. I don’t suppose a messy house is a reason to deny adoption, but it would be nice to come home to a tidier house – so I will be busy!