This is more like it! When USST showed up for the first round of testing, there were only four of them. I was quite disappointed, expecting their usual army. For this round of testing, however, they are here in force, 13 in all.
And they’ve come in style – look at the picture of that truck! Yes it’s a rental, but it’s easily the coolest vehicle I’ve seen so far in this competition. The truck is a Chevy (with a Santini paint job) and is a monster. They are using it to pull the motor home they have with them – I think it could pull a lot more. I asked them if they would wash it for me so I could get a good picture of it, but they declined. Spoilsports…
When I visited their work area yesterday, their climber was mostly assembled – you can see it here. However, you’ll note that they have nothing on there to hold payload (at least I didn’t recognize anything that could be used as such). When I asked what they were going to use (last year they had some tubes mounted to their climber), I just got some smiles and an offhand comment about “we’ll have something”. I’m sure they will.
And, it looks like from this picture that they’ve been putting in some long hours (as everyone involved with the Games has)…
(Click on the first or last picture thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture)