You still can't beat human power though. I road 90 miles with only 6 Cliff bars for energy, and water. Total cost was less than $7. During that 6 hour time I would have eaten food that most likely would have cost that much even if I had been driving a car. So the way I see it the ride was nearly free. Also I didn't have any emissions. Well, none that I want to talk about here.
The other night a friend stopped by unexpectedly. Well, with this guy you should expect such surprises. From the quite of the outdoors emerged a light that shined through my house windows. As I opened the door, and didn't hear a sound I realized it was my old friend Warren with an electric vehicle. He owns a Nissan Leaf, and a Ford Focus Electric car, but this was a new vehicle that he was borrowing from work. Last year Warren and I had gone to the LA Auto Show, and we test drove the BMW i3 there during it's introduction. They had several vehicles there so hundreds of people were able to test them over the week that the show was running. This vehicle is seriously quick, and nimble. I could see myself driving a car like this if I had the money. The light display at night is something out of a Tron movie as you can see from the photos. The light that it cast on the plants in front of my house was strange as well. It has a blue halo around the top of the bushes. Overall it was fun learning more about this machine. Warren is always loaded with information on new technology. Presently he loves to see how far he can go on a charge. Last year we took he Nissan Leaf to the Auto Show, and managed to barely get to a charging station at a Nissan dealership in LA after the show. It was a free fill up, but it took some time waiting for other vehicles to get charged as well. At least they were having a special event there so we got some free hot dogs, and soda to hold us over. Eventually more charging stations will pop up, and electric cars will become less of a novelty.
You still can't beat human power though. I road 90 miles with only 6 Cliff bars for energy, and water. Total cost was less than $7. During that 6 hour time I would have eaten food that most likely would have cost that much even if I had been driving a car. So the way I see it the ride was nearly free. Also I didn't have any emissions. Well, none that I want to talk about here.
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It's been over a weeks since I got back from Battle Mountain. The amount of photos that I took was more than any other trip out there. Of course it doesn't take too much effort to get a few hundred pictures these days. It's not like those long gone film years. Back then you would have to decide how many photos you were going to take before you left on your trip because you never knew if you would be able to get film where you were. The photo above took me a little time to plan for prior to the shot. I established the area I wanted to take the photo minutes before the bike came. Then I panned the shot at about 1/250th of a second, and let the camera choose the aperture. Now I wonder what it would look like with less background blur. Overall it's a tradeoff. I wanted to have a slight feeling of motion, and at the same time some nice landscape. Well, there's always room for improvement.
If you want to see more photos from my Battle Mountain adventure this year you can check them out on Flickr by clicking either photo above. Also you can click the following to get to the photo album on Flickr: Tom Amick's 2014 WHPSC Photos The game is over. Once again our small family of bike designers, builders, racers, and volunteers has had to say goodbye. It's never easy leaving this place after a week of competition. Sometimes I think that it would be nice to have a place that we could all live in throughout the year so we could continue to help each other reach our goals. Fortunately we do have places like recumbents.com and Facebook so we can share our progress. I look forward to next year, and have some plans in the works for new streamliner designs. Many of us at the awards banquet were already talking about changes that we have in the works. If you have a dream you should pursue it. The worst thing to deal with is regret. I highly encourage any newcomers to come out with a machine to Battle Mountain next year. Start building now though. Time goes by fast, and it will be race day once again before you know it. I plan to post more pictures to Flickr, and my Facebook page when I get home. First off I have a 12 hour drive. Wish me luck. It's early in the morning on Sunday here at the Super 8 hotel in Battle Mountain. I'm giving John some more time to sleep since he didn't get back from the big after party that was in the conference room of the hotel until really late. This is the first time I have been up past 2 am for a long time. John had me beat on the late night adventure by over an hour. The plan was to get on the road by 8 am, but that might be pushed off a bit. I just want to get home by 10 pm so if we are slightly behind schedule it's ok. What a shame the connection with the Internet wasn't as good as now. My blog posts are uploading at rocket speed. That's the only reason I am posting so much content right now. Maybe everyone else is still fast asleep? I have three times more photos to go through this year than in any of the past competitions. Monday will be time for reviewing them all. I'm really excited to share them all with you. Here's the new team for this year. Teagan managed a maximum speed of 52 mph for the event. She seems happy, and would like to come back next year. By then she should have much more preparation, and maybe a new bike. This first year was a success to me. All the achievable team goals have been met. The main thing is that everyone is safe. John did take a tumble on the last night during a failed launch. He's doing fine. It's all part of the game with these odd machines. I know first hand what it's like to do a tuck and roll while running at full speed. If executed properly you walk away with some scrapes, and bruises. The rush of finally launching the bike masks all the pain. So we are yet to see how sore John will be today. I'll keep you posted. I am having all sorts of trouble trying to get my blog updated. It could be file size related, or a bad internet connection. Eather way I thought a test might help me figure this out. So here is a small text message to see if a simple file can upload. Hopefully I can get some photos up soon. Last night was pretty easy for me in the spectator area. Most of the people there knew as much about the event as I do. Dr. Weaver was there, along with Jonathan, and the Ince family. Also Walt Tibits showed up. He used to work the starting area years ago. Everyone was impressed with his new Corvette. We were hoping to get him to run sweep, and really show us what that beauty can do. Teagan has been improving over the days. She's gone from the low 40 mph range on her early qualifying attempts to over 52 mph this evening. It's been exciting to see her progress. I knew that with time, and proper guidence, she could get her 50 mph hat. The team has done a great job of getting her to this point. Now we wonder if she will manage to skip forward to the next level, and drop a 55+ mph ride. We shall see. Last night I caught the bus out to the spectator area. The bus was slightly behind schedule, but we managed to make it to the road before first closure at about 5:40 pm. Jonathan and Alan from the Slippery Slug team joined us along with some people from Elko, and Battle Mountain. The Ince family was back, along with Dr. Weaver. Teagan's Mom was there as well. The big surprise was that George Leone was going to be our tour guide. He did a thorough job informing everyone about the origins of our sport. He talked about the IHPVA, and how the WHPSC started at Battle Mountain. Overall he did a fantastic job of filling the silence with loads of fun facts. Thanks George. I'll try to post more pictures in another post since they don't seem to be loading to the site so well. |